ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

The last five years have been among the most challenging in the nearly 250-year history of Charlotte. The Great Recession erased the mythology that our community was invulnerable to the vicissitudes of national economic fortunes. Home construction, property values, business investment, and community philanthropy plunged downward at rates not seen since the Depression. Unemployment rates […]

One of the most harrowing experiences for a young driver in the Uwharries used to be crossing the Swift Island Bridge. For those of us east of the Pee Dee River, it was a dreaded necessity if we wanted to catch a movie in Albemarle. When I approached that seemingly endless span, with its narrow […]

It’s that time of year again – for changing skies and summer storms. A little more than a year ago, early on March 3, 2012, an unannounced tornado blew through parts of Harrisburg and eastern Mecklenburg County. The twister injured four people, destroyed six homes and left 41 others uninhabitable or with major damage – […]

Charlotte ranks near the bottom in a recent study of access to jobs via automobiles in the top 51 U.S. metro areas. Raleigh ranks even lower. The study, Access Across America, by David Levinson, the R.P. Braun/CTS Chair in Transportation Engineering at the University of Minnesota, ranks the Charlotte metro area No. 40, with the […]

In January, Charlotte had 1.8 million people. Today it has 2.3 million people. And no, there was no airlift of half a million residents from the Rust Belt or anywhere else. How can a city gain a half-million people almost overnight? How can a metro area vault from No. 33 in population to No. 23? […]

Understanding the wealth of publicly available data can be both exciting and overwhelming. But plenty of people are eager to try. More than 150 neighborhood organizers, nonprofit leaders, local government staff, academics, and interested citizens gathered Tuesday at UNC Charlotte’s Center City building for the inaugural Charlotte Data Day. Hosted by the UNC Charlotte Urban […]

“In 1965, if you had a good back and a good alarm clock, you could make a good living in Milwaukee,” Mayor Tom Barrett told a recent Raleigh conference, because of the strength, at the time, of that city’s manufacturing sector. Although rural Stanly County is very different, that Milwaukee attitude was also the prevailing […]

HOT (High Occupancy Toll) lanes proposed on I-77 are a red-hot topic, and residents were vocal about their concerns Wednesday at a public information meeting at Huntersville Town Hall. Jim Trogdon, chief financial officer for the N.C. Department of Transportation, introduced a group of experts to meet with citizens and answer questions. “The existing revenue […]

Local perceptions may not have caught up with the new reality in the Charlotte region’s manufacturing economy. Even before the recession began in 2007, declines in the textile and furniture industries were changing the structure of local employment. As the downturn continued, counties that depended less on textile and furniture manufacturing lost fewer jobs. The […]

In Charlotte’s Madison Park neighborhood, Gretchen Gregg didn’t search for a magnet school, a charter school or a private school when her daughter entered kindergarten last fall. She enrolled her at the neighborhood public school, Pinewood Elementary, even though many parents in her middle-income community refuse to send their children there. In Sedgefield, another older […]