Charlotte is swiftly urbanizing and changing -- but at what cost?

On Jan. 31, Charlotte Center City Partners, members of the media and city leaders got together for the seventh State of the Center City presentation.

Charlotte Center City Partners is a nonprofit group dedicated to helping provide needed direction to developers and entrepreneurs looking to leave their stamp on Center City Charlotte, from South End to Uptown, and Midtown to West End.

In years past, Charlotte was presented as a city trying to compete and emerge as a leading New South City. This year’s event abandoned that, painting a picture of Charlotte as a fast-growing powerhouse that has already fully emerged. Personally, I think CCCP is getting way ahead of itself.

Do a simple word search in the 2017 State of the Center City Report and the following terms aren’t mentioned a single time: “adaptive reuse,” “historic,” “preservation,” “rehabilitation” — and I could go on.

I can’t argue with the assessment of Charlotte as a fast growing hub for job growth, with its ever-expanding base of young people flocking to the city.

Charlotte is a swiftly urbanizing and changing city. Just look at these numbers from the report:

• 5.3 million square feet of office space planned or under construction.

• 777,392 square feet of retail space planned or under construction.

• 9,725 housing units planned or under construction.

• 2,671 hotel rooms planned or under construction.

I’m a big advocate of urban development. With every development-related announcement, with every piece of news from CATS, I get a little more excited for the city I can imagine one day flourishing. Charlotte is, without a doubt, a city on the rise — but at what cost?

I listened to the Center City Partners presentation and read the 40-page report and all I see is how it hopes to urbanize the city, but I don’t see a single mention of how it plans to preserve it.

Center City Partners loves to only talk about the positives — they make their money as an advocacy group after all. What they fail to mention are the following items that also shaped Charlotte in 2016.

• Loss of timeless cultural icons in the name of development.

• Loss of homes for people that don’t have the luxury of living in the new development sprouting up at every turn.

• Loss of essential small concert venues, gathering spots and cheap places to have some fun. Every big city loses these things while they grow, but Charlotte lost nearly all of them in 2015-16.

• The loss of cheap, historic space for start up entrepreneurs to thrive and grow.

• The growing divides in the different cultures that should all reside with one another and work together to make Charlotte a better place.

I know it’s not necessarily Charlotte Center City Partners’ job to be socially conscious like this, but doesn’t keeping these things in mind make the city it works so hard to showcase that much better?

I have to give CCCP credit for promoting the reuse of the wasted lobbies and ground levels spaces in uptown. It has lead to some great things happening at Trade and Tryon. But I cry “shame” that it hasn’t helped breed the type of culture that could have saved the buildings that housed the Common Market and the numerous Charlotte-born businesses that lived within them. Just look the Dillon in Raleigh, which incorporates the character of a historic warehouse building, or similar projects in Winston-Salem and Durham. If it’s possible in smaller cities, it’s possible here.

Center City Partners likes to say that it wants to facilitate and promote the economic and cultural development of center city, but I have yet to see how they do anything but promote development that hinders culture.

I also have yet to see how they expect to make Charlotte better for those living in Charlotte for generations, not just those moving to Charlotte every day.

Charlotte has a lot of work to do in order to be what Center City Partners is selling. I hope it, and we, can help bring about that change.

Photo: Diedra Laird/Charlotte Observer

This story was originally published February 5, 2017 at 10:01 PM with the headline "Charlotte is swiftly urbanizing and changing -- but at what cost?."