Charlotte to close businesses at downtown transit center to help with safety
The interim CEO of the Charlotte Area Transit System announced plans to end the lease of six businesses at the uptown transportation center within 90 days in an effort to curb crime and decrease loitering.
Brent Cagle told members of the Metropolitan Transit Commission about the department’s plans at a meeting Wednesday, saying the empty businesses will be converted into waiting areas for riders and drivers.
Removing the businesses from the Charlotte Transportation Center will help CATS enforce a “fare zone,” Cagle said. Cagle said some light rail stations are already fare zones, which allow CATS employees to ask people who don’t have a ticket or bus pass to leave.
Making the transportation center a fare zone make CATS “better able to maintain security within the facility,” Cagle said. There are plans to release a renovation plan for the facility in June.
Safety at the transportation center has come under scrutiny recently after violent crimes and deaths, including a shooting death in April.
But for Youn Park, whose Little Orbit corner store is located in a facsimile of an old ticket booth at the transportation center, CATS’ decision to end the leases was sad.
Park, speaking with The Charlotte Observer on Friday, said he opened his market 14 years ago. He said doesn’t know when he’ll have to leave or where he’ll go.
Other businesses inside include a Burger King.
Dwight Little, who was standing in line at USA Fried Chicken on Friday, said he doesn’t have a problem with the people who hang around the transportation center each day.
Little, who owns a headlight cleaning business called D Best Cleaning Co, said he regularly travels through the transportation center, and eats and shops at the businesses and restaurants inside.
While he understand what CATS is trying to do, said he wasn’t sure it was the correct approach.
“Some of them, this is the only place they got to go in the evening, so that’s going to basically put them out in the street,” Little said. “It might create an additional problem.”