A South Charlotte rezoning project was voted this week down due to a lack of the required 6 votes needed. (5-4) but Charlotte City Council member Dimple Ajmera made a motion after the failed vote to defer the petition and it passed. So the project lives on.
Apparently there are some people who despite all the evidence in the world can't grasp the basics of the problem with re-zoning in Charlotte.
30 Years ago Albemarle Road was an extremely prosperous corridor. You'd not know that today, but at one time East Charlotte was impressive. Today it is a crime infested blight on the Queen City.
So what happened?
Density saturation. Developers paraded one re-zoning request (from R-3 to MF) after another in front of Charlotte City Council in the 80s and 90s. Every one of them blindly approved. The oversaturation of apartments was followed by a glut of empty apartments and declining rental rates with vacancy rates above 30%.
The subsequent low rents brought in low income residents and the problems of drugs and crime with them.
Within a decade Eastland Mall was empty and became a CMPD hot spot with an explosion in calls for service. Restaurants along Albemarle Road closed, strip shopping centers declined and sold for 10 cents on the dollar and single family homes values imploded as the area became a wasteland of blight.
Today the Steele Creek area is experiencing the same thing. Over saturation of apartments vs single family homes has turned what should have been a much desired community into CMPD's newest violent crime nightmare.
Now a developer wants to expand the Legacy Arboretum complex off Pineville-Matthews Road across from Providence High School.
There are already around two hundred apartments at the site, but the Goldberg Company Inc wants to tear down those apartments and build a complex with several four story buildings and five hundred units.
According to news media; Councilman Ed Driggs, who represents district 7 where this is all happening, is skeptical of the site plan.
“The residents around there are very upset, and I agree with them. They’re putting apartment buildings in a single-family area on a very crowded road. And it’s just unsuitable at that location,” Driggs said.
Cedar's Take: Driggs is a spineless bastard which would be ok if he wasn't the lone republican with a track record of folding like a lawn chair.
“My role in this situation is to try to mediate, right, so I look at the rights of the land owner, I look at the concerns of the residents. And I explored to see whether I can find a middle ground,” Driggs said.
As I said Spineless and lets add weasel to that.
According to Joe Bruno -Tom Sedden is one of around six hundred residents against the redevelopment.
“The development is right in front of Providence High School, which is a very unusual setting. And, you know, if you look at the traffic in the morning, there, it’s already crazy. And you pop out, you know, another 300 apartment units into that is just gonna make things just madness,” Sedden said.
Sedden is also concerned about the removal of green space in the area. He says it will result in the loss of more than half of the tree canopy on the site and the removal of the tree buffer between the single-family homes and 500 new apartments.
So back to Charlotte City Council. Turns out Dimple Ajmera the lone idiot that keep the madness going is compromised. Seems she's in a certain developer's pocket who has made at least $22,000 in campaign contributions to key local politicians.
Beside all the reasons that re-zoning is just wrong there's long term affect. Homeowners buy into an area because it suits their lifestyle. To change the character of their neighborhood is unconscionable.
The bottle neck created by Waverly is inexcusable and second bottle neck at Providence Row, a similar re-zoning request to accommodate the destruction of the Pinehurst Apartments displacing hundreds of lower income families for the high end multi story project, tripled density and has turned Fairview and Providence into a hot zone for traffic accidents.
The project has also stalled perhaps due to COVID but the 2nd and third phase on the project is apparently on hold.
You can read more about the plight of South Charlotte residents here:
8 comments:
It's Charlotte. Developers have always gotten what they want. Tear down existing affordable housing stock to replace it with astronomical rent, fancy density. There's nothing new under the sun. Just because SouthPark's changing landscape looks fancy, doesn't mean those places won't have a value collapse as well. The problem seems to be, most of these complexes sell even before they are finished. The developer moves it as soon as rental forecasts are set and some greater fool comes along and pays a multiple on that value.
Yet Charlotte has always given more to those folks than the common single family owner/occupier. Wait until the duplexes and quads move onto your street CP.
So Cedar Mouth once again proves what a racist bigot he is, what's wrong racist jerk you don't want people of color in your neighborhood? To F-IN bad were are coming for your white neighborhood now.
Sadly, you're right. You are coming for every neighborhood in Charlotte, and at the same time changing it to the point of no return, and no semblance of what is was before. What used to be decent, will be unlivable and still expensive beyond the reach of most. It's played out that way in every part of Charlotte. Paw Creek, Steele Creek, North Charlotte, the eastern corridors, Matthews, South Blvd, Pineville. You may not be able to completely ruin Myers Park- just the schools.
The good thing is, Ryder, Penske, and Hertz rent one way trucks for all of us to sell our places to you, let us pack up, and move on to our own little paradise somewhere. meanwhile, you will get neighborhoods of rental properties owned by Wall Street, apartments jammed up on top of what's left of single family housing, a crippled woke police force, taxes through the roof, and nobody to blame. Wilmore used to be a very diverse neighborhood. It's long been out priced for anyone looking for 'affordable', yet still has nothing to offer but proximity.
So basically, you could have stayed in Philly or Baltimore or Detroit or whatever slum infested rat hole Democratic machine milked outhouse you moved down here from. Or just moved to Durham or Atlanta and allowed us North Carolinians to enjoy our own places. Not racist, just reality.
Folks, lock and load. Get ready and be prepared.
Not trying to sound or be racial however why do African Americans like the Dallas Cowboys and the color Purple so much? I’m tryI got to understand culture and why they are drawn to these two? Only a curiosity thing
Don't they ever get tired of their own crap getting destroyed, stolen, or devalued? I've seen lots of the successful ones move into great neighborhoods, so maybe they do. But until their is an admittance that their own folks are causing the vast majority of the problems, it's gonna get a lot worse.
744, my nigga you are too harsh. Go ask Jackie Bryley. She likes the Cowboys and purple. SHe a fucking weirdo, though.
The way the media reported the violent AWD, attempted murder with a motor vehicle and robbery incident in the links below is just shameful. It was not just a hit and run. The guy was rear ended, jumped and then run over. The lack of reporting on this is also concerning. It should have been all over the news!
At least David Whisenant reported this part from witnesses in the body of his article - “We’ve been told that the people pulled a gun on him and laid him on the hood,” said Jeremy Good, owner of LeBleus Towing. “When he bent over the hood they took off, drug him about 50 feet down the road, ran over the top of him and just kept going.”
This should have been a much bigger deal but to act as if it is just a hit and run or not cover the story at all is just sick and complicit. Thank the media for crime rates because as long as no one talks about it we can all pretend it's not happenning. That is until you get rear ended and jumped.
https://www.wbtv.com/2022/06/13/concord-police-searching-driver-car-who-hit-dragged-tow-truck-driver/
https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/tow-truck-driver-seriously-hurt-concord-hit-and-run-crash/2PSNDPDL4NHSZHG4CXY72HCDEM/
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