She gets it exactly right in demolishing the city of Charlotte’s dopey plan to demolish businesses in Belmont in the name of fighting crime. The city simply does not need to be in the real estate speculation business.
And as Mary notes, old buildings in slightly sketchy neighborhoods today become tomorrow’s Plaza/Midwood or NoDa. We lost most of Charlotte’s old Downtown via a much larger “urban removal” scheme.
More broadly, there has got to be some sort of investigation into the city’s and the county’s land banking activity in recent years. There just simply seems to be way, way too much property out there under public ownership to no real clear purpose. In meantime, tax revenue the property could produce is lost.
