Mecklenburg Times: News for Mecklenburg, Union and Iredell counties Real Estate, Development, Construction, and Community News in the Charlotte area and throughout Mecklenburg, Union and Iredell counties

He’s a relative youngster, 39, and he’s a novice politician running for his first public office, but Kenny Smith has already learned the ABC’s of politics: Always Be Campaigning.

Property insurance companies are in the business of selling a product they don’t want anyone to actually use. Bob Freitag knows this because he used to be in the property insurance business, with Allstate.

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Walter Fields dishes dirt about dirt. As one of the region’s most well-known land-use consultants, he’s got an opinion on just about everything related to development.

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It was 10:30 a.m. in a cubicle on the eighth floor of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center. So there was no beer. About 50 people work in the Charlotte planning department, but we specifically wanted to talk to the beer-lady: Bridget Dixon. We wanted to know why she worked for the department from 2003 to 2006, left, and then came back. And we wanted to talk about beer. Good beer.

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"All of these rules and regulations are well-intentioned, but it’s just gone too far -- despite my 'no' votes," Dulin said. "It’s added too much more costs to the costs of development, especially the tree ordinance and the post-development design guidelines."

Tagged with: Andy Dulin Charlotte city council Eastland Mall Pulte Homes Warren Cooksey

"The last two or three years have been tough on contractors and designers," he said. "There haven’t been jobs for new professionals coming out of schools, and people have been losing jobs, too."

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"The first thing I’d like to do is update the land-use plan," he said. "It has not been updated since 1999."

Tagged with: city of monroe on the level town of cornelius wayne herron

At 46, Cobb is starting all over again, going from commercial real estate to commercial real estate while staying in the town he has called home for all his years except the four he spent in Chapel Hill.

Tagged with: NAI Southern Real Estate Selwyn Property Group

At 35, Charlotte land-use attorney Collin Brown is moving up, literally and figuratively. As the Charlotte area comes to grips with development and density issues, you can often find Brown advocating for developers at public meetings, which are just as often packed with protesters.

Tagged with: Avery Park Bailey Patrick Childress Klein Properties Collin Brown Cosmos Cafe Grubb Properties Horack Talley K&L Gates M/I Homes Charlotte

Rick Judson is no longer simply principal manager of Evergreen Group. Starting in January, he'll also be the president of the D.C.-based National Association of Home Builders, the first builder from Charlotte to occupy the office and only the third from North Carolina.

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