Harris Teeter files rezoning application for Central Avenue grocery store

The rezoning application for the Harris Teeter grocery store at The Plaza and Central Avenue has been filed.

Public hearing date is July 18.

The revised site plan (PDF) includes a bike rack near the building, specific space dedicated to a CATS bus pad and specific trees to be preserved.

Oh, and the rooftop seating area faces west, with a likely view of the skyline.

Here's the background.

Streetcars vs. bicycles: Some Central Avenue neighborhoods lose out (opinion)

Comments on an environmental assessment of Charlotte streetcar plans are due to planners on May 9.

The full environmental assessment, available at a city of Charlotte planning site, is 58 megabytes in a PDF and rather dense. Karen Sullivan of The Charlotte Observer has written a summary of the streetcar environmental findings.

The assessment concludes there are no significant negative effects on residents or surrounding neighborhoods.

But the fine print deserves a closer look, particularly for some neighborhoods along Central Avenue like Merry Oaks. The negative effect of the streetcar on bicycling cannot be denied.

For the Central Avenue Subarea, the report notes that bicyclists will face increased safety risks because of streetcar tracks in the roadway and because they would share a lane with streetcars along Central Avenue.

And while the report generally supports the increased use of bicycles, it includes a small clause that could affect plans for extending bike lanes along Central Avenue from Merry Oaks Road to Elizabeth Avenue. The Central Avenue bike lane now stops abruptly at Merry Oaks Road. (It's the red line in the bike route map at the top.)

Says the report:

“The LPA will maintain existing bicycle lanes through Central Avenue and adopt recommendations under the No-Build Alternative to the extent that the improvements do not present a conflict with Project operations.”

In other words, existing bike lanes would be supported as long as bicyclists dodge streetcars, but plans for extending bike lanes along the corridor could be in jeopardy.

Admittedly, many bicyclists and area residents think biking Central Avenue now is akin to suicide. One Merry Oaks bicyclist is lucky to be alive after being hit by a drunk driver on Central awhile back.

Still, bike traffic along Central Avenue continues to increase as gasoline prices rise and as area residents look for alternatives to fossil fuels. And bicyclists also often use parallel routes through quieter nearby neighborhoods like Merry Oaks, Plaza Midwood and Commonwealth. (Some of those routes are on the bike map.)

The report is designed to look at environmental conditions in the future and determine the costs of the streetcar. One cost clearly is the lost opportunity for increased bicycling along Central Avenue if extended bike lanes are abandoned and if street riding becomes even more dangerous.

Some people doubt whether these streetcar plans have any immediate effect on their lives since long-term funding remains unclear. But that one clause in a 58-megabyte document could add weight against a planning commitment for extending bike lanes along parts of Central Avenue.

If the streetcar would hinder the future bike lane from Merry Oaks Road to Elizabeth Avenue, then a deep commitment to enabling and connecting the alternative parallel routes seems in order. Certainly other factors affect future bike routes, but the streetcar plan piles on to existing hurdles.

Granted, other Charlotte city departments are working on bicycle route planning. The negative effects of streetcar planning on Central Avenue routes should influence their work.

Our transportation and energy consumption plans shouldn’t just switch us from oil to electricity. Enabling and encouraging other methods like bicycles shouldn’t fall victim “to the extent that the improvements do not present a conflict with Project operations.”

Bikes and streetcars don't have to be an either/or choice. Other cities like Portland have been through this and have lessons to share. Let's learn from them.

Thoughts? You can email the streetcar senior project manager, John Mrzygod, by May 9.

Images: Top image shows existing bike routes around Central Avenue. Bottom image shows planned streetcar stops.

Further reading:
Bikes & Streetcars: let's be Best Friends!
Streetcars and Bicycles, a Learning Experience
Bikes and streetcars should be friends

Charlotte streetcar shelter design workshop planned

A streetcar shelter design workshop is scheduled from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Feb. 18 in Room 267 of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center at 600 East Fourth Street.

City officials are looking for design ideas for the stops on a planned 10-mile route for streetcars. Part of that route passes near the Merry Oaks neighborhood, with one planned stop near Arnold Drive and Central Avenue.

The workshop is the same night as the neighborhood’s general meeting, which begins at 7 p.m. at Merry Oaks Elementary School.

Here are excerpts from the neighborhood newsletter about the streetcars and their impact on Merry Oaks, based on a November meeting:

The City of Charlotte’s Engineering and Property Management Department and CATS hosted a public meeting in late November to discuss the Charlotte streetcar proposed in the 2025 Corridor System plan.
The engineers expect to be at the 30 percent mark of preliminary planning by fall of 2010. The project requires looking at utilities, stops, and a maintenance facility. Engineers are trying to position the project for federal funding and determine how to minimize the impact of construction. They said a discussed north corridor does not meet federal funding requirements.
Streetcars would be larger than buses but smaller than rail cars. A packed bus carries about 60 persons, and a streetcar could carry about 100.
The entire route for all lines would be about 10 miles long and have 34 stops. The cars would hook up with transportation centers, including a new Amtrak station planned just west of the Square in uptown Charlotte, and the route would have varied destinations, such as Central Piedmont Community College, a new uptown branch of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Presbyterian Hospital, retail shops, businesses and hotels.
The portion of the routes nearest to Merry Oaks (the Central/Hawthorne Corridor) would have stops at Hawthorne Lane, the Plaza area, Veterans Park, Morningside Drive, Arnold Drive, Briar Creek Road, Eastway Crossing, Sheridan Drive, Darby Acres, Rosehaven Drive, Winterfield Place and the Eastland Transit Center.
In the summer of 2010, trolley stops will be discussed at a charette design meeting for community input.
In a separate development, the city council voted Jan. 25 to apply for a recently announced federal grant for 1.5 miles of streetcar service. There is no guarantee that the grant would be awarded. If granted, construction would begin within 18 months.

References
The new Amtrak station.
A pdf of the Merry Oaks newsletter: Visit Neighborhood Link, and look under “Documents and Pages.”
Map of proposed streetcar route.

Heavy rains flood low areas in Charlotte and wash flotsam into creeks

The waves of heavy rain that hit Charlotte late Sunday night and early Monday overloaded drains and creeks and washed debris down the creek beds.

A small blue dumpster is stuck on the Central Avenue bridge over Briar Creek at the moment. A Charlotte Special Services truck was parked nearby.

Debris also clogged the edges of the pedestrian bridge over Briar Creek connecting Merry Oaks and nearby Plaza Midwood. Sand and mud on the bridge indicated that at some point late Sunday or early Monday, the creek overwashed the bridge.

A Charlotte Fire Department alert early Monday indicated that the department had responded to a call for "rescue and evacuation" at 1600 Masonic Drive about 1 a.m., and also responded to a person trapped in a flooded vehicle at 3800 Country Club Drive about 3:25 a.m.

For future similar situations, you can follow @charlotteFD on Twitter. And another good person to follow: Brad Panovich, or @wxbrad, chief meteorologist at News Channel 36, WCNC-NBC TV.

Ghost Busters car visits The Penguin

A car that resembled the Ghost Busters vehicle from the 1984 movie showed up at The Penguin restaurant at 1921 Commonwealth Ave. on a recent Saturday evening.

A waitress said the car's owner was inside eating. She said it was fine to gawk and shoot pictures. I took a couple of shots, and then I took my warm, greasy sweet-potato fries home without stalking the owner.

But a few clues exist on who the owner might be, or perhaps we have more than one Ghost Busters car in North Carolina. A Durham blog, take the bull by the horns, took note of a very similar Ghost Busters vehicle back in March 2009. And the Hendrick Durham Auto Mall blog spotted the same car as the one seen in Durham back in January 2009.


So was the car at the Penguin the same, only new and improved? Have you seen it elsewhere? Give me clues.

The vehicle isn't the only weird, wacky car to turn up in the Plaza Midwood business district and surrounding areas.


An Escher pickup truck showed up in September 2008 outside of Nova's Bakery at 1511 Central Ave. It didn't have an N.C. tag, and a bumper sticker touting Black Rock High School suggested the car had recently been to Black Rock City, home of the Burning Man festival. I haven't seen it lately.



And, of course, the Area Fifteen art car was parked outside of Area Fifteen at 516 E. 15th St. at Davidson Street for Charlotte's first ever Barcamp back on Jan. 24.

The Area Fifteen car appears to be the work of Jared Nicolson, profiled by Weird Charlotte awhile back. The car displayed at the bottom of the Weird Charlotte story was created for Charlotte photographer Jim McGuire, and I remember seeing him drive it around the neighborhoods.

Haven't seen it lately.

Wonder if it still runs.

Regardless, I love living in a place where crazy cars turn up. If you want more, check out the art carz archive at the House of Dioxin.

Charlotte's outerbelt vs. Independence Boulevard

"See there's a highway to the right of us I took it years ago.”
Distraction #74, Avett Brothers

Circuit City.
Toys R Us.
Service Merchandise.
Barnes and Noble.
Wolfe Camera.
Target.
When I moved into a neighborhood off Idlewild Road on Charlotte’s east side in 1993, I moved minutes away from big-box land along Independence Boulevard ( U.S. 74.) For the parent of a toddler, it was perfect, except in December, when every other consumer swarmed the boulevard and parking lots.

Now that part of Independence Boulevard has many empty big boxes.

Nearby neighborhoods are hanging on, waiting for a widening and realignment of Independence Boulevard, with the elimination of three traffic lights between Albemarle Road and Conference Drive. Some residents hope the widening will spur an increase in home values, which has happened for neighborhoods closer to downtown along the corridor.

And now Gov. Bev Perdue has given Charlotte a choice: Finish the final northern segment of the outerbelt or complete the Independence Boulevard project.

The next step: the Mecklenburg Union Metropolitan Planning Organization is scheduled to make a decision in August. If they don’t pick the outerbelt over Independence, construction on I-485 probably won't begin in 2015, according to an article in The Charlotte Observer by Steve Harrison. That choice followed a February 2009 promise from the governor to speed construction of I-485.

I moved away from big-box land in 1999, toward downtown Charlotte. My commute shortened dramatically. And after a few years of big-box deprivation, Target moved nearby.

So I don’t really have a dog in the fight for or against widening of Independence. But the future health of those east side neighborhoods affects me, and flaws exist in the decision-making process now:

• The vice chairman of MUMPO, Anthony Foxx, is a Democratic candidate for Charlotte mayor. One city council member who represents the area, Nancy Carter, faces a political challenge from Darrell Bonapart, who has led the Charlotte East Community Partners. Any decisions or pronouncements from those candidates will be strongly influenced by short-term political goals.
  
• MUMPO is heavily weighted toward favoring work on Independence. Of the 17-member board, 8 are from Union County. Only three represent northern Mecklenburg towns. And towns in Iredell County that would be greatly affected by an improved outerbelt have no representation on the board.
  
• Plans for Independence are out of date, given our changed economy. The retail industry has moved dramatically online. Federal funding for light rail appears light years away. Housing needs have changed too.
  
• The process isn’t transparent enough. Lists of the landowners affected by either decision should be online, and searchable, with the proper identities behind corporations and businesses available. While a PDF map of the Independence widening has been available online for a while, new technical capabilities of adding transparency are available now, and taxpayers have more reason than ever to check for themselves for conflicts of interest.
  

A representative for Charlotte East Community Partners has said the organization would rather postpone the Independence widening. Representatives of another neighborhood organization, Coventry Woods Neighborhood Association, want the Independence work to proceed before the outerbelt, and they’ve urged Carter and Foxx in email to support that idea.

Given the circumstances, any decision should wait until after the November mayor and council election, though of course broad debate during the political season is in order. And given other factors, perhaps widening Independence first isn’t such a good idea.

Ideas have surfaced about whether the Independence widening should be done at all, or whether it should be done differently, as a boulevard or parkway like in Washington, D.C., and other cities. More time might allow alternative ideas to develop.

Throughout its history, Independence Boulevard has disrupted neighborhoods. A delay might give us a chance to rethink its future.


More information at MUMPO.

Eastside Charlotte mayoral forum

More than 75 people showed up for a Charlotte mayoral candidates' forum Tuesday night at Windsor Park Elementary School to hear John Lassiter and Anthony Foxx discuss issues near and dear to the east side of Charlotte.

The forum was sponsored by Charlotte East Political Action Committee and was set up as a moderated Q&A with the candidates, with time for questions from the audience.
Foxx, a Democrat, and Lassiter, a Republican, are both at-large city council members and the leading candidates for Charlotte mayor. The winner will replace Mayor Pat McCrory, a Republican, who is the longest-serving mayor in Charlotte history, according to Wikipedia.

Fred Clasen-Kelly did a fine job of reporting the event at The Charlotte Observer, (temporary link) focusing on low-income housing questions.

The following are raw notes from the meeting. My background is as an editor and designer, so I can't do as fine of a job as Fred, but I offer these notes up to flesh out areas that Fred couldn't address because of time or space constraints. If there's anything I left out or portrayed wrongly, let me know in comments.

In addition, CLTBlog plans a streaming video online town hall with Foxx at 7 p.m. on Sunday, May 17. Anyone can submit and vote on questions for that event by going to Google Moderator here.

The key topics (often overlapping) from Tuesday night:

Fixing Eastland Mall
Both candidates noted that zoning and overbuilding hurt the Eastland Mall and Albemarle Road areas. Both noted that the tough economy is making a fix difficult.
Lassiter: Plans for the mall land will succeed if zoning is mixed use. When the economy rebounds, the area will see folks coming in and buying up these properties. The city planning department will be key in making the rebound a success.
Foxx: Fixing Eastland will involve a number of efforts, including police, infrastructure and rebuilding trust between the neighborhoods and the city. "We cannot leave East Charlotte out."
One questioner pushed for housing on the property at a specific price point: $200,000 or so, not $110,000 to $150,000. Neither candidate promised such a price point in future zoning for the property. Lassiter noted that the east side faces a challenge because existing housing stock falls into a narrow price area, with no ability for residents to move up but stay within the area. Lassiter also said redevelopment of the 90-acre Eastland Mall site would not include subsidized housing.
Another questioner expressed concerns that existing city investment in a bus transit station at the mall site could impede future plans.
Foxx: "There have been alot of false starts." "I'm sorry that folks have felt the city hasn't been paying attention." "We need to rebuild that connection between the city of Charlotte and the east side."

Working for better public transit on the east side of Charlotte
Both candidates noted that the Independence Boulevard widening was a state project that failed to take local residents and business needs into consideration.
Foxx: "As mayor, I'd commit to taking a long hard look at rapid transit on Independence Boulevard." He also noted that he's pushing for a way that the city can move ahead with the trolley line from Beatties Ford Road all the way to Eastland Mall.
Lassiter: "The challenge of getting light rail money is meeting federal rules." He's also working for the trolley, trying to find a way to use mostly local money to fund the project.


Fixing Independence Boulevard
Foxx: Wants new money to pay for the finishing of I-485, preserving existing state money to finish Independence Boulevard. "The N.C. DOT has not historically been a good partner with us" for helping to support the businesses that depended on Independence Boulevard.
Lassiter: Independence Boulevard needs to be the back door for the neighborhoods, not the front door. "I think we can all agree that the state has made a mess of Independence Boulevard."

Maintaining safety and fighting crime
Both candidates acknowledge the strong work of the Charlotte police department (which had at least five representatives at the meeting) and that crime had gone down in the Eastway division. Both noted that the city would find responsible ways to pay for more police officers that would not raise taxes. Both pointed to fiscal responsibility from the city, contrasting it with financial difficulties the county faces.
Foxx: Went to Washington, D.C., on his own dime to talk with U.S. Senator Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and U.S. Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., about federal support for fighting crime. He has also talked with the state Administrative Office of the Courts, and is working in the community at West Charlotte High School, his alma mater, to help show young people different, positive paths.
Lassiter: "We have to get chronic offenders off the streets." Lassiter noted he served on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board for many years, working to support young people and schools.


Low-income housing
Foxx: Noted a story by Fred Clasen-Kelly in The Charlotte Observer in 2006 that said roughly four of every five Section 8 residents are clustered in 10 ZIP codes in the Charlotte area. "I want to see this city deal with affordable housing in a real way," he said. He mentioned an "incentivized inclusi0onary zoning" fix. If he were mayor, he would establish a task force to handle low-income housing questions.
Lassiter: "I believe the east side of Charlotte has given enough." However, he emphasized a market-based approach to handling housing price points.

Code enforcement
Eastside residents have wrestled with the problem of code enforcement people working day hours Monday through Friday, with no one to verify and follow up code violations such as parking cars and trucks on lawns on weekends and evenings. Lassiter addressed the issue, saying the city was looking at innovative solutions such as split shifts for code enforcement workers. Foxx agreed: "We've got to have weekend code enforcement," he said, and he noted that the city workers must deal with three computer systems to input and track data about violations, with no easy computer interaction with police computers. He said the city needed to increase our investment in technology to address the challenge.


Small-area plans
Susan Lindsay, a long-time neighborhood activist for the east side of Charlotte, questioned why the city had not gone forward with small-area plans for the Milton Road-Plaza area and the Eastway-Plaza areas. Both candidates said they would look into that, with Lassiter noting that the planning staff should have some excess capacity at the moment because of a lack of rezoning cases.

Eastsiders turn out for Independence

About 30 people turned out Thursday to rally for redevelopment, light rail and strong planning for Independence Boulevard, an Eastside corridor lined by abandoned strip malls and big boxes after road widening.

Mayoral candidate and city councilman John Lassiter plus several television stations turned out as well.

Lassiter spoke with residents about the complicated mix of planning needed for transportation and the luring of business back to the corridor. His main point: The neighborhoods that line the road will likely turn their backs to the road over time as it continues to develop into a high-speed road to deliver commuters into Charlotte.

However, some businesses are planning to return to the area. WSOC reported Thursday that Walmart confirms a new store will be built on Independence Boulevard near Albemarle Road. The store could open in the fall of 2010.

More background:
Eastside Political Action Committee.
Independence Area Plan, from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Department.
Map, history and links on Underoak.

Rally for Independence Boulevard

The Eastside Political Action Committee is leading a rally from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Thursday, April 9, for the Independence Boulevard corridor.

The group has been working for more than a year to support redevelopment of the Independence Boulevard corridor: its neighborhoods, businesses and landowner rights.

Independence Boulevard from Eastway Boulevard to Sharon Amity Road was once a thriving retail corridor; many businesses moved or closed up shop when the road was widened five years ago and access was limited.

In March, Charlotte's Economic Development and Planning Committee proposed a change in land-use plans along the corridor that area residents say will make it harder for businesses to redevelop the area.

Details on the rally, from the Eastside political action committee:
How: Show up and bring a sign. (There will be signs provided if you don't have one).
Where: Independence Boulevard, both sides: The sidewalk of Coliseum Shopping Center just east of the Eastway/Wendover bridge, and between Norland Road and Woodland Drive (the former Shoney's parking lot).
Why:
- Support redevelopment of Independence Blvd.
- Support reduction of a 175-foot transitional setback
- Advocate for more information or funding for buyouts of undevelopable property.
- Advocate for an Eastside PAC meeting with the NC Department of Transportation and Charlotte Department of Transportation, as promised at the last rally for Independence a year ago
- Advocate for the support of businesses along the next part of the corridor widening, from Sharon Amity Road to Conference Drive.
- Push for light rail in the Independence Boulevard corridor.

Background links courtesy of the Eastside PAC:
WSOC story, March 2009.
WBTV story, March 2009.
History of the building of Independence Boulevard from historian Dan Morrill
Eastside PAC forum.

Top image from Google Maps. Bottom image from the Charlotte Economic Development and Planning Committee, looking west toward the Independence interchange with Wendover Road/Eastway Drive.

Getting there - on a bike

Here are a few bicycle route resources, for those close to town who are ready to give up high gas prices in their commutes. Links will join those in the sidebar.
Bike Mentor.
Charlotte Bikes dot org.
Routeslip dot com. Routeslip lists 1,401 bike routes for North Carolina. It lists 749 in South Carolina and 243 in Charlotte.
Thanks to Scott Lundgren for the links. If anyone has other tips on commuting from Merry Oaks on a bike, feel free to share.

Car, bus or bicycle?

A picture is worth more than a thousand words.

Related: Can someone please get a "Bike lane ends" sign put up on Central Avenue inbound before the intersection of Central with Merry Oaks Road? I worry a biker is going to get hit where the bike lane abruptly stops.

Biking for booty

A beer and wine tasting party will be held on Friday, June 29 from 5:30-8:00 p.m. to support Charlotte-based 24 Hours of Booty , which runs the Official 24-Hour Cycling Event of the Lance Armstrong Foundation in Myers Park on July 27-28. The "Hops & Vine" fundraiser will take place at Dillon Natural Health in Elizabeth at 406 Louise Avenue (near 7th and Hawthorne). Tickets cost $15 per person. Details: Christina Dekraay at 704-226-6580 or at christinadekraay AT yahoo.com.

Connecting Duo at CBC with Merry Oaks

The Merry Oaks Neighborhood Association board had a cybermeeting this month, via email, and agreed on a letter to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Department about Merry Oaks connectivity with Duo at CBC:

The Merry Oaks neighborhood has a strong value around pedestrian, bicycle and public transit use. As evidence, please note that we have successfully lobbied the City and County for in-place ped/bike trails to the adjacent Plaza Midwood neighborhood and to the Merry Oaks School Campus. Many of our residents use the bike lanes and CATS buses on Central Avenue for commuting.

Consistent with this, we strongly support eventual public bicycle and pedestrian connectivity from Tuscan’s proposed development Duo @ BCB to the interior of the neighborhood (Cosby Place). This will allow current residents to more easily walk to CATS buses on Central Avenue. It will also allow Duo @ CBC residents to walk/bicycle to the Briar Creek Greenway/CDOT connector off Arnold Drive which takes them over the creek and through the woods to Plaza Midwood.

However, we do not support a full extension of Briar Creek Road for eventual vehicular access to the interior of the neighborhood.

Be aware that we fully understand and support the City’s connectivity policy with regard to new subdivisions. However, in the case of our existing very small neighborhood, we do not see compelling reasons to add additional vehicular connectivity to the interior of our neighborhood.

---We only have around 450 homes with no possibility for vehicular connectivity to any other neighborhood. Therefore, there is adequate ingress/egress from the neighborhood for our residents.

---Signalized ingress/egress at Briar Creek Road may encourage cut-through traffic from Eastway Drive. While we acknowledge that the connectivity policy exists precisely to provide this kind of option, in this case it could be devastating to the dead-end Cosby Place and other small neighborhood streets.

Tuscan’s plans call for minimizing impervious surface and significant tree save on this heavily forested parcel. We are concerned that a public street would compromise this intention.

Thank you for considering our concerns about this.