|
Charlotte Real Estate News and Real Estate News/ Links from Local and State Resources |
McColl on McColl
"Republished
with permission from The Charlotte Observer.
Copyright owned by The Charlotte Observer."
By AUDREY Y. WILLIAMS
When Hugh McColl Jr. retires today as chief executive and chairman of
Bank of America Corp., he will leave to his successor a company that is
dramatically different from the one McColl inherited.
When McColl was appointed chief of Bank of America predecessor NCNB
Corp. in 1983, the two-state bank had $12 billion in assets and 7,600
employees. Since then, McColl has crafted a series of carefully
orchestrated deals that transformed a second-tier regional banking
company.
The pinnacle of McColl's career was the 1998 merger between NationsBank
Corp. and San Francisco's BankAmerica Corp. The deal created the first
bank to touch both coasts and clinched Charlotte's status as a premier
financial center, second only to New York.
Said McColl, whose career at the bank spans 42 years: "I've
enjoyed it in a lot of ways, but I'm looking forward to the rest of my
life."
Today, McColl, 65, will greet shareholders for the last time at the
bank's annual meeting, in the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center in uptown
Charlotte. He will then pass on the titles of chairman and chief executive
to his second in command - Ken Lewis, now chief operating officer and
president.
Lewis has the task of making sure Bank of America is the efficient
powerhouse that McColl envisioned when he brokered the historic
mega-merger.
McColl's formal tie to Bank of America in the days ahead will be as
consultant - a role he says consists entirely of him doing "whatever
Ken asks me to do."
In an interview with reporter Audrey Y. Williams and editorial page
editor Ed Williams, the banker reflects on the future of the industry and
the city he helped to build.
Q. You have said you would be a
consultant to the bank after you retire. Talk a little bit about what that
role means and what you'll be doing. And what other things will occupy
your time.
A. Well, to be candid I will do
whatever (successor) Ken Lewis asks me to do. It's not any more
complicated than that. If he wants me to contact somebody on behalf of the
company, I'll do that.
The only thing that I know I'm going to do for sure is that I'm going
to go in the art business with a very good friend, Massoud Shiraz, who's
been here for a number of years. He and I have been talking about this for
at least five years. And it may take us a couple of years to get where we
want to be, but it's going to happen.
The second thing I'm going to do is work some with my son, Hugh, and
his partner, John Mangan who run a company called, cleverly, M&M
Partners. They run a couple of hedge funds - one hedge fund and one
arbitrage fund - and they're launching another one.
Q. Give me an idea of what kinds
of post-retirement offers you've received from people.
A. Well, you know, I plan to
sort of be in the financial advisory business, which is sort of a
broad-sweeping statement. And I've been approached by a lot of people to
either join their boards as a financial adviser or to be engaged with
them.
Q. What are you physically going
to take with you from the bank when you leave and what are you going to
leave behind?
A. I'm going to leave a lot of
what I would call memorabilia or whatever you call that. Plaques, things
like that. I've been dumping them on the corporate affairs division as
part of their archives. And of course, I'll leave our papers behind to our
archivist. Ultimately, I think they'll find their way to the University of
North Carolina's Wilson Library, well, really to the University of North
Carolina's historical division. It'll take a little bit of sorting - I've
been here 42 years and chairman of the board for more than 17, I think.
This is the 18th year for me, I won't quite make it through 18th. So the
papers are being left behind. What I'm taking is my own personal artwork
and that's about it. My collection of editorial cartoons, which I actually
like a lot and one of the things I'm very unhappy about is some of the ink
fades and I hope to go back to (the cartoonists) and say, could you, you
know, put your ink back on this? So I am taking all my cartoons with me,
yes.
Q. I get the sense that you
sometimes feel like you're misunderstood by people in Charlotte and in
other places. What's so complex about you that people just don't get?
A. Well, I think that people
develop an idea, a caricature, and then new people come along and the only
way they have of judging you is to go back and read an article that was
written about you 25 years ago or some number, and they believe that's the
single person. And you yourself know about your own life that you've grown
a lot. And no doubt that I'm given to colorful turns of phrases but, you
know, I think that I have a much broader life than is depicted and
participate much more broadly in business and in society than is depicted
by, let's say, popular press.
For instance, I think I have a reputation of being very tough and
hard-nosed - when in fact people around here would say just the opposite.
Too soft-hearted.
Q. What's the toughest call you
had to make as CEO?
A. Well, I think always it's
personnel. Always it's a decision that someone's job has gone beyond them,
and so, I couldn't say there was a single toughest decision but I think
there've been a number of them and a lot of them would be people that you
had worked a long time with and that's a very difficult thing to do. And
that's when you earn your pay, so to speak, where you have to do what's
right for the company as opposed to what your heart might tell you to do.
So, those are the toughest.
Q. If you could set the record
straight on your career as a banker what would you say?
A. Well, I don't need to set the
record straight, I think it speaks for itself. I think we are a company
that didn't like being small, we had great leaders in (McColl's
predecessors) Addison Reese and Tom Storrs, who created a vision for the
company. We followed the vision for 25 years. We built a true nationwide
bank. People said it couldn't be done. We were unceasing in our pursuit of
that. We changed the laws. We did things people said nobody could do. And
hey, why would we change that? We were proud of that. I think that
record's there, doesn't need to be set straight, so to speak. Charlotte is
the net beneficiary of all that. Period.
Q. What first came to your mind
when you first heard about the First Union-Wachovia merger?
A. Joy. Secondly, I think it's
fairly important for North Carolina and for Charlotte. I mean, let's be
honest - we would not like to see one of our banks taken over by an
out-of-state operation and to have First Union and Wachovia merge seems to
preclude that. And so, I feel very positive about it from a North
Carolinian's point of view and candidly, from a Charlottean's point of
view. The headquarters of the company will be in Charlotte, N.C., the
CEO's in Charlotte, N.C., the emerging company will be stronger than the
two standing apart. From a long-term perspective, I mean, it'll be
tremendous competition for us. But yeah, that's always been the case. So
we're not unhappy about it, let me try it that way.
Q. What does that merger say to
you about the state of the banking industry?
A. Well, I think that we've been
very outspoken - I have and my teammates have - that we believe that the
consolidation's not over. It had to happen. The industry was fragmented.
If you go back in time and look at it, it had what I call franchise
protection acts, states had passed laws keeping out competition and in
some states, for instance, you couldn't even have a branch, so that each
of what we would think of as branches became a separately incorporated
company. The net result of that was in the states that had those laws,
they had very weak banking companies who were unencumbered by competition,
and I might add, did not have adequate capital and could not attract
talent.
Whereas North Carolina, to the contrary, had branch banking from day
one. We never got a law that said we had it, we just had the absence of
laws saying you couldn't, a very important difference. We were able to
amalgamate capital, acquire, attract talent, and Wachovia, First Union and
ourselves were very aggressive competitors with each other. And that honed
us in terms of running our companies better, prepared us better for
consolidation. This consolidation is inevitable. As I have often said, it
makes no sense to allow a red line on a map to interdict, let's say,
operational efficiency by being forced to have a separate bank, any more
than Wal-Mart has separate corporations between North and South Carolina.
Or Harris Teeter, which has its distribution center that serves both. The
point is, it made no sense. And North Carolina has always been a better
environment and maybe that's why the North Carolina banks participated at
the front of the consolidation movement. But it will go on.
Q. What do you think the makeup
of future deals will be like?
A. Well, I have no clue about
that. What my own view is that it depends on the times. I mean, we had had
acquisitions in which people were literally glad to turn over their
problems to us and go away and have a nice life - leaving us with the
problems, I might add. Other periods, prices are very high and there's a
lot of competition to buy companies and prices go very high. So it depends
on the situation at the time. But having said that, there will continue to
be consolidation.
I think in the financial services industry - particularly you see it in
the securities companies being taken over by the banking business, in both
foreign banks and U.S. banks - I think it'll be a global consolidation
before it's over. So that you will see intra-European mergers. And then
ultimately cross-continental mergers - Asia with Europe, with the United
States, etc. So it's inevitable, and it will happen.
Q. With the consolidation in
your industry, the point of view from a consumer standpoint could be that
the customer loses because there are fewer people on the playing field.
Why should consumers be excited about there being fewer banks out there?
A. Well, I don't think there's
any more vicious competition than between Wells Fargo and Bank of America
in California, where really we're the only players. And yet it is vicious
price competition. This is good for the consumer. We've got product
competition in which we try to give better offerings, make it more
convenient for customers. The same is true in North Carolina. There's no
doubt that First Union and Branch Bank & Trust Co. and ourselves don't
wish each other any success - other than survival. And so, I mean, I think
we're very competitive and I believe in all candor that in every state in
which we've entered - Texas, Missouri, wherever - that were uni-bank
states, we've brought more competition to the game. So I think that
consolidation brings more intense competition, better service, alternative
delivery, etc. If it doesn't, the customers have the ability to vote with
their feet. They go somewhere else. So you have to be responsive.
And hey, we spend a lot of money trying to be. This is Ken's world now. He
will do it.
Q. Share some of the important
lessons that you've learned from the merger/acquisition process? That's
been a part of how you built the bank.
A. Well, arguably one should be
very careful not to over-promise. Or to put it differently, to allow
people to draw conclusions which are incorrect and you don't correct.
Secondly, I think the most important thing is no matter how good you are
at it, it's difficult. And no matter how much you study, you will be
surprised. and I guess I would add, seldom positively. It's just the
nature of the world.
What you do is you end up dealing with problems that have not been
dealt with but must be dealt with. And you may be perceived as being
ruthless about something when in fact you're just being practical. But the
lesson is, they're more difficult than they appear, no matter which one it
is. There are no other lessons, really, other than that one. I would say
the last thing is, that everything in life is people. And people make
things work or not work. And so, sorting out the people that will make it
work versus the people who will try to keep it from working, is the early
part of the process. But it's always there. This happens in newspapers,
too.
Q. What is it about Charlotte
that makes it a place where companies like Bank of America and First Union
and Duke Energy are the acquirers and not the acquired?
A. That's viewed by many as a
bad word, it's a pejorative term, being an acquirer. Having said that,
it's a mental set and one has to think about it in that sense. We're not
unlike farmers, maybe that's why we're like we are. In that farmers will
see a piece of land adjacent to them which is a little higher land and
drains a little better, grows cotton a little better than other land, or
soybeans, and they want it. They're avaricious. They wish it. And they'll
do everything to buy it. And they'll talk to their neighbor and eventually
if it comes up for sale, they know it's there and they buy it. And so, you
could argue that it's so natural to this part of the world.
Having said that, of course, in Kansas they farm as well and that
didn't work. I actually think that Charlotte is a unique city in that it
is a city whose business is business. It's not a political city. We're not
Raleigh or Columbia, S.C., or even Richmond or (Austin). We're different
in that sense. And while we have some nice universities here and colleges
here, we're really not a university town, either. If you look at what we
are, we're a professional town. We have business people, we have lawyers,
accountants, a huge medical profession, and we're a distribution center
for the region around us. And that was really the birth of this city, the
distribution. And it was natural that the banking industry grew up around
the distribution system, financing the inventories and the wholesale, and
then the banks financed cotton as it moved to the mills in the old days.
But I think what's unique about Charlotte is that its business is
business. That seems like a trite thing to say, but it's not. I mean, we
don't get up in the morning worrying about politics - federal, state or
local. We get more interested in local politics but just barely. We're
more interested in curb cuts for our buildings than we are for anything of
any other substance. With the singular exception of we're all interested
in the school system.
Q. Do you still think that a
group of local people will get together to buy the Hornets in entirety or
part of it?
A. Well, I think there are a lot
of people here who would like to be part of doing that, and I certainly
think that First Union and Bank of America are prepared to do that. I do
not know whether it will happen or not.
Q. Do you think a referendum on
the issue will pass if that doesn't happen?
A. Well, my own personal opinion
is it should pass and the reason I think that is that Charlotte as a city
has always done the right thing for itself as a city. That is all of us
for all of us, whether it's building another runway at the airport, or a
new coliseum when we needed one - which we've done before, incidentally -
or a new convention center or new schools or whatever's needed. And it's
not reasonable to think that a city that is growing as rapidly as ours
won't have new needs as it goes forward. But we'll also have new citizens
to help pay for it. It's not just those of us who are here that have to
pay for things. It's those that will come and are coming. People
are voting with their feet, they are coming to live in Charlotte, N.C. Our
biggest problem is getting people to leave Charlotte. When we want to
transfer somebody it's extremely difficult. Personally, I'm gonna vote for
the referendum and I would hope, I think that informed people will vote
for it, that is, people who actually read the truth about how the arena
would get paid for. Why would we think that our leadership that has run
the coliseums in the past would do a bad job? They won't. So it's
Charlotte's arena - not the Hornets arena.
Q. I saw you in a jacket once
that had McColl Farewell Tour on the back of it. When did you get that
made and why did you do that?
A. Well, I didn't do that. It's
like a lot things that people ask me, I didn't have a thing to do with it.
My chief of staff, Vick Phillips, got the idea, and it sort of grew out of
a tour I'd been making around to meet all of our people across the nation,
I've probably talked to 20- to 50,000 people in a period of 18 months, in
town hall meetings or whatever you want to call them. And Ken Lewis was
doing some of the same thing. Between the two of us, there's no telling
how many people we talked to. And it was like kinda like a rock star. I
mean, you'd get a lot of applause, and then we'd get a round of wide-open
Q&As, and so that's where Vick got the idea from. He had about nine or
10 of those jackets made, maybe a dozen, and he gave them to members of
our staff and people that were on the traveling team, which Ms. (Lynn)
Drury (head of corporate affairs) was one of those, my writers, my
speechwriters, all the secretaries, the road team, and security,
everybody. So we had about a dozen or so of them, and they show up
periodically.
Q. Those jackets were made in
2000?
A. Yeah, middle of 2000 sometime
and I never will forget, we went down to Ken's officeabout eight or nine
of us went down to Ken's office and turned around and showed him the back
where it said you know, McColl Farewell Tour 2000-2001 and he said,
"What day in 2000?" It was really funny. It was a real laugher.
Soit's actually a very good jacket. I enjoy wearing it and I've taken it
to Europe a couple of times and you know you don't have to have another
jacket. It's not rainproof, but it's rain resistant. Works alright.
Q. I'm interested in leadership
in Charlotte and the changes in leadership as the city changes. You've
watched all this for a long time and been a participant. A lot of students
of Charlotte say you have to look back to the turn of the last century, to
D.A. Tompkins and E.D. Latta and people like that, to see individuals who
made as much impact on the face of the city as you have. Without arguing
about your place in the pantheon of city builders, what is it that's made
you so interested in building a city here?
A. I think somewhere in there is
the same thing that made me interested in building the bank. In other
words, I think it's the same sort of motivation, that is, `Why not?' You
know, `Why should we not have a great city?' I never liked being put in my
place, so to speak. And didn't like sort of the order of things when I
first came to work for the bank, you know, that we were small and we were
Southern and ergo we should not be important and we should stay in our
place. We haven't done that, as you know. It may have disturbed some
people over the years - even people here, who preferred the bank to be
small and therefore more manageable. But hey, we didn't do that. Well, I
felt the same way about the city. Why shouldn't we have a good city? Why
should we have allowed urban renewal, which was urban clearance in the
'60s, to essentially denude us of housing, businesses, etc., Why shouldn't
we do something about that?
So, starting from that premise, I mean, I got very very fascinated,
when I first started traveling, with New York, and London - particularly
London - the less big also excitingly Hong Kong and San Francisco and
then, later going to smaller cities in Europe and seeing how they were
laid out in a very tight way, you know, the business was in the center and
culture was in the center and then people lived in a very clearly defined
area. and then, you know, land began and then farming began. I always
liked that about it and I thought, hey, this is pretty good.
So it started, all of those things kind of in the mix, And then I guess
what's really driven me is, hey, it's fun. You know? And it's something
you can do that is, I would have said noncontroversial, but that's not
exactly correct either. But it's not like taking over banks. It's a
different game. And I'll have to admit that I take tremendous pleasure
out of walking down the street on Thursday night at 10 o'clock and seeing
a gazillion people where there used to be none. And I like that.
And there are restaurants. It's not just bank buildings. You know, my
real thrust and that of my associates has been housing.
Fourth Ward first. I give Joe Martin, Dennis Rash a ton of credit for
that. Wouldn't have gotten there without them. They were the ones who had
the idea. But you know somebody else has a good idea, you like it, hey, go
with it. And Third Ward was exciting. I think Third Ward was even more
exciting, because, in a way, it's the integrated neighborhood in Charlotte
that everybody's chosen to live there, you know what I mean? It's not like
hey, somebody was forced into this.
Same thing with First Ward. I like it. It's happening. And I believe we
can be a model for the rest of the city if we kind of continue along that
course. So all that, it sort of fits in to kind of what I believe, if you
know what I mean.
Q. You've built a regional bank
into a national and international financial institution. Talk some about
how it feels to be a boy who grew up in a small town in South Carolina who
has now climbed to that height of accomplishment?
A. We've joked internally about
the fact that we were always more arrogant than we should be. That is when
we were North Carolina National Bank, NCNB Corp. and even NationsBank, we
sort of were presumptuous about our importance. And what has been the
hardest thing for us is to realize where we actually are. You know the
Bank of America is a hugely important company in a lot of places in the
world - starting with the most important place which is America. And it's
the first time that our egos and our hyperbole have not caught up with the
reality. It has really been an interesting thing for us. We are still in a
funny sort of way a small town company that's in the body of a giant
company.
I think our region of the country has suffered always by
characterizations that are not accurate. I think we've come a lot further
in race relations, say, than people in other parts of the United States
have. They posture us as, you know, we're all racist, and as someone said
redneck is still the last word you can use that has not been wiped out by
political correctness. They view us as barbarians.
There was a historian who wrote about the Civil War and he said that
one of the important things that each side had to do was to paint the
other as a devil. Because it was a very religious country in which they
believed in "Thou shall not kill" and in order to induce their
soldiers to kill one another they had to paint the other as devils, evil
people, antichrist. And unfortunately, a lot of those relationships, that
conditioning, has lasted through 150 years or more. It's unfortunate.
Because as you know we are now a city full of people from everywhere
else. Charlotte is not from North and South Carolina. We're from
everywhere. Unfortunately these characterizations live on. Naturally, I
take some pride in the fact that we are a civilized company that does a
lot of good for people. We gave away the largest amount of cash of anybody
last year - $92 million, with in-kind giving that's $100 million of
charitable giving last year. We have thousands of volunteers. I'm proud of
all that. We make a difference and I'm proud of all that.
Q. Do you think that commitment
to almost overachieving has something to do with the Southern need to
prove that you're worthy enough to be here?
A. Yes, I think that. I think
that a lot. I remember reading in Sports Illustrated one time, they were
talking about John McEnroe and it said that short people are aggressive
like grass growing through concrete. And I think there's a lot of truth to
that. I mean I think that the combination of being short and Southern has
a lot to do with it.
Q. Or you try to hire short
people?
A. No. I really haven't. But it
is true that we have a lot of them. We just are not prejudiced against
short people. But no, I think being Southern has a lot to do with it. A
lot to do it. And you can argue that the company is not patrician.
Although arguably, going back to the turn of the century when Mr. (George)
Stephens and others organized this bank and the old Commercial National
bank organized in 1874, these people were patrician and they were very
fine citizens. But our company has been a more egalitarian company always.
It's made up of people from a lot of different banks. I think we have
1,080 banks that make up this company. And we come from all over the place
so I just think that we are different in that sense. We're really not all
from one university. We're not all Ivy League - although we have a lot of
Ivy Leaguers working for us. As I always jokingly say, we don't care where
you went to school unless it was Duke. And they're going to be
insufferable this year after winning the national championship.
Q. When you came here,
Charlotte's major institutions were essentially regional institutions -
the banks, Duke Power, The Charlotte Observer, the TV stations, Belk and
others. Now many of those institutions have a national or international
focus or are owned by a corporation that does. That would seem to me to
mean that the chief executives of those companies will be able to spend
even less time focused on Charlotte than some like you have in the past.
What does that mean for Charlotte?
A. I think that's a very good
observation. I think Duke Energy is a perfect example of a global company
involved in almost every aspect of the energy business globally and hugely
committed to continued growth and doing a phenomenal job. But that really
means that (Duke CEO) Rick Priory's got less time for Charlotte. Ken Lewis
has got a global company that has a huge footprint. Just keeping up with
our company in the United States, much less Asia and Europe, is a huge
undertaking. They by their very nature don't have as much time.
Now having said that, one of my pet peeves has been that someone like
Ed Dolby, who is president of the Carolinas and runs the biggest bank in
the Carolinas by some staggering margin, doesn't get recognized as such
when he comes to the table. Perhaps people think, well, he's not the
chairman or chief executive officer of the company. And yet he is a very
powerful executive within our company. Or people like (Bank of America
consumer products president) Amy Brinkley who runs about a third of our
profit-making operations, which incidentally is a $9 billion profit-making
operation, she produces nearly $3 or $4 billion worth of profits annually.
That's a big company. Maybe people don't see Amy Brinkley She happens to
be on the Carolinas Medical Center board. I just use that as an example.
We are furnishing a huge amount of leadership for this city and I could go
on and on but it will be a little bit different. I might add (Observer
Publisher) Peter Ridder is providing a huge amount of leadership here.
Very quietly, but he's in front of a lot of different things here which we
think is good because (former Observer Publisher) Rolfe Neill was involved
in so much.
Now having said that, let's go back to the arena issue. We're going to
have leadership. What we see is (Bank of America chief financial officer)
Jim Hance, Mac Everett, (Carousel Capital managing director) Nelson
Schwab, (developer) Johnny Harris, whose a real shaker and mover and those
four have been driving this process. Not me. Not (First Union CEO) Ken
Thompson. Not Ken Lewis. And so I feel very good about the leadership that
is emerging. I do believe the two Kens - Ken Thompson and Ken Lewis - will
play a major role in the city going forward because nothing actually
happens unless the CEO wants it to.
And I take Ken Lewis for an example: He is running the drive to raise
endowment for the Children's Learning Center. He's put his own money up in
very large sums. Ken Thompson has clearly already stepped up. I'm very
excited about him. I think the world of him. So I think the city's in good
hands. and as I mentioned, Peter Ridder. That's the good news. Here's the
better news. I see a new guy like David Burner from Goodrich, a guy like
Terry Broderick with Royal & Sun Alliance who has been here a while,
who are playing in the game. And many others.
So I'm very encouraged about that. So I think we're going to have the
leadership. I'm not worried about that. There are a lot of good people out
there. I've seen this movie before.
Q. You mentioned education in
passing as something that everybody supports.
A. One would hope.
Q. And yet, we have a really
long way to go if we're going to educate all the children. And it's not
just a local problem. It's a national problem.
A. But we seem to be able to
complicate it locally.
Q. When you look at something
like that, that is so important to the future of our region, what do you
wish would happen that is not happening?
I wish we would get past the rhetoric and move on. I think we have a
very good (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools) superintendent in Eric Smith.
He's a terrific guy. I think that most Americans regardless of their
ethnic background would like their kid to walk to school, a neighborhood
school. That failing, to ride their bike to a neighborhood school. That's
what I did in Bennettsville. I rode my bike to school. But I had friends
who lived in the country who came by bus. So must of us would like a
neighborhood school either for our children or our grandchildren.
But there's also this issue of equity that we've talking about it, but
the truth is we haven't done what we've said we were going to do. We've
built a new school in the suburbs and let the inner city schools go down
and we bus the inner city children out. I think we should have
neighborhood schools. If I were running things as a czar, all the schools
would look exactly alike. Nobody would have a better school than the
other. Now, the kids could paint them and do anything they wanted to and
make them look different. And I would have, if I had kids who were behind
others for whatever reason, then I would lower the student-teacher ratio
and I'd pay the difference to see that the finished product was the same.
I'd do what it took, in other words.
Now, I think a great city like Charlotte should be able to do that. And
well-meaning citizens, regardless of their economic background or their
ethnic background, ought to agree on equity and neighborhood schools. And
equity means - I don't like the word compensatory, that's not the right
word - remediation where it needs to be. And if it's intense education,
hey, do it. If it costs more money Just to illustrate it, if it cost
$6,000 per pupil (living in) Ballantyne and $10,000 at Belmont-Seigle
Avenue, hey, do it. And let's quit arguing about it. And then let's be
honest about it. Let's pay attention. Let's don't think we can fix it one
day and walk off from it. Now I think we can do that. And I think 80
percent of the people want to do that. Maybe 90.
Q. What's keeping us from that?
A. The 10 percent who somehow
see that as something bad, for one reason or anothercosts too much for
remedial work. There are people who have attitudes, as you know, that are
unreasonable. If I could do one thing that's what I would do. I would fix
that. Why would you fix it? Because, hey, if we want social peace in this
city, that is not having people hold each other up and all other kind of
things like that, the first thing we have to do is educate people. And
then if we want prosperity we want everybody to be educated enough to have
a good job and have a home. Because if people have homes they behave in a
socially peaceful way. And they have pride in themselves. So this is what
I would do if I were the czar. But, not being the czar, I can't get that
done.
Q. So being the czar is not in
your future plans?
No I don't think I'm going to get to be czar.
Q. You've seen a lot of things
happen as Charlotte has grown and prospered over the last few decades.
What's pleased you most about the development of the city and what has
disappointed you?
A. Well, I think what's pleased
me the most is to see the growth in housing in the center city and just a
general national trend in that direction is infilling. I'm very pleased to
see neighborhoods taking pride in themselves and fixing themselves up.
Like Plaza-Midwood. The awakening of the need to do that.
Wilmore. Dilworth. South End. All those things excite me. It's like, hey, we're
getting it to happen. And out of that has come a lot of reconciliation as
people learn to live with each other and pay attention to each other. All
those things are very good and positive things and I feel very good about
that.
The thing that I don't like is the opposite of that. Where we have had
polarization around singular issues that divide us rather than make us
come together. We have allowed politicians, and even put money up for
politicians, to be divisive. And one asks oneself, "Why would we do
that?" Well, we struggle so hard to make positive things happen. So
that would be the flip side of it. The polarization of politics and its
polarizing language is something I find tremendously distasteful.
Q. There seems to be a growing
political rivalry between the center city and close-in suburbs and the
farther out suburbs and the towns. Part of that I guess is inevitable as
things progress
A. I think it's the perception
that we do everything for the center cities with our monies and don't do
anything for the suburbs, which is a joke since if you know anything about
geometry the farther out the circle, the more area's involved. The more
you have to build roads, sewer, whatever. So it's technically not true to
start with. And also the burden it puts on the neighborhoods that lie
between the center and the outerbelt. By that I mean the pressure of the
traffic coming in on the spokes and how then the widening of the roads as
the spokes grow eats into people's property. But having said all that, you
can't stop growth and I don't think we should. We should manage it. We
should plan. I believe the misconceptions are fanned by people who write
things that are not true. And then they are given equal time in the press,
the media, excuse me - which includes sound bites - in which they are
allowed to say things that are not true. And it becomes true.
One of the things I have always liked about The New York Times is that
I think they do a good job reportorially, I think that's the right word,
in writing a story and not editorializing the story and editorializing on
the editorial page. And when someone says something not true, they say
that's not, you know in the sentence under a statement, it might say
"despite the fact that this is not supported by any evidence
whatsoever.." I think it would be useful if the media were a little
tougher on people who say things that are not true. I think that we allow
the loudest voices to sometimes prevail.
Q. You've been very involved in
what's going on in the center city. What needs to happen next and are
things standing in the way of that happening?
A. I think the things that need
to happen you've mentioned. There are a number of neighborhoods around the
center city, I think somewhere I read that there were 73
and I said, hey,
that's a lot. And some of which have fragility that is quite real. And it
needs the attention of the council, the county commissioners, city
government. And it's getting it largely. It needs the attention of the
planning director. And I think the small area plans really work. Then of
course the financial institutions have to be sure they're supporting it.
My view is that we should continue to develop our second ring, if you
say this is the core ring I think the core is alive and well and is going
to do well.
The issue then is the next ring out. Part of that is doing extremely
well. Dilworth, South End, Plaza-Midwood, Elizabeth, coming back around to
Wilmore and even up across the interstate toward Johnson C. Smith
University. I think that's all got momentum. The issue then is going out
to the next ring around that and also this north ring right here. And
developing it more intensely with more housing, more affordable housing in
particular. We have a large body of people living here like the tremendous
influx of Mexicans who don't have adequate housing. We need to work on
that.
We need to work on our feeder road, North Tryon, being one of our most
important avenues out to the University of North
Carolina. We ought to
quit having to get on the Interstate to get to University of North
Carolina. We ought to have a boulevard that runs straight up North Tryon
Street into the University of North Carolina. And link the center city
with the University of North Carolina. I've been a tremendous proponent of
boulevarding Wilkinson Boulevard truthfully making it the attractive
entrance to the city and actually linking it to the airport instead of
having to go around your elbow to get to your nose or whatever. I don't
understand it. I mean this is the center. Those two boulevards needs to be
worked on.
One thing I've learned if nothing else, Rolfe Neill and I used to walk
through Fourth Ward and we had all these plans and we were going to do
this and I thought I could do it overnight. It's taken 25 years. It was
(American entertainer) Eddie Cantor I think who said it takes 20 years to
have an overnight success. So it really means the next generation has got
to work for the next 25 years to make those neighborhoods we're talking
about better. Now if they do that, we'll get more social peace, we'll have
better schools, we'll have better citizens and we'll have a more
attractive city.
Q. You came here many years ago
as a young man from South Carolina seeking his fortune and you've done
pretty well.
A. Not as well as (Family Dollar
founder) Leon Levine. I always tell Leon, he was from up there just 20
miles north of me, and he did a lot better. We came the same year.
Q. What would you say to people
who are coming to Charlotte now about their chances for prosperity, but
also about their chance to be involved.
A. I think Charlotte is
remarkable. To go back, it's a city whose business is business. If you
work hard and you're ambitious here you'll do well. And the same is true
in getting involved in the community. Hey, if you want to get involved,
bang, you're involved. I cite only (Goodrich Chairman and CEO) Dave Burner
and Peter Ridder to make the point that, hey, if you want to get involved,
people will overwhelm you with involvement. If you want to volunteer,
whether it's at the hospital, reading to kids, Habitat (for Humanity) or
whatever, they need you. The only thing that is so interesting is that we
actually have so many Habitat volunteers that we can't always have enough
houses for them to build. So Charlotte is a remarkable city in that way. I
would urge everybody to get involved because I think you meet a lot of
people too and that also helps you grow in your business. The more
contacts you make the more you grow in your business. Also I think you may
find yourself working next to the person who may give you the boost that
you need for your career. You don't even know it. You know the guy there,
or the woman, next to you with the bandanna on with a hammer may be
interviewing the next week. You don't know. So I think that's what's good
about Charlotte. It's a fun time.
Q. Anything else you'd like to
add?
A. I would hope that what
Charlotte would continue to do is be positive. Not to use one of my
competitors' lines First Citizens always said it was a can-do bank. And I
really think that Charlotte's been a can-do
city. It never occurs to us we
can't do something that we want to do. I want us to keep that spirit,
rather than develop a can't-do-something attitude or a won't-do-something
attitude. So we can fix the school system. We can have great employment
opportunities for all our citizens. We can fix all our neighborhoods. We
can do all of that. And we can continue to have a great city. So if
there's nothing else that I want to say it's that we can keep up that
optimism and the spirit that we can do it. Hey, it'll work. |
|
