Wide open spaces at the Morningside development

It's hard to imagine that this rural-like scene is less than three miles from downtown Charlotte.

Pictures tell the story better than words for an urban area that once housed Morningside Apartments, brick buildings from the World War II era, with hardwood floors, large rooms and a multicultural community.

The apartments were torn down in August 2007 to make way for new development, which has since stalled. The 33-acre parcel sits between Central Avenue and Commonwealth Avenue, with a small creek running through the eastern part of the property just before Morningside Avenue.

In the mean time, grass and weeds hold down the dirt. For a historical look, check out the Morningside Apartments website, which has some dead links but also holds some great glimpses of the past.

For more photos of the open fields (with captions), and photos of efforts to manage runoff into the small creek, see Flickr.

Aerial map snapshot from Google Maps.






Update: I shared the top photo in this post on Twitter, asking a guessing game of where it was, on May 31. Photographer James Willamor guessed the location correctly, and that's no surprise. He loves to study Charlotte buildings, the skyline, maps and development and write and shoot for CLTBlog. James has built a Google map of good vantage points to take photos of Charlotte's skyline.

Further historical links:
The developer's website, circa 2008:

Karen Shugart in Creative Loafing, talking with residents and nearby neighbors, March 1, 2006:

Hip Hoods on the development plans, Feb. 13, 2008:

Steve Lyttle from The Charlotte Observer, July 29, 2007.
(Note: This is the HTML version of a .pdf from The Charlotte Observer, not available directly from The Observer but available through the developer's website. If The Observer has any objections to this link, please let me know and I'll take it off.)

Doug Smith in The Next Big Thing, The Charlotte Observer,Feb. 13, 2008.
(Note: This is the HTML version of a .pdf from The Charlotte Observer, not available directly from The Observer but available through the developer's website. If The Observer has any objections to this link, please let me know and I'll take it off.)

J. Lee Howard in The Charlotte Business Journal, March 31, 2006.