Real Estate

As hundreds of apartments pop up around transit stations in Charlotte’s South End neighborhood near uptown, the city’s plan for more high-density housing near its young rail line is beginning to take shape. But a sister policy encouraging apartments for low-income families isn’t faring as well. In the six years since the Lynx Blue Line […]

A North Carolina Department of Transportation letter has planners and officials in several Union County towns scrambling to figure out how they’ll maintain new subdivision streets in what has long been one of the fastest growing counties in the state. The September letter from Division 10 engineer Louis Mitchell said NCDOT would no longer accept […]

With encouragement from City Manager Ron Carlee, Charlotte’s planning department is taking more initiative in contacting property owners along the route of the city’s new light rail line and encouraging them to help the city achieve its vision for the corridor, Planning Director Debra Campbell told the city-county planning commission Monday. Campbell spoke during a […]

With encouragement from City Manager Ron Carlee, Charlotte’s planning department is taking more initiative in contacting property owners along the route of the city’s new light rail line and encouraging them to help the city achieve its vision for the corridor, Planning Director Debra Campbell told the city-county planning commission Monday. Campbell spoke during a […]

A U.S. Postal Service change requiring the use of centralized box units in new neighborhoods is causing problems in some developments being forced to switch in mid-construction. Joe Padilla of the Charlotte-based Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition, an industry advocacy group, alerted planners and elected officials to the change in home-delivery strategies at an […]

An artists’ colony in downtown Gastonia? Sounds far-fetched. But after studies, surveys and a yearlong fundraising campaign, it’s getting closer to reality. In May, the Community Foundation of Gaston County signed a pre-development contract with Artspace, a Minneapolis nonprofit that builds and maintains affordable live-work units for artists, to build a project in Gastonia by […]

It’s no secret that the Charlotte region experienced a huge influx of new residents in recent decades. The region has consistently ranked among the nation’s fastest-growing. All those newcomers also needed homes – so new homes were built by the thousands. The recently released American Community Survey 2007-2011 five-year estimates, reflected in the interactive map […]

In recent years, progressive developers have made an important discovery. If they incorporate design features into their development proposals to make them look and function better, communities will allow them to build more product. But their investment can be fundamentally devalued if communities aren’t allowed to establish basic design standards to ensure a similar quality […]

The debate over “Zoning/Design & Aesthetic Controls,” (House Bill 150) concerns two basic issues: first, how much control we want government to have over our power of consumer choice, and second, whether we want government in North Carolina to function as its founding fathers intended. Let’s address the latter issue first. To understand why the […]

The Charlotte City Council, with no discussion, Monday unanimously OK’d a measure to try to encourage developers to build more low-income housing in affluent neighborhoods. The council also heard a series of pro- and con- speeches concerning a proposed outlet-store center in southwest Mecklenburg County. The affordable housing measure, an amendment to the city zoning […]