Entirely too funny edit from the Uptown paper of record today, coming down from on high to tell East Charlotte not to be downright giddy at the prospect of a Wal-Mart landing along the denuded landscape of Independence Blvd.
We get the standard “big box” cant devoid of fact or perspective. The truth of the matter is that the city of Charlotte can no longer afford to have what was once a bustling retail corridor throwing off buckets of tax revenue instead look like Fallujah without the IEDs. City planners aided and abetted by the incompetents at NC DOT resolved to “remake” Independence realities be damned. They quite purposely killed off retail near the Old Old Coliseum as a solid decade of boomtimes for the city permitted it.
Now, with the city strapped for cash and the lie of an affordable five corridor rail transit system exposed for all to see, we are back to earth. What zaps new energy into suburban strip shopping zones? New Wal-Marts do. They do it all over the nation. Hell, one did it over at Sardis and Monroe, where thousands of square feet of new, taxable development is anchored by a Wal-Mart.
For its part, the Bentonville gang strung the city along on demands that the corporation make its existing Eastway store meet the aesthetic demands of the city’s Uptown gnomes. Strip shopping has a life cycle, everyone knows that, except the central planners. So, of course, the Uptown paper is already whining about another “abandoned” big box on Eastway. Here’s an idea, if the city would not try to micro-manage what goes into strip-shopping centers it has targeted for “revitalization” maybe someone would take on the risk of up-fitting old big boxes for new uses.
Then again, if you are like me and fed up with all the poor decision-making by Charlotte and Mecklenburg officials, you try to do most of your shopping in Union County.
