A Generation Ago It Would Have Seemed Absurd To List Charlotte With Atlanta, Miami, Denver, Dallas, Seattle. No Longer. Now, As The Carolinas’ Undisputed Economic Capital, Where Is The Charlotte Region Headed In The 21st Century

Sunday, September 17, 1995
The Charlotte Observer
Written by Peirce, LaRita Barber, Alex Marshall, and Curtis Johnson

This region is a place where people perennially assume a powerful bunch of bank presidents and other men (always men) call the shots. As the big oaks of business and civic leadership have fallen across America, Charlotte has seemed a case of arrested development. The mysterious group of business folks called ”The Vault” (they met at a bank) has long faded in Boston. The once-powerful Citizens Council has turned warm, fuzzy and conciliatory in Dallas. The immodestly named ”Phoenix Forty” has retreated from dominant leadership.

But change in Charlotte? Never, it seemed. The legend has been constantly renewed by the activism of the bank chieftains – remarkable financial buccaneers, ranging America in search of banks, capturing one big fiscal house after another and dragging the prize back uptown – much like the hunters of old returning home with the bounty.

The triumphs of Ed Crutchfield, Hugh McColl Jr. and their colleagues have made a huge difference: Look at all those new bank jobs in the region, at Charlotte’s soaring reputation.

Even so, a leadership revolution is under way in the Charlotte region. The leadership clique, led by the bank CEOs and other corporate chieftains, has not disappeared. But it is less cohesive, and rebellions against it more serious. Residents of Charlotte-Mecklenburg and neighboring counties, from York to Cabarrus, Gaston to Union, err when they glance up at those soaring bank towers and assume power is as centralized as it was.

Consider the rebellions: 

Populist conservatives, saying government power is at the root of much evil and highly suspicious of ”uptown power,” have swept to power themselves in recent local elections. Yellow dog Democrats are cowering in confusion. (”We were the party of the people; what’s this revolt from the right all about?”)

Tom Bush, a Mecklenburg County commissioner elected last fall, told us, ”Elected officials used to operate at the beck and call of the big banks and corporations. The business leaders had a close relationship with a powerful Chamber of Commerce that could both help local government and dictate to local government. Now many of us have been elected whom the economic powers in Mecklenburg didn’t know or weren’t interested in. Obviously there’s nervousness on the part of the chamber, the major banks, that they may be losing some of the control they previously had. My attitude’s not to do just uptown’s will, but also what University Park, southeast Charlotte and all the other areas need.”

• Years of harmonious approval of major school bonds came to a surprising, discordant end last spring, as Mecklenburg voters defeated a mega-bond issue, more than $300 million, despite its strong support in the corporate community.
• A gaggle of organizations has emerged across the multicounty, bi-state Charlotte citistate. The object of each: regional consensus or cooperation. Why? It’s becoming obvious no jurisdiction or power group has the power to carry the day by itself.

Examples: The Carolinas Partnership tries to catalyze economic development on a regional basis, consciously including development interests from the counties. Such groups as the Carolinas Transportation Compact and the Committee of 100 have looked at issues from highways to rails. After years of being trounced by rural and small-town politicos from other N.C regions, a Southern Piedmont Legislative Caucus organized to get a better deal in Raleigh.

A whole array of programs are training potentially more independent future leaders, including the three-year-old Carolinas Leadership Program. New citizen groups are emerging. One, in its infancy, is the Queen City Congress, under which a group of neighborhoods, both affluent and poor, recently signed a ”Declaration of Interdependence.”

There’s a plausible argument that with a rough brush of the arm, big business leadership could neutralize any of those groups. Some of them, the leadership training groups, for example, are largely establishment- financed anyway.

But as more groups and people begin to exercise leadership, commands sent down from executive suites are (1) less likely to get sent, and (2) more likely to be circumvented or ignored.

What’s more, leadership naturally disperses when problems get tougher. The big guys can hardly snap their fingers and provide answers to today’s pressing problems:

• How to prepare a work force that can sustain the region’s stunning record of almost full employment?
• How to avoid choking on the congestion of the thousands of cars – in other words, how not to become a Houston or Los Angeles?
• How to build a society that works for all, across races, neighborhoods, counties?
• How to make sure the region has functioning schools, ample parks and that people feel safe from crime?
• How to cultivate big-city opportunities and small-town civility in the same region?

Those who doubt the power transfer in the Charlotte region should ask the man himself, NationsBank Chairman Hugh McColl Jr. We did. ”Maybe the baton’s already passed,” McColl said. ”The so-called group that people think controls everything downtown cratered about four or five years ago.”

McColl and First Union Chairman Ed Crutchfield acknowledge there was a strong partnership seeking to guide Charlotte, among themselves and such leaders as former Duke Power Co. Chairman Bill Lee, developer Johnny Harris, retail leader and former mayor John Belk, Observer Publisher Rolfe Neill and the Dickson family, whose Ruddick Corp. owns Harris Teeter supermarkets and other companies.

But today, they say, the group mainly coalesces on charity issues. Business figures such as Crutchfield disclaim almost any contact with the local political structure.

The regional counterparts to Charlotte’s power brokers are well-known – the Cannon family in Cabarrus County, the Close family of York and Lancaster counties, the Broyhills in Catawba and Caldwell, and the Stowes, Carstarphens and other textile titans in Gaston.

This Carolinas culture is wrapped in strong country-city ties. Crutchfield noted many Charlotteans (like McColl and himself) were born in small towns within 100 miles of the city, ”sort of one-horse towns where some old rich guy controls the land and the buildings, and they think that’s what’s happening in Charlotte.” Result: The symbolism of power remains, reinforced by Charlotte’s soaring bank towers, even if it’s less often exercised.

Whether or not McColl and Crutchfield protest too much about their modest power, no one can gainsay the achievements of Charlotte’s recent leaders. By their imagination and will power, they played a catalytic role in catapulting Charlotte from the third tier of cities – the category of a Norfolk, Birmingham or Jacksonville – to a firm place in the constellation of major U.S. regional centers.

A generation ago it would have seemed absurd to list Charlotte with Atlanta, Miami, Denver, Dallas, Seattle. No longer. The big banks, the audacious skyline, the NBA and NFL franchises, the thriving airport, the city’s dynamism have all seen to that. Charlotte is the Carolinas’ undisputed economic capital. Savvy leadership is the obvious reason. As Belk is fond of saying, ”Charlotte is a man-made town.”

But will Charlotte emerge as a trend city, with a fast-moving, urban, cosmopolitan life? We doubt it.

Here’s a city and region that seems to care more for trim, green lawns than urban spice. It holds some excellent shopping centers, but you can look long and hard for an eccentric coffeehouse or used bookstore. Uptown rolls up its sidewalks at 5 p.m. SouthPark is thriving, but urbane it isn’t.

Even among residents, the joke is: ”Charlotte’s a nice place to live, but you wouldn’t want to visit there.” Or the perhaps apocryphal comment we heard, attributed to a Hornets player: ”You can’t do nothing in Charlotte except live.”

Yet with its quieter style, Charlotte has an immense asset – its culture of cooperation and participation. More than in most cities, citizens are expected to take part in civic projects, volunteer on civic boards and committees, even run for office. Not by accident does Charlotte have more Habitat for Humanity houses – nearly 250 – than any other city in America.

In the same spirit, this city is quite open to outsiders. ”If people come in and want to work for the community, Charlotte lets them,” said Belk. ”Some cities are jealous of people coming in and won’t let them help. But we’re different.”

An outsider looks across the Charlotte region and sees a high quotient of what political scientists call ”civic capital.” Community-based organizations proliferate, as do an extraordinary number of churches, at least some of which support important social work. Charlotte boasts a stronger tradition of racial amity than most other Southern cities, including strong early efforts to make school desegregation work, and election of a black mayor ahead of many Southern towns.

The effort to excel continues. The city government is making a heroic try to ”reinvent” itself, to become more responsive to neighborhoods and citizens. Whether or not full city-county merger is approved, the consolidation of multiple Charlotte and Mecklenburg County services stands out as a beacon of common sense among America’s quarrelsome metropolitan regions. Indeed, here’s a region where it’s at least possible to discuss the idea of merged regional government services. For example, the successful police merger in Charlotte-Mecklenburg could be tried in surrounding counties, where the elected sheriff is becoming an anomaly in an increasingly urban age. Think further: Wouldn’t regional fire and emergency medical services make sense, too?

And consider Rock Hill’s strategic planning process, begun in the early ’80s, which has transformed it from a depressed, unemployment-plagued mill town to one of the nation’s most economically vibrant, highly attractive suburban centers. The transformation was accomplished in part, leaders told us, by convincing firms ”that if they were in Rock Hill, they were really in Charlotte.” Yet Rock Hill, with its public art, quality industrial parks, restored downtown and emphasis on neighborhood revival, is anxious not to bleed into Charlotte proper.

Perils exist, and they start with the region’s success. Does Charlotte aspire to be more than a boom town? When an Observer columnist recently asked, ”Would you challenge a bulldozer for anything in Charlotte?” only a tiny proportion of readers offered any examples of physical places to which they felt real attachment.

Can thousands of newcomers be integrated successfully into the region’s civic life? Newcomers are arriving in such numbers that thousands are in danger of being mere ”residents,” not true ”citizens.” A number of newcomers, interviewed in shopping malls by our colleague Alex Marshall, talked of the Charlotte region as if it were a disposable commodity, not a community to which they have reciprocal obligation.

More challenges relate to development. For example: Since the 1960s, the dominant form of construction has been self-contained, single- income-group subdivisions, each with one entrance onto an arterial road and a country-club-type sign proclaiming a Quail Hollow or whatever, hinting strongly of safety, seclusion, exclusivity. Missing, as a rule, are connecting roads to the next development.

Such problems are typical. It’s no accident the Charlotte region’s greatest pockets of congestion turn up in areas most recently developed – exactly the opposite of what one would expect.

The developers’ land-use decisions will increasingly leave the public to suffer serious inconvenience, from long driving times and congestion to worse air quality and a palpable loss of community.

Is it too heretical to suggest, in this land of free enterprise and ferocious distrust of government, that abdicating so much public decision-making, and letting private developers determine a lot of the region’s shape and form, may have been a very bad idea?

The region’s cities and counties should return to the practice, common until the 1940s, of laying out and mapping streets. On a big wall at city hall or the county government office should be a map of how the city will grow over the next half-century. It might take 40 years before a developer paves that street and puts in lots, but when that happens, it will fit into a whole.

People will predictably reiterate that such planning smacks of socialism. Again and again, we heard that this is a region of prickly, independent, ”Don’t Tread on Me” folks. The Scotch-Irish pioneers who settled the banks of the Catawba River brought their deep resentment of aristocrats, government and the authorities, and those sentiments endure.

But even if government is viewed with a jaundiced eye, does it make sense to assume a mill owner, a banker or a subdivision builder knows best? We believe there’s a third route – broader citizen participation, not just in elections but thousands of forums.

The region’s citizens need to take charge. The native intelligence of the people of this region needs a workout. The citizens of the Charlotte citistate must address the most critical challenges of the times, personally, intensively, in all kinds of formats.

Take one problem: the poverty, crime and social chaos that plague some of Charlotte’s older neighborhoods. Rural areas have parallel pockets of deprivation. These problems already besmirch the region’s reputation.

Unattended, they could prove deeply injurious in the future. A number of constructive, neighborhood-based recovery strategies have been proposed, based on self-help, accountability and strategic public investment. But is the whole society – businesses, nonprofits, universities and affluent citizens – ready to provide the political and financial support to get progress rolling and sustain it?

If a growing proportion of the region’s crime problem is rooted in youth crime, for example, are youth being called on to help analyze the problem, work with peers, suggest solutions? Are young people in general being drawn into discussions of the Charlotte citistate’s choices and future?

Is UNC Charlotte, with its huge repository of brainpower, being tapped sufficiently? UNCC and the community colleges are making an effort to contribute to the region’s public dialogue. UNCC has many students engaged in some form of community service. Regardless of the discipline, UNCC officials told us, the university does not hire department heads without being clear that relating to the community will be part of the job.

But the community shouldn’t wait for outreach from the academics. They need to be sought out, challenged, drawn into critical public debates.

One example: North Carolinians are debating subsidies to draw industries. UNCC should be ready, perhaps working with the local press, to do cost analyses on subsidy deals as they’re proposed.

Finally, consider government itself. In the new international economy, regions must be keenly competitive. That means not just wages, but a technically skilled work force, a clean environment, quality health care, arts and professional sports, parks and open space, and, especially, efficient government.

Good or bad, government makes up roughly a fifth of a local economy. If government is inefficient, so is the citistate.

Only informed citizens can hold government accountable. Services must be merged, bureaucracies thinned, performance benchmarks set. Public-private partnerships for more economical and effective local government must be devised across the region’s neighborhood, county and state lines. If not, the discordant cacophony of competing governments will start driving new businesses away.

It won’t do any more just to say, ”No – I don’t like taxes, I don’t like government, I distrust city people or minorities or whoever, so get government off my back, let free enterprise reign and everything will be fine.”

Some of the Charlotte region’s radical populists seem to go that far. We believe these new conservatives should be welcomed into the political debate, since they bring insights and challenge many of government’s encrusted and outmoded ways of operating. But they should not go unchallenged. Because at the end of the day, real solutions to shared problems must be found, or the region will falter.

Thousands of citizens of the ”can-do” Charlotte region, operating across the barriers of political persuasion, class and color, need to think through their problems and challenges and design their own collaborative answers.

The region’s newspapers can enrich the process immeasurably. So can the broadcast media, broadening the debate to thousands of people who might otherwise not be engaged. Churches, Rotaries, chambers of commerce, schools – all should be facilitators and leaders.

Gather these forces and, we believe, there will be no stopping the Charlotte citistate, advancing confidently into the 21st century.

DEAR READERS: 

On a Sunday afternoon, soaring over your communities at low helicopter altitude, it hit us. Your region has magic. Historic neighborhoods, a stunning uptown skyline, recreational lakes spreading from the spine of the Catawba River. Your Rock Hills and Gastonias, Davidsons and Kannapolises in stages of renaissance. And a marvelous vast canopy of trees standing guard over your places still unfilled.

We’re two journalist observers invited to delve into your region and offer counsel on its future, as we have done for 10 other cities.

In more than 100 interviews last June with your fellow citizens, your enthusiasm for your high quality of life came through.

Famous or humble, you were also as candid about your problems as you were proud of your prosperity. We try to match your candor, in the series starting today in Perspective, on Page 1D.

We’ve studied metro regions coast to coast. We’ve seen what happens when planning is scorned, sprawl tolerated, historic urban centers abandoned, education dishonored, crime and neighborhood decay left to fester.

Don’t let it happen to you. You don’t need to. 

As friends of your region, we propose a bunch of ideas today. For example: walkability and livability for uptown and your historic county seats. Next Sunday we focus on growth guided to corridors and town centers, to protect your environment. A third Sunday we’ll try to show how computer learning can overcome anti-education sentiments left over from your pioneer days. We’ll wind up Oct. 8 addressing the potential for nationally significant breakthroughs in your crime- and poverty-plagued neighborhoods.

Whether you warm to our specific ideas or not, do yourselves one big favor: Try democracy. Too often the Charlotte region looks for direction to bankers and corporate chieftains. Of course, they’re a talented lot. But from clean air to the work force to family stability to crime, they can’t and won’t solve your most basic problems for you.

Create multiple forums – regionwide and locally – to put the decisions about your physical growth, your educational future, your parks, towns and neighborhoods, into the hands of thousands of citizens. Make Everyman and Everywoman an author of your region’s future. Trust yourselves, challenge yourselves. Have fun at it. Build a great 21st-century citistate. Remember, no one else can do it for you.

CHALLENGES TO THE REGION

• Accept that the bank CEOs and their friends no longer control the region. Future leadership becomes everyone’s job on the big problems for the region’s future: Quality work force, traffic, crime, equity.
• Celebrate Charlotte’s ascension among the ranks of America’s leading cities.
• Cultivate and protect the region’s special, open, ”can-do” culture. Work to accumulate more ”civic capital.”
• Integrate the thousands of newcomers into the region’s life.
• Think about regional services beyond Mecklenburg’s borders.
• The public – not developers – should plan streets, roads and neighborhoods.
• Recognize the age of the ”citistate” has dawned. Reduce attitudinal splits between Mecklenburg and outlying counties. Focus on a common future.
• As the old power brokers die or retire, the region’s leadership must come from its people – city and suburban – working together. Tap citizens, youth, universities. Build trust, and expect the media to help.
• Recognize uptown is the region’s signature piece to the world. Make it as welcoming for people as for big buildings.
• Support the region’s other uptowns – Concord, Monroe, Rock Hill, Davidson and Gastonia, for example – where the real character of town life is preserved. Use local zoning and other powers to make sure the downtowns become a focus of development.

THE PEIRCE REPORT 

This series is based on a simple premise: Charlotte and its sister communities are one region, one economy, one environmental area, one society.

Clearly, Mecklenburg County is the population and income heavyweight. But in no way is it the only guy on the block. The daily lives of people across at least eight counties – Mecklenburg, Union, Cabarrus, Iredell, Catawba, Lincoln, Gaston and York, S.C. – are ever more tightly intertwined. And clear ties are developing to an outer ”ring” of counties – Anson, Stanly, Rowan, Alexander, Burke, Cleveland, and Chester and Lancaster, S.C.

The Charlotte area is becoming a major national and world economic region. It fits well the definition of ”citistate,” which we have developed in our work with other regions (and hope some day to get accepted by Random House or Webster):

A region consisting of one or more historic central cities surrounded by cities and towns which have a shared identification, function as a single zone for trade, commerce and communication, and are characterized by social, economic and environmental interdependence.

The definition doesn’t mention city or county lines. A citistate is organic. The citistate is what the economy does. It’s the ”commute-shed” for workers, the signal area for local newscasts, the geographic base of fans for pro sports teams. It’s the market for top regional hospitals.

No matter what you check – from air pollution to water quality, the arts to crime, shopping, higher education, day care – the interdependence of the Charlotte citistate is underscored.

It’s absurd for this region to do anything but think and plan collaboratively. One hears of a growing split between suburbanites and Charlotte’s old guard. But Rock Hill, for one, is making an asset, not a liability, of strong ties with Charlotte.

Citistates that quarrel will suffer the unhappy fate of families mired in conflict. Those that see opportunity in the variety of their regions, that mobilize people and communities to work together, will be far more resilient – better places to live and work.

UPTOWN: SYMBOL OF THE REGION 

When ”Nell” appeared at theaters last winter, the origin of the rural scenes was a mystery to most moviegoers. Not until the credits did they learn those stunning mountain scenes came from Western North Carolina.

But in a theater as far away as Minneapolis, when a city skyline loomed, there were audible whispers: ”That’s Charlotte.”

Charlotte’s skyline has become the region’s signature.

Anchored by the NationsBank and First Union towers, the skyline symbolizes banking clout. It signals Charlotte is now an ”instant recognition” city. Goodbye to confusion with the South’s other ”Ch’s.”

Charlotte needs its uptown to keep emphasizing its newly won status. A depressed or abandoned uptown would be a disaster for the entire Charlotte citistate.

Right now, uptown shows lots of big-project dynamism: the new convention center, the huge Carolinas Stadium, Discovery Place, Spirit Square, the Afro-American Cultural Center and the North Carolina Blumenthal Performing Arts Center.

But what about people? Will uptown be a place for them, too? Will the streets be fun to walk on, with restaurants and galleries and little shops? Will uptown warmly welcome an entire region? Will it stop looking like a stage set for a ghost town after 5 p.m.? Can a human, real city be built?

What’s missing is glaringly obvious. We discovered it one evening, in search of a good meal. Unless you know where the restaurants are hidden, you’re in trouble.

We stood at Trade and Tryon, unthreatened by cars or buses, watching stoplights flash green, then red again, regulating unseen traffic. A few human figures wandered about, reminding us of the hotel concierge’s warning to be wary of street people.

We found Bistro 100, deep in an indoor retail complex, and enjoyed a fine meal. As we paid, we were advised to call a cab, since it wouldn’t be a good idea to walk around at night.

The next evening we found an excellent restaurant, Carpe Diem. Wonder of wonders, it actually had a street entrance on South Tryon.

The chances for a more vibrant uptown rest heavily with NationsBank, through its Transamerica Square project and Chairman Hugh McColl Jr.’s personal, active interest in a major sweep of development through uptown’s entire northern end.

McColl talks both of investment and his personal legacy to Charlotte when he discusses plans for an urban village of offices, townhomes, apartments and stores stretching eventually to the Brookshire Freeway, filling the gaps from Third and Fourth Wards to Earle Village to the new transportation center on East Trade Street. A huge chunk of it would be residential development. That has major promise. Double the 7,500 people living uptown, and just watch the gathering parade of restaurants, as well as places to buy groceries, get hardware and have your suits cleaned.

Developing a strong residential base is key to everything else.

One worries that all this development could be hurried forward without full public participation.

When citizens are involved from the start, they become stakeholders, defenders of the new. Ideas emerge: What about a day-care center at the new transportation stop? What about special arts and music fairs to celebrate Charlotte’s ring cities – a Rock Hill or Gastonia or Monroe day? Will uptown have housing for every income group (the goal successful cities such as Portland, Ore., have set)?

Let’s fast-forward five years. Is this what visitors will see as Charlotte turns the century?

• Fifteen thousand uptown workers awaken to the smug reminder that their commute is a pleasant walk. No congestion. No extra car to keep up, no parking fee. A quick breakfast is easy to find, whether it’s coffee and muffins at St. Ruby’s Java Joint II at CityFair, or biscuits and livermush at the New New Big Village on North Tryon.
• A second awakening comes later, as dozens of restaurants on Tryon and Church streets fill with people headed to the Performing Arts Center to hear the Carolinas Symphony, formerly the Charlotte Symphony, conducted by Christoph von Dohnanyi, recently lured from the Cleveland Orchestra.
• The south end of uptown goes seismic several times a month with suburbanites, Dilworthites riding the trolley up South Boulevard from Dilworth, and conventiongoers heading for concerts in the new Hornets Nest, a basketball arena near the Carolinas Stadium. The older Charlotte Coliseum continues to be booked solid, as well, with tractor pulls, Amway meetings and Ice Capades.
• After the concert, the crowd spills into a nearby complex of movies, bars and restaurants developed in the late ’90s. Residential life is also returning to this end of town. The pioneer was developer Jim Gross, who followed his successful Ivey’s project on North Tryon by converting the old Lance factory into condos.
• The transportation center works so well that last year nearly half of all commute trips to uptown were by transit. There are buses, van shuttles, even a jitney lane of specially marked cars to make short trips around uptown. Uptown residents use the transit center for van rides to Lake Norman, University City or shopping malls.
• Meanwhile, work is getting under way to convert one transit way to the first line of light rail, linking uptown to the airport.
• Instead of steering around it, Charlotteans proudly include Earle Village as they show guests around. The public housing project, developed in 1967, was almost completely rebuilt with $41 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (just a year before HUD itself was replaced). And NationsBank, despite its earnings hitting a rough patch after it swallowed the Bank of Boston in 1996, kept its promise to hire 100 Earle Village residents.
• CityFair bursts with higher education offered by UNC Charlotte and Central Piedmont Community College. They opened a job and training information clearinghouse, which offers a package of interest- and aptitude-testing and computer-based searches for the best matches in jobs.
• After years of debate over the old convention center building, the city – over some local retailers’ objections – courageously struck a deal with Nordstrom to buy the facility for $1 and turn it into a department store.

Don’t believe it’s possible? Fifteen years ago, no one would have believed uptown Charlotte would look the way it does now. One thing is certain: The roaring growth of the past decade will slow. Executives such as First Union CEO Ed Crutchfield warn that the region’s financial services job gains won’t be anything like what they were in recent years.

The attractions of the suburbs won’t fade. Crutchfield makes a strong case for the communications ease and less-expensive parking at his bank’s massive, Pentagon-style building in University Research Park.

Still, a diverse, well-planned uptown can strengthen and give focus to an entire region – as the business center and symbol of the citistate, as its entertainment and arts and culture center, and as the area’s lived-in, welcoming heart.

In the chase to outpace Atlanta and Dallas, building a vibrant uptown could be the go-ahead move.

CHARLOTTE THEN. . . AND NOW 

1. In an aerial view of The Square on Sept. 27, 1981, North Carolina’s first ”skyscraper” – the 14-story Independence Building – is imploded to make way for new development. 2. The bottom photo is a current view of The Square and uptown, looking south down Tryon Street. The triangular structure in the foreground right is the Independence Center, one of the buildings that replaced the Independence Building. 3. At left is the 60-story NationsBank Corporate Center, which opened in 1992. 4. When fire destroyed Crockett Park (above) in 1985, baseball had been played on the site for a half-century. When it came time to build a new stadium, however, team owner George Shinn took Charlotte’s minor league team south of the border to Fort Mill. 5. Olmstead Park (below) – a development combining single-family homes and apartments – filled the vacancy.

ON CHARLOTTE AND THE REGION 

Tom Bush, Mecklenburg commissioner: ”Elected officials used to operate at the beck and call of the big banks and corporations. . . . Now many of us have been elected whom the economic powers in Mecklenburg didn’t know or weren’t interested in.”

Hugh McColl Jr., NationsBank chairman: ”Maybe the baton’s already passed. The so-called group that people think controls everything downtown cratered about four or five years ago.” *

Michael Gallis, Charlotte planner: ”Rock Hill is Richardsonian Romanesque, Monroe is variegated Victorian, Concord is Second Empire, Davidson is Georgian or Palladian. Gastonia is neo-classic.”

John Belk, retail leader and former mayor: ”If people come in and want to work for the community, Charlotte lets them. Some cities are jealous of people coming in and won’t let them help. But we’re different.”

AREA CITIES DISTINCTIVE, CAN CHOOSE TO REMAIN SO 

Walk around the downtowns of the cities surrounding Charlotte – Monroe, Rock Hill, Concord, Davidson or Gastonia, for example – and you’ll find something uptown Charlotte lacks.

These cities have character, a sense of history, a sense of place. They have straight streets where 100-year-old buildings perch on sidewalks and storefront windows invite passersby inside. They have fine Victorian homes with wraparound porches. They offer old hardware stores. They have churches and schools as rooted in their places as old oaks.

Charlotte may have the Panthers, flashy attractions and a lot of money. But most buildings look inward, not to the street, once the river of life flowing through every town. Central Charlotte is strangely devoid of the intricate web of homes, stores, offices and churches that used to make up a city.

Charlotte’s special character oozed out during postwar development. Charlotte tore down its past with scarcely a thought. Only traces remain, principally in Fourth Ward, a reconstructed hint at the Charlotte of yesteryear.

But outside Charlotte lie cities with distinct personalities. Michael Gallis, an architect and planner, can even discern separate architectural flavors: ”Rock Hill is Richardsonian Romanesque, Monroe is variegated Victorian, Concord is Second Empire, Davidson is Georgian or Palladian. Gastonia is neo-classic.”

The good news is that while Charlotte (like Atlanta) has been willing to destroy much of its architectural past, the Piedmont’s history lingers in its smaller cities.

That makes for a nice balance. You could go to a football game or ballet uptown; then browse for antiques or lick an ice cream cone in Concord or Davidson.

As Concord, Gastonia and all the smaller cities and towns try to shape their identity over the next half-century, leaders should keep that in mind. Those cities may covet Charlotte-style office buildings, shopping malls or subdivisions. (The Rouse Co. plans a 110-acre mall in Gaston County, which is surely stirring enthusiasm now.)

In our talks with development officials from the counties surrounding Mecklenburg, the sole melody was growth-growth-growth – even when that growth, in several counties, turned out to have been primarily in mobile homes.

In Iredell we were told, ”Growth is stretching us like a rubber band,” but, ”We believe in a man’s unfettered right to do with his property as he pleases.”

This region seems also to have a fetish for bigness – the massive convention center and stadium in Charlotte, the mega-Speedway in Cabarrus County, the soaring, pink-hued Calvary Church on N.C. 51. All are reminiscent of the big-growth boosterism that preoccupies Charlotte proper and sometimes makes it look a tad silly to outsiders.

Our question to the ring cities and counties: If you want quality growth without overwhelming size, why not plan consciously for it? What are the realistic goals that represent appropriate growth, development matched to your history and traditions?

It is vital for each of the ring cities to develop, preserve and enhance their own historic identities. If a town is tempted, say, to clear away an old church or neighborhood to make way for a new office building or subdivision, it should consider what it will lose as well as what it will gain. If an industry wants to move in, does the location fit the county’s own plans? Reality check: There are big obstacles to restoring and developing older downtowns. We noted dozens of vacant storefronts, deserted streets and serious disinvestment in the cities ringing Charlotte.

Downtown Monroe, with its blocks of largely vacant storefronts, was the most tragic, but not alone. Many others suffer from lack of use, despite a booming regional economy. Even Rock Hill, a star of the group, needs more downtown activity.

The public sector – a government the people elect – must insist zoning and taxes and other regulatory powers be exerted more strongly, to make sure downtowns remain centers, the jewels of their counties, and that new development fits and creates a livable, balanced community.

We don’t intend to say growth is bad. Quite the contrary. It’s a necessity for prospering communities. It means jobs, prosperity. But how development is done – whether it relates to established growth centers, supports a city or county plan, or simply devours and exploits the countryside – is a decision many developers would rather keep the public out of.

That’s why each community must ”be its own man,” determine the growth it can absorb, then stand its ground when developers or mega-corporations seek to build on the periphery and let the town center deteriorate.

Growth itself needs to be redefined, from sheer numbers of new houses built or gross dollars spent in stores to a measure that makes a difference for ordinary people: How many adults are fruitfully employed? How are people’s skills being expanded? How many youth are being adequately prepared for 21st century jobs?

One answer is to design or channel growth so it hugs tightly to the existing cores rather than heading for some cornfield 3 or 4 miles from town.

Where possible, extend the old grid of streets and build offices and homes in the so-called ”new urbanist” fashion – close to the street.

If you plan a new office park, make it fit with the core city, as Rock Hill has done.

Do not encourage leapfrog development. Instead, mobilize to fight it. The farther each town sprawls from its center, the more difficult it will be to keep those centers viable.

And don’t expect zoning alone to ensure a healthy city. Planners, with citizens’ help, must craft how new sections of the city will appear and how they will fit together.

Some Charlotte ring cities are taking steps in the right direction. Gaston County’s Belmont has adopted a new code encouraging traditional, small-town development and restricting suburban-style sprawl.

And consider Concord, with its old homes and charming downtown. It looks as though the consultant the city hired a few years ago did well. Fashioning growth around Concord could ultimately make all Cabarrus County more prosperous. We were told one reason Cabarrus residents are talking about controlling growth is that they don’t want to become another Gwinnett, the suburban Atlanta county that lost its charm and identity in helter-skelter growth.

Davidson is considering a new town plan to preserve and encourage its historic core, which centers on Davidson College. But its housing prices have skyrocketed, and even some professors can’t afford to live in town. That points to a pitfall: Growth must be fair. If a city simply prohibits growth, it protects ”haves” at the expense of ”have-nots.” That sows the seeds of a phenomenon familiar to Boulder County, Colo., or Sonoma County, Calif., where the gentry live in town. Those who can’t afford it have nowhere to go.

The way out is to channel development around cities so that old and new co-exist in harmony. This takes planning and discipline.

But remember the sprawling future you avoid. Think of preserving the identity that brought many of you to Gastonia or Rock Hill in the first place. You came, most likely, because it was not just another Charlotte suburb. Maybe you need to form some regional alliances to make sure it doesn’t become one.

Again and again, we heard how much people in the Charlotte region love their towns, how much they want to keep their towns’ identities, to avoid being lost in faceless suburban growth.

The best way not to become Charlotte is to stand one’s ground and tell fast-talking mega-developers to take a walk until they’re willing to respect each place’s unique history, culture and vision of its own future.

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ABOUT THE PEIRCE REPORT 

If you’re curious how urban writer Neal Peirce’s team came to study Charlotte, you have several people to thank – or, if you wish, blame. 

Peirce, 63, is a nationally syndicated writer whose column appears in 50 newspapers, including The Observer. He studies cities; he has written 10 other Peirce Reports, including one in 1993 for The News and Observer of Raleigh. 

He’s also a sociable and curious fellow. So when he visited Charlotte more than a year ago for a speech at UNC Charlotte, he spent time talking with folks here about the region. 

”There were various people saying, Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone of his stature to come into our community – an outsider, unbiased – to look at where we are?’ ” remembers Bill McCoy, director of UNCC’s Urban Institute. 

Bill Spencer, president of the Foundation for the Carolinas, and Mark Heath, president of the Carolinas Partnership, were particularly enthusiastic. Spencer, with the Urban Institute, approached The Observer and several smaller daily newspapers, which agreed to publish the report. 

So in June, Peirce’s interview team arrived and began work. They talked for seven days with roughly 100 politicians, executives, neighborhood leaders and everyday people about the Charlotte region, past and future. They toured by car and helicopter. Interviewers were:

• Curtis Johnson, 52, Peirce’s writing partner. He chairs the Metropolitan Council of Minneapolis-St. Paul, a planning agency. He has been chief of staff to Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson and executive director of the Twin Cities Citizens League.
• Alex Marshall, 36, city government and urban affairs reporter for The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk.
• LaRita Barber, 32, formerly community services director at the Urban Institute. She is director of internship programs at Queens College.
• Peirce, who lives in Washington, was a founder of The National Journal and has been political editor of Congressional Quarterly. His books include ”Citistates” and ‘The Book of America: Inside 50 States Today.”

Funding, raised by the Foundation for the Carolinas, came from: the Carolinas Partnership, the Belk Foundation, the Duke Power Foundation, Foundation for the Carolinas, NationsBank, the Blumenthal Foundation, the Cannon Foundation, First Union National Bank, Southern Bell Telephone Co., Wachovia Bank and Trust Co., Lance Inc., Branch Banking and Trust Co. and First Charter National Bank.

Donors had no say in the reporting and writing and did not see the articles before publication. The writers did not know who the donors were.

The Gaston Gazette, The Herald of Rock Hill, The Concord Tribune, The Enquirer-Journal of Monroe and The Daily Independent of Kannapolis are also publishing the report.

The Peirce Report was edited by editorial writer Mary Newsom. Photos are by Observer photographer Mark B. Sluder, graphics by staff artist Dean Neitman. The pages were designed by Perspective editor Greg Ring; Steve Johnston was copy editor.