Un-sprawling Charlotte

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When David Walters looks at Charlotte’s growth, he sees haphazardness everywhere.

A resident of Charlotte since 1990, the professor of architecture at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte said he has watched the city take shape with little rhyme or reason, veering off in multiple directions with no clear guiding principles.

As a result, it has become a region dominated by disconnected suburban sprawl with a smattering of urban, pedestrian-friendly communities supported by mass transit, he said.

“There’s some good things here, but there’s also some flaws and residual weaknesses,” he said.

He’s not alone, and he’s not the first to criticize the way Charlotte has grown.

But as the city emerges from the recession, Walters is among those calling for the city to use it as an opportunity to improve on its design flaws.

“The big question is: What will Charlotte transform into?” said Tom Low, a partner and director of town planning at Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co.’s Charlotte office. “Our disadvantage is that to achieve a walkable, compact and connected city, we have to overcome the challenging infrastructure we’ve created based on a suburban model. It’s going to be hard.”

If Walters, who has helped the towns of Davidson, Cornelius and Huntersville with design plans, were to assign Charlotte’s planning and development a grade, he said it would be a B-.

And the recession has highlighted the flawed system upon which the area’s suburbs are built, he said. In most cases, the amount a city or town pays to provide suburban communities services, such as public education and police and fire protection, exceed the amount it gets in property taxes, he said.

“The rule of thumb is low-density residential subdivisions don’t pay for themselves unless the houses cost at least $350,000,” he said.

The way towns and cities try to fill the gap is by permitting lots of commercial development, which pays more in property taxes and doesn’t demand services like schools and libraries, he said.

“There’s lots of economic pressure to keep building strip centers as fast as you can to get tax revenue, which means you keep spurring outward growth, and you never really catch up,” he said. “You’re never in the driver’s seat for having a clear financial plan.”

Walters said Charlotte has allowed the sprawl to go on for too long.

“If we keep building suburbs in a low-density, disconnected way, cities like Charlotte will slowly bankrupt themselves,” he said. “It’s just not economically sustainable.”

Walters said the city should be trying to create communities that are more like SouthEnd, which is compact, pedestrian-friendly and benefits from the Lynx light-rail line.

Such infill communities meet the needs of 20-somethings, who want to live close to work and shopping and entertainment venues, and baby boomers, who want a more hassle-free urban lifestyle, he said.

“There’s enough demand (in Charlotte) to drive urban landfill development for at least another decade,” he said.

But Jim Merrifield, president of Merrifield Patrick Vermillion, a Charlotte-based commercial real estate firm, said that to remain competitive, Charlotte has to offer people all kinds of residential options, urban and suburban.

“There’s a place for both of them,” he said. “Charlotte needs to grow on both sides and offer people what they want. If they don’t get it here they’ll go to somewhere like Jacksonville, Nashville or Atlanta to find it.”

Charlotte’s not alone in having unwieldy growth, said Jose Gamez, an associate professor of architecture and urban design at UNCC. He said it’s indicative of most cities that experienced a boom after World War II, with Los Angeles being the poster child of sprawl and poor planning run amok.

But the ugly side of Charlotte’s growth is drawing national attention. The city’s foreclosure rate increased by 37 percent in 2010, earning it a spot on CNN’s list, released in February, of top foreclosure hot spots. And Forbes named Charlotte the second-most gas-guzzling city in the U.S., with the average Queen City household driving 21,500 miles per year, thanks in large part to lots of commuting.

Gamez said people want communities that are more pedestrian-friendly as opposed to the suburban model of the late 20th century that was based on everyone having a vehicle, Gamez said.

“City leaders have to think about how to retrofit and renovate parts of the city and bring investments back into the city instead of along the suburban edges,” he said. “But these large-scale developments require a lot of investment, and that type of momentum takes a long time to get moving.

“Most of what’s been built in Charlotte since the 1960s is not good.”

Mecklenburg County Commissioner Jennifer Roberts said the city needs to focus on urban, energy-efficient, high-density, mixed-use projects in which residents can live, eat, work and shop in the same area.

“We do not have the road capacity for more sprawl,” she said.

Low, who has lived in Charlotte since 1979 and says he helped design and reinvent the once-struggling city of Belmont in Gaston County, said there are already examples in Charlotte of cohesive communities with a mix of commercial, office and residential developments. As examples, he points to developments like Philips Place, Birkdale and SouthEnd.

“But these were all pilot projects and never became embedded as an operating system,” he said. “The autopilot of conventional suburban sprawl continued in an overwhelming proportion.”

Then again, many people are just fine with the suburbs and like the space and privacy they provide.

“Americans still like their homes, and I don’t see families with children moving into urban, high-density residential areas,” said Larry Reed, president of Charlotte-based Lochard Reed, which has developed about 1,700 entry-level, single-family homes in nearly 20 suburban communities, mostly in north Charlotte.

“In the end, it’s (development) going to be driven by the market.”

But the market could force the hand of Charlotte developers, pushing them to build differently than they have been, Reed said, citing tougher mortgage-lending policies, rising gasoline prices and an overabundance of available single-family lots. Those factors will result in fewer new suburban developments and more urban, infill projects, particularly rental properties, he said.

“We (Lochard Reed) have no vision for new single-family projects at this time,” he said. “When the economy picks back up, we’re going to focus on rental apartments. That’s just where the market is headed.”

David Ravin, president of Charlotte-based Ravin Partners, agrees.

In June, Ravin Partners purchased Crosland’s residential division, which focuses on multifamily developments. For the short term, there will be less “for sale” developments and more of a rental market, which is more likely to be urban, infill projects, Ravin said.

During a recession, suburban growth typically contracts, he said, and urban areas fill in.

“People are too spooked to buy, and there’s a lot of uncertainty regarding home loans,” he said. “So, for now, we’re focusing exclusively on rental projects, and it will be a long time before I recommend we consider anything else.”

As for existing suburban communities, Walters said Charlotte must focus on retrofitting them to be more connected, creating individual town centers with a mix of office, commercial and residential uses.

As an example, he points to the north Mecklenburg County town of Davidson, where officials there have controlled growth, resulting in a compact, vibrant downtown.

“In order for the suburbs to be sustainable, you have to put in more connectivity,” he said.

Gamez said that, in theory, he agrees with new urbanism principles that advocate building suburban developments that are more compact, pedestrian-friendly and feature town centers.

“It uses fewer resources and is less land-use intensive, but it’s still a pattern that’s not sustainable,” he said. “It forces us to rely on cars, pulls us away from city centers and increases our urban footprint. And all this raises challenges as we move forward and resources have become increasingly limited.”

Sam Boykin can be reached at [email protected].