Outdated housing on the eastside of Charlotte. Slightly edited version of my column from the January issue of Carolina Journal. And obviously, we now know that Eastland will soon close:
Charlotte’s Eastland Mall made the news a lot in 2009, though rarely for positive reasons. In May, a Wall Street Journal front-page story described the 1.1 million-square-foot shopping center’s decline. In November, the Charlotte City Council decided against buying the now half-abandoned eastside mall.
It’s not that council members had a problem with the city becoming the landlord and redeveloper in chief. It’s that the existing owner wanted too much money — $23 million — for the property. The city thought that a fair price was closer to a third of that amount.
Retail follows income. And it’s hardly surprising that there’s a glut of retail space in east Charlotte. When Eastland Mall opened in the 1970s, shoppers from the nearby middle-class neighborhoods filled its stores. Thirty-odd years later, the same houses in those neighborhoods are still there. It’s just that they aren’t filled with middle-class families anymore.
Put bluntly, few middle-class families live in houses like those around Eastland. They’ve moved on to bigger and newer digs. The average size of a new house built in 2006 was 2,469 square feet. In 1970, it was more like 1,400 square feet. Not that 1960s and ’70s housing is even that comparable to what’s being built today. The “open concept” hadn’t been popularized yet.
Typical houses built back when Richard Nixon was president had large formal living rooms and smaller, but still substantial dens. The bedrooms were small. Closets were almost nonexistent. Houses rarely had two full baths, and, in any case, the bathrooms were tiny. And there may not be spiffy hardwood floors under those carpets.
At the center of any city plan for revitalizing the Eastland area is, unsurprisingly, transit. The city wants to run a $450 million, 10- mile street car line from Eastland down Central Avenue through Uptown Charlotte to Beatties Ford Road on the west side of the Queen City.
Street cars aren’t really much of a transportation solution. They are no faster than the buses currently serving the area and are many times more expensive. Nor does the Charlotte Area Transit System or the city have any idea of how to pay for the line.
Even if the line is built, it’s difficult to see how street cars stabilize the area. The city’s vision undoubtedly would involve condominium developments along the major streets near the mall. But there’s a finite amount of land — often just the width of a strip shopping mall with not much parking in front — along those thoroughfares that could be redeveloped easily before you get to those existing neighborhoods. And no one in Charlotte is talking about razing square miles of obsolescent housing.
Any true solution must encourage middle-class families to buy those small, 30- to 50-year-old houses and turn them from outdated into outstanding. That means many individuals and families making substantial investments — gutting kitchens and adding rooms — in properties.
That wouldn’t be an easy sell, and is certainly something the city has completely failed to accomplish over the past decade or more. It would require Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, and state officials to address some issues that largely have been ignored. Like making sure the area is safe from crime. And making sure Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, which are on the brink of full-scale flight by white and middle-class black families, offer a high-quality education to all students.
Perhaps most importantly, Charlotte and Mecklenburg will have to keep tax increases in check — paying a premium in taxes for the privilege of rehabbing an old house is asking a lot, regardless of the proximity to shopping. Let alone empty storefronts.
