"What's the difference between an optimist and a pessimist?" he asked. I confessed I didn't know the answer. "The pessimist has the data," he replied.
It is easy to be depressed about Charlotte's future. My colleague's encyclopedic knowledge of America's urban failures made for grim listening. Many current Charlotte policies have failed elsewhere, the outerbelt being the most egregious example.
But I refuse to be downhearted. Maybe I don't have all the data, but I know that against all the odds, we are doing some things right. Things that buck our trend of mediocrity and hold out hope, however flickering, that our city can mature into a place our grandchildren can be proud of. Our city has some urban successes that aren't talked about enough. This story highlights those accomplishments; if they were the norm, Charlotte would be a beacon of progress across the nation.But of course, our urban successes aren't the norm. Some of these buildings and projects, like Latta Pavilion in Dilworth, were achieved by sheer persistence on the part of small, local developers. Others, like Gateway Village and Ratcliffe on the Green uptown, were made possible by the deep pockets of big banks that allowed them to bend the normally inflexible rules of development economics to their advantage. Other "points of light," the redevelopment of First Ward, and Prosperity Church Road Villages on I-485, are public sector initiatives, while two large suburban projects, Birkdale Village in Huntersville and Ayrsley, at I-485 and South Tryon, are progressive attempts by the private sector to improve the quality of large-scale freeway development.
These success stories of "smart growth" and "sustainable development" are often obscured by the flotsam and jetsam that usually characterize our city's surging growth. All the more reason to heed their lessons, and not to regard these projects merely as interesting aberrations.
A "sustainable" community offers a full, rich quality of life while consuming fewer resources. It's more energy efficient, both in its urban layout and its buildings. Transit provides options for getting around: we can use our cars when we want, not when our urban environment dictates. Home and work are closer together, and walking, or a short bus or train ride, become realistic options. Open space is preserved, and schools, parks and stores are once more integrated into neighborhoods, not spread apart with long drives between activities.
A sustainable city reduces our dependence on finite fossil fuels and dangerous nuclear materials. It cushions us from the whims of fickle foreign governments, who can hold us hostage to energy supplies; and it lessens the need to pillage our natural landscapes for small oil deposits. This urban future offers more lifestyle choices; it reduces the stress on our environment, and on families, by making life easier and more economical. Growing toward this objective is called "smart growth."
From our current perspective, this may seem like Utopia, an unachievable dream. But, in fact, several aspects of this vision are part of everyday life in Charlotte. It's just that they're fragmented, separate little pieces that never form a complete picture. Individually, the projects described in this article are just that -- fragments. But taken together, they provide a working blueprint for a better future.
But first, some context
Cities around the world, particularly in developing countries, face serious challenges of population, poverty and pollution. Many of these densely populated areas in Asia, Africa and South America are badly equipped with poor public infrastructure of streets, sewers and transportation. Daily life is often an uphill battle.
In Europe, old cities, supported by good public transit, have learned to retain their charm and economic viability by retrofitting for the digital era. Sensitive urban renewal, combined with aggressive planning policies to protect rural areas from sprawl, and strong measures to support energy conservation, allow older metropolitan areas to maintain a high quality of life. But even successful places have problems. Visit the faceless suburbs of Glasgow, Madrid, London, Rome or Paris (pick your city) and you'll see dull, dispiriting environments, especially in the poorer areas.
American cities are caught between these two poles, spared the horrors of Third World shantytowns but lacking the complex infrastructure of European places. Few American cities have an urban form that's sustainable in the long term, for they're structured around a single technology -- the private vehicle. We have no back-up plans, no choices, no flexibility for when fuel shortages hit, or polluted air from vehicle exhausts makes us sick, or when high gasoline prices tether us close to home.
By contrast, the Charlotte projects described below embody several components that must be present in any sustainable, progressive urban agenda. They all subscribe to urban design principles that put people first, although vehicles are always accommodated, sometimes at great cost. Several projects are located where their own mixture of uses can connect with, and enrich, existing neighborhoods; in greenfield locations, these examples provide an array of uses that is to some degree self-sufficient. You can live, work, shop and recreate all within a compact area that's enjoyable on foot.
A thriving urban core is necessary for a sustainable community, so we'll begin downtown, where three projects illustrate excellent design and planning: Bank of America's Gateway Village office development, surrounded by apartments constructed by various private developers; in First Ward, both First Ward Place (the replacement for Earle Village) and the new Garden District; and Ratcliffe on the Green, part of First Union's (now Wachovia's) improved stewardship of its South Tryon territory.
Getting it right, in the urban core
* Gateway Village offices, by architects Duda Paine from Raleigh (Turan Duda was Cesar Pelli's project architect for the Bank of America tower before starting his own firm) is an excellent example of a new type of urban office building, lower in scale, and more responsive to city street life. Skyscrapers were already losing favor before September 11, and that tragedy has increased the significance of this more community-friendly urban workplace.
Retail spaces and a YMCA line the streets, and the buildings incorporate fine new public spaces, with a park designed by local landscape architects Cole Jenest and Stone. However, every time I take my students there, our presence alarms the security guards, who circle us like hawks, not sure whether sketching is an approved activity. There are still some bugs in the system.
Part of the credit for the public faces of the buildings goes to the urban design firm RTKL, from Washington, DC, who provided the bank with an excellent set of urban design guidelines for the West Trade Street corridor.
The architecture of the offices is crisp and contemporary, free from Charlotte's highly infectious disease -- a craving to slather on fake historical detail in an attempt to look "olde-worlde." (Morrocroft is a typical example.) Gateway Village offices provide an excellent counterpoint to this tacky tendency.
Some of the surrounding housing is very good; David Furman's "soft lofts" (loft look-alikes with all mod-cons) that hide the giant parking deck from West Trade St. are very fine. The incorporation of public art -- especially "Wind Vale" by Ned Kahn -- commissioned by Bank of America to screen this same parking deck from the view across the elevated train tracks is also praiseworthy.
Currently, the complex is somewhat divorced from the rest of the city, but when the new Amtrak and commuter rail station is built at Graham and Trade, with its associated commercial development, together with new housing between Fifth and Sixth Streets, this "urban village" (certainly a trend of the future) will be connected to Tryon Street and Fourth Ward much more effectively. If an arena ever gets built between Trade Street and the Panthers' stadium, that facility, together with its associated public park, would link to the train station and Gateway Village in an urban ensemble that would be a model of integrated development for American cities to follow from coast to coast. Instead of the City Council and Chamber of Commerce flying to other cities in a desperate search for silver bullets to solve our problems, civic delegations would swoop in from all across the country to see how we achieved this urban marvel.
* Similar fine urban qualities -- good buildings around good public space -- are also found at the new development approaching completion on South Tryon Street, Ratcliffe on the Green. This project takes its name from the much-loved old Ratcliffe Flowers building that journeyed across Tryon Street and back to find its relocated niche in the new development.
The dominant element of the project is the 10-story building facing a new one-acre park, with eight floors of condominiums sitting atop one level of offices and a shopping arcade linking Tryon and College Streets at ground level. This new urban green space, which will include innovative public art, is being laid out to the detailed design of Cole Jenest and Stone, and forms the roof of an 850-space multi-story underground parking garage (like Boston's Post Office Square). It's framed on the south by the existing St. Peter's Catholic Church and its new Annex, a pleasing building by architect David Wagner, whose firm, Wagner Murray, is the coordinating architect of record for the overall project.
The design of the residential building, by FMK Architects, is a model for high-rise housing. The facade, rising eight stories above its commercial base, is well proportioned, with areas of recessed glazing that counterpoint projecting vertical brick masses. Elegant, thin roof slabs accent the sophisticated composition that houses 57 condos ranging from 900 to 4,600(!) square feet; the only wrong note is in the choice of dark, solar reflective glazing for the recessed planes, which creates an unfortunate corporate feel instead of a vibrant residential presence. A system of external louvers to shade the glass and provide a layer of shimmering shadows would have been better.
The project as a whole was the brainchild of First Union (now Wachovia) Bank, with Childress Klein as overall developer and Dennis Richter and Clay Grubb as the developers for the housing component. Everybody involved deserves a lot of credit.
* Richter and Grubb also collaborated on my third example, Latta Pavilion on East Boulevard in Dilworth. On a three-acre site between Scott and Kenilworth, and rising to five floors fronting East Boulevard and Fillmore Street, FMK Architects (again) have neatly fitted in 20,000 square feet of street level retail, 13,000 square feet of second level office space, 162 apartments, and 101 condominiums. All this accommodation is served by 450 parking spaces in a mid-block deck. There is no other compact, integrated development to match it in Charlotte.
Like both the previous projects, Latta Pavilion is a classic example of infill development being inserted into an existing urban context, and lifting the surrounding area to a new level of sophistication. It brings a pedestrian focus to a busy street, and is likely to stimulate other new developments along East Boulevard. The architects, as they did so successfully at the Ratcliffe, have articulated the street facades into a series of projecting and recessive planes that reduce the apparent scale of the buildings. The presence on the street is reminiscent of the boulevards in great European centers, or fine American cities like Boston or San Francisco.
Despite the enthusiastic endorsement of the Dilworth Community Development Association, and the support of city planning staff who prepared new street design standards to promote this kind of innovative project, the development has been so difficult to bring to fruition that Richter says he would think twice before embarking again on a similar project. His partner Clay Grubb reluctantly agrees. The problems distill to two major obstacles: money and parking.
Infill developments like this one are finely balanced in terms of development risk. Nestled in mature neighborhoods, they're a safer marketing bet than building in the suburbs, where cutthroat competition is the norm, but they're more costly and complicated to produce. The average turn-around time from inception to the construction start of a suburban project is typically six months to a year; for infill like Latta Pavilion, this extends anywhere from 2-6 years, with consequent financing costs.
One of the major expenses for infill projects is parking. A typical surface parking space costs about $1,000. For that same space in a deck, the price jumps to $16,000, and if the deck is underground, to $25,000 per space. These parking prices make infill developments -- unless they're served by transit, which reduces the need for parking -- very hard to pull off. Richter and Grubb have produced a minor miracle.
Gateway Village and The Ratcliffe happened because major developers, the big banks, were willing to cover the parking costs themselves and accept a more modest return on their investment in the short term, offset by the longer term advantages of a good, lively urban environment that attracts and supports an energetic workforce. The unforgiving economics of development that constrain most developers were bent to accommodate the desires of giant financial institutions, with the result that high quality, creative urban development became possible.
Most of the time, harsh economic realities push developers into easy, repetitive formulas of strip malls and office parks, products with proven track records of economic success. The fact that these types of development promote the environmental and social problems of suburban sprawl doesn't seem to matter to the lending institutions.
It's very significant that Richter and Grubb couldn't find a single bank in Charlotte to fund their innovative Dilworth project. They had to go to a lender in Alabama! Bank of America under McColl's leadership talked a good game about financing "smart growth," and McColl's personal commitment to uptown spurred a plethora of good development. First Union/Wachovia have followed that lead. But the rank and file managers in the lending departments have failed to get the message. They would rather finance the kind of sprawling development that drags this city down. It's time for a wake-up call to echo in the elevator shafts of uptown's towers. The time for rhetoric is over. It's time for action, for progressive lending policies, and not just on the banks' own pet projects.
* While lending practices of large banks are part of the problem, there is another project uptown where Bank of America gets considerable credit. Through its non-profit community development corporation (CDC), an organization designed to promote affordable development and to meet federal community reinvestment guidelines, Bank of America, or NationsBank as it was called then, partnered with the Charlotte Housing Authority, the Charlotte Uptown Development Corporation (the forerunner of Charlotte Center City Partners) and the Charlotte/Mecklenburg Planning Commission to redevelop First Ward.
Beginning in 1992 with one of the first Hope VI federal project grants awarded by HUD, this group addressed the problem of Earle Village, a decayed and dangerous downtown public housing project. From modest beginnings, this new project, shepherded with special care by Robin Davis and Kathleen Foster from NationsBank CDC and Laura Harmon from the Planning Commission, grew into a major redevelopment plan. The design, prepared by Urban Design Associates (UDA) from Pittsburgh, one of the leading firms in the nation, embraced the whole of First Ward, from Trade and Tryon to the Brookshire Freeway loop.
Within that area, the concept of First Ward Place -- around North Davidson and Seventh Streets -- emerged as a development of mixed income housing, with a strong bias toward affordable, lower-priced accommodation. Public housing units were included in the plan, although it's not possible to distinguish them from other dwellings. This was achieved through careful design by FMK Architects and David Furman, on Phase I (near Seventh Street) and FMK Architects on their own for Phase II, along Ninth Street. These designers interpreted the UDA plan with imagination on a very tight budget.
Existing residents of the Earle Village public housing could elect to be re-housed in First Ward by enrolling in the "Family Self-Sufficiency Program," intended to wean people from dependence on public housing and onto the ladder of home ownership. Opinions differ as to why more residents didn't apply for this program, but one fact is clear. While there are fewer public housing units in place than were contained within the old Earle Village, there are today in First Ward Place more "affordable" dwellings available to lower income families than the total number of units in the demolished public housing project.
The success of this scheme in turning a dangerous part of town into a model redevelopment spurred private investment, aided by over $6 million dollars of city-financed street improvements and the sale of city-owned land. Thus was born the Garden District between Alexander Street and the freeway, a compact neighborhood of condos and townhomes constructed by progressive local developers such as Tuscan Development and Boulevard Centro. The design of the new housing bears the stamp (again) of FMK and David Furman. These two design firms have set an admirable standard for medium-to-high density housing affordable to a wide variety of buyers.
These four projects -- First Ward, Ratcliffe on the Green, Gateway Village and Latta Pavilion -- provide clear examples of how to reconstruct a center city and close-in neighborhoods to provide a diverse range of housing types and attractive urban workplaces. But no attempt at building a sustainable city can ignore the suburbs.
Another type of suburban living
* Suburban development falls into two categories: the redevelopment of existing areas and new, greenfield locations. Existing districts can be improved by promoting new development around transit lines, creating mixed-use urban villages at many of the proposed new train stations. Staffs from the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) and the Planning Commission have prepared textbook urban design guidelines for neighborhoods around the stations. By agreement between CATS and the Public Art Commission, the plans also include enlightened, city-approved funding for public art to enliven station architecture and promote community identity.
But this isn't enough to lure developers away from easy greenfield sites around the outerbelt. The city needs to rezone land along the transit corridors to support these pockets of denser development (Transit-Oriented Developments, or TODs); in some cases the city itself will need to assemble land parcels and roll them over to developers as incentives.
Along the northern route of the proposed commuter rail line to Mooresville and the three north Mecklenburg towns, all four communities (disclosure: with some help from myself) have already created transit-supportive zoning. In several cases I and others (notably The Lawrence Group and Duany Plater-Zyberk and Co. [DPZ]) have created designs for transit-oriented urban villages, and the town of Cornelius has produced large-scale plans (by the firms DPZ, Shook, and Cole Jenest and Stone) for a new town center along the rail line. In addition, Huntersville's design by DPZ for a transit village on the site of the old Anchor Mill will link to the Bowman Development Group's exemplary Vermilion "traditional neighborhood development," designed by Duany and Plater-Zyberk.
This transit-oriented development is important, and must become the dominant form of urban construction if Charlotte's transit-based vision of sustainable growth is to become reality, but TODs rarely deal with the most ubiquitous of sprawl-boosting development: building around freeway interchanges.
In an ideal land-use scenario, interchange developments would be severely restricted to redirect growth into transit corridors, but only a political revolution -- or a severe and sustained hike in gas prices -- will make them go away. So we conclude this survey of good development in our county by looking at three good models: Birkdale Village in Huntersville at Exit 25 off I-77 by the Crosland Group and Pappas Properties; Prosperity Church Road Villages, a Planning Commission vision for the junction between Prosperity Church Road and a future leg of I-485; and Ayrsley, a proposed development near the intersection of South Tryon Street and the outerbelt by Cambridge Partners and Henson-Tomlin Interests.
All parties tout their projects as "smart growth," but this is debatable. While mixed-use and pedestrian-friendly in themselves, all are in locations accessible primarily by car and served poorly by transit. However, if intensive development at freeway interchanges is inevitable, these three projects are head and shoulders above anything else in our region.
* Birkdale Village is on the ground already. Starbucks will soon be up and running on Main Street. This development is best described as "Phillips Place on steroids," a functioning "town center" for west Huntersville measuring several blocks in all directions. But Birkdale is much better than its successful SouthPark precursor. Whereas Phillips Place creates the image of a pedestrian "Main Street" it actually has a very weak mix of uses. There are a few apartments upstairs, but most residences are on adjacent land, sequestered behind heavy wrought iron gates. And it's impossible to walk there from any surrounding area.
Birkdale Village, by contrast, is the real thing, a densely integrated development of retail, offices and housing created around walkable, landscaped streets and plazas, and connected to adjacent housing by other attractive streets and sidewalks. Walking and biking to the shops or to the office are real options, not urban fantasies. Crosland, Pappas and their architects, Shook, have organized a masterful plan, and solved many tricky problems of urban mixed-use buildings.
The zoning regulations in the three north Meck towns actively support, even require, this type of more advanced development. When Ann Hammond (former Huntersville Planning Director) and I wrote the Huntersville zoning regs several years ago, we were determined to bring principles of good urban design to bear on large scale commercial developments, and to integrate them with housing. Crosland, Pappas and Shook have followed this lead with considerable flair; and they've made it work economically. A multiplex cinema anchors one end of "Main Street," and companies like The Gap and Barnes & Noble raise the retail stakes, attracting other tenants. Above this lively scene, people in cool apartments and offices can view pedestrian activity at stores and restaurants. Consumers are demanding places to shop with more character than tired old strip centers, and young professionals are attracted to an active urban environment. Birkdale Village satisfies both needs by good urban design.
The Crosland Group's project manager David Ravin admits the company could have made more money by building another simple shopping strip. But under new CEO Todd Mansfield, and with the help of energetic, young design-educated executives like Ravin, Crosland has taken the long view. This integrated development is much better for the community than conventional sprawl, and the expertise gained on this project will serve the company well in the long term, placing them at the forefront of progressive development nationwide. This is a far cry from the days when the name "Crosland" was a byword among Planning Commission staffers and neighborhood groups for behind-the-scenes developer influence and cookie-cutter design.
All in all, Birkdale Village and its connected residential neighborhoods comprise one of the most advanced developments on the ground anywhere in the Carolinas. It's a crying shame that this density of development isn't in the real town center of Huntersville. But until rail transit is an established fact of life, excellent developments like this will continue to be sited in the "wrong" places, still too dependent on the car.
* In contrast to Birkdale, Prosperity Church Road Villages are still in the early stages, a vision of a revolutionary new development pattern at the outerbelt. Faced with more interchanges on I-485 than transportation logic requires, the Planning Commission several years ago sought a new approach that would be more integrated, sustainable and efficient in its land use.
Planning staff give credit for the original idea to "try something different" to Walter Fields, a former senior member of the Planning Commission staff. The specifics of the task were handed to Warren Burgess, then Senior Urban Designer on the Commission, and now Planning Director for the Town of Davidson. Burgess recalls how he was sitting in a bar after work one day, discussing the project with Tom Low, lead designer in the Charlotte office of DPZ. Out came the sketchbook, and together the two designers drew a new concept, an urban village that straddled the freeway, with the normal four-lane thoroughfare split into three two-lane roads with parking. Each was a city block apart, setting up a traditional urban town grid that bridged the freeway and extended for several blocks either side before merging together again into a conventional highway.
Burgess' vision is maturing slowly in northeast Charlotte. Coordinating planner John Cock, who took over from Burgess, compares the process with completing a jigsaw puzzle; each private developer brings in a project that fits the master plan, with pedestrian-friendly buildings close to the street in traditional fashion, with screened mid-block parking. Piece by piece the overall design is taking shape.
To its eternal shame, the NC Department of Transportation has been the biggest obstacle to success, unwilling to consider any idea that isn't in their outdated rule book. It has taken personal visits to Raleigh by Charlotte mayor Pat McCrory to obtain even tentative acceptance from the state. It's probably fair to say that the biggest obstacles to smart growth in North Carolina are the state agencies. All the more credit to Charlotte planners for sticking to the task and pushing this avant-garde project to the point of final agreement. But this fine design is likely to remain an isolated phenomenon. There are no plans to repeat it elsewhere. Most other interchanges are sewn up tight with outdated concepts.
* At the opposite end of town, and coming from the private sector, is Ayrsley, located on 140 acres near the junction of South Tryon Street and I-485. Within its boundaries, this development follows the same principles of design as Birkdale and Prosperity Villages -- a tight network of streets connecting a variety of uses in the manner of traditional town centers. But here the developers had to work against Charlotte's sprawl-style planning regulations. In the words of Cambridge Properties Director of Business Development, Robert McMillan, "(Charlotte's) current zoning laws and traffic policies actually serve to promote sprawl and retard smart growth plans like Ayrsley. . .It would have been much easier to do another big box suburban project."
Designed by Duany Plater-Zyberk, the Ayrsley master plan illustrates a vibrant mix of uses shaped around a matrix of dense town center streets, similar to Birkdale, but larger and denser. It promises to be an excellent development, but like its two companion "villages," getting there demands a car. This is the great irony of these progressive developments: they're in the wrong place. They should be on transit lines, but the train is a long time coming.
In our auto-dependent society, development goes in locations easily accessible by car. These three projects are not perfect examples of smart growth. But they're very good designs, and bode well for a decade from now when such tightly knit, mixed-use developments can cluster around transit stations, with parks and low density housing in between.
Now there's a Utopia, a real-life, livable, sustainable metropolis. We have the pieces of the puzzle; we just need to collect them into coherent policies to promote that vision and resist sprawl. After years of fighting each other, key developers, urban designers and progressive planners are united. Let's make the big picture. Let's get it right. *
