Don’t go big at Eastland Yards. Go small. | Opinion
Eastland Mall was once a phenomenal gathering place and community anchor. There are many Charlotteans who, with wistful eyes, will recount how important the mall was to them and the communal trauma of seeing something so grand fall into decay and disrepair.
When you talk to people who live in east Charlotte, there is a burning desire to undo this decay and have a local phoenix rise from these concrete ashes to make Eastland a communal anchor again.
As city leaders review proposals for Eastland site redevelopment, they need to consider a development option that would allow east Charlotte to thrive and be a stronger, more resilient community.
All three of the projects currently proposed for the Eastland Yards site are just as vulnerable to decline and decay as Eastland Mall was. We can do better by building smaller, more adaptable units or storefronts that will allow local Charlotteans to grow their businesses instead.
In our desire to recapture the magic that was Eastland Mall, we need to understand that the mall was a large project and carried with it the vulnerabilities inherent to large investments. When you have a large investment like this, it is difficult to adequately handle or adapt to the changing needs of the community.
When crime became an issue at Eastland Mall, many retailers opted to leave, weakening the mall before the Great Recession, which subsequently killed it in the following years. When you have a development this large and it fails, the result is a black hole in the community that causes a downward spiral. This is because these large development sites cannot be easily repurposed.
For example, on Independence Boulevard you see large former department-type stores that have either fallen into disrepair or become cheap storehouses that function more as warehouses. This is what happened with Eastland Mall and the surrounding area.
The same danger exists with all three of the proposals — and it’s unaddressed. A tennis court, water park and Target store are not things that could easily and quickly be changed into something new should they not pan out.
An alternative approach — one that could turn east Charlotte into a hub for small businesses and retailers alike — would be to build a wealth of small storefront units capable of dramatically and inexpensively changing to meet the needs of the community, or accommodating new entrepreneurs if an old tenant didn’t rise to the occasion.
On North Sharon Amity Road, for instance, we saw a mechanical shop, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department substation, and a check cashing store change over a period of 10 years into a tax accountant’s office, a cellphone dealership, a sign and print shop, and a restaurant.
When you build small units over large ones, they can be more financially productive on the land they occupy in comparison to larger developments, which may go out of business and are harder to replace.
We also have the issue of equity. We’ve already displaced the Central Avenue Flea Market vendors and some of us wring our hands at the thought that east Charlotte’s immigrant community will be displaced by gentrification.
If we build small units versus large projects like department stores and a water park, members of the immigrant community could stay and build real, tangible wealth over generations.
Great cities are ones where those with scant resources but determination can build themselves into something. All three of the projected proposed for Eastland Yard won’t accomplish that, but smaller units could.
Two futures lie ahead of east Charlotte: One that considers the mistakes in our past development patterns and creates the conditions necessary for a resilient, strong economy — catering to the small businesses that the community genuinely needs and desires. Or, we end up chasing the grandeur of the past and find ourselves depleted and left to have this same conversation again years from now.