Feb. 02, 2002

Freedom's future

MARY NEWSOM

You have to admire the audacity of consultant Ron Morgan's suggestion that the best way to improve Freedom Drive would be to create a whole new street, carving it through the vast, unkempt parking lots, then line it with trees, homes and shops and let existing Freedom Drive sink of its own weight.

Morgan, an architect/developer, pitched that idea Monday at a public workshop to help people in the area imagine a new, better-looking, more economically vigorous street.

It was an audacious thought, but audacity is probably going to be needed, because if the city, the property owners and the national retailers keep on doing what they've been doing, Freedom will keep on getting what it has been getting: worse.

Freedom Drive shows the underbelly of laissez-faire sprawl, the part boom-boom developers would rather not admit. Do you really think stores and apartments are reproducing like wild onions at edge cities such as Concord Mills and Whitehall because there aren't any sites left closer in? Welcome, then, to Freedom Drive.

Freedom, which heads northwest from uptown, is lined with unattractive and partly filled shopping centers. It's home to more than its share of carcasses left by retailers such as Lowe's and Target, companies that strip-mine an area for profits and then move on, creating new slag heaps on fresher land. Freedom Drive neighborhoods, though growing, aren't fast-growing enough or wealthy enough to lure trendy retailers.

Study this textbook

Freedom Drive is a textbook in which you can read -- if you care to -- many lessons on the complex failures of late 20th-century architectural design, real estate development and city planning.Of the corridor's seven shopping centers, six date to the '60s and '70s and illustrate that era's lamentable architecture and planning weakness. In a nutshell, developers tacked up buildings as disposable as Kleenex. They weren't intended to uplift the eye. They weren't even intended to last. Their reason for existing was so people could drive in, park and spend money.

Local elected officials, apparently having no higher aspirations, acquiesced. And in the 30 years since, they have let stores and businesses drain out of close-in neighborhoods while approving virtually every request from developers to build shopping centers, office parks, apartments and subdivisions farther and farther out.

Then they use that growth to explain why they're still enabling the retailers' addiction to sprawl sites. By now the sprawl addicts are mainlining their newest, pure-grade stash: Interstate 485. The outerbelt is funneling customers to ever-newer stores, commuters to new homes and employees to new workplaces -- all far, far from Freedom Drive.

Imagine the impact on the remaining stalwart Freedom Drive businesses when the outerbelt's western leg opens in a couple of years. Already, of about 1.3 million square feet of commercial retail space in the area, 400,000 square feet sit vacant.

The numbers come from a city-funded study by Washington retail consultant Anita Kramer to help the nonprofit Freedom Drive Development Association envision a better future. The FDDA, with some city money, has also hired Charlotte planning consultant Ron Morgan.

Turnout at Monday's workshop -- almost 100 people -- was about three times what organizers expected, showing how deeply residents and business owners thirst for something better.

Hopeful signs

Reasons for optimism exist. The area is convenient to uptown. A new high school, the Berry Academy of Technology, opens nearby next fall. The city plans to upgrade sidewalks and street trees, starting about 2004. Eckerd has expanded its store. Aldi opened a 15,000-square-foot grocery. Klingman Williams Inc., an office furniture company, bought a $1.5 million distribution warehouse on Freedom, and owner Dick Klingman has been active in the FDDA and enthusiastic about the corridor's promise.

Kramer's analysis concluded the area's buying power could support about 120,000 square feet more retail space than are now in use. However, she said the total, 1.3 million square feet, is bigger than the area will support even by 2010. Her recommendation: Reuse the land.

Morgan's prescription was the same, though more bluntly worded. "The answer is not to fix up the big boxes, but tear them all down," he proclaimed, to applause.

He showed slides illustrating some ideas: more housing, smaller blocks with more connected streets and better transit service. He favors more city-style development, where stores aren't so far from homes and sometimes are even on the ground floor below apartments or condos.

At the next workshop, the audience will bring their ideas, and then Morgan will illustrate them.

Not an easy job

Fixing Freedom is a tough assignment. The area has a reputation for crime, although in Kramer's analysis it's undeserved. Its unattractive buildings and desolate parking lots hurt its chances with potential investors. Big chunks of property are owned by out-of-state companies with little interest in Charlotte's overall health. Finding financing for the sorts of mixed-used projects that Morgan favors has stymied developers elsewhere.

Further, national retail trends toward even bigger boxes make it unlikely big-name chain stores will gallop in on white steeds to save the street.

Finally, even though buildings there are so ugly they're a disincentive to revitalization, city zoning laws still allow developers to build those buildings. Until the rules change, Freedom isn't safe from this decade's blight-in-waiting.

Is that too pessimistic? I hope so. I do think Freedom Drive eventually can rise again. But without something truly audacious, it's in for a long, slow climb.

Mary Newsom