"Stay away from those railroad tracks!"
Those were always my parents' words of warning when
my friends and I hiked from our homes on West Boulevard to catch a flick
at the old Dilworth Theater on South Boulevard.
You couldn't get there without crossing the tracks,
which parallel South Boulevard.
But that's not what worried my mom and dad.
They understood the attraction curious boys had to
those tracks, lined with wino habitats, empty whisky bottles, blackberry
thickets, vacant warehouses and all sorts of unclaimed treasures.
The rail bed was our shortcut to stores on Park
Avenue, our favorite route to the old A.G. Junior High School on Morehead
Street (where the YMCA is now) and our after-school playground.
It's hard to believe that was more than four decades
ago.
Even more difficult for a native like to me to
fathom is how the rail corridor is being transformed from the underbelly
of South Boulevard's industrial development to a revitalization magnet.
Urban planners say the tracks -- which will host
regular daily trolley service starting in January and light-rail service
in 2006 -- might compensate for Charlotte's lack of a river or natural
feature to lure additional development.
That theory gained credibility last week when a
Charlotte developer disclosed plans to remodel the 76-year-old Fowler's
Office Furniture & Supplies building on South Tryon Street at the
Camden Road fork.
Chris Branch, president of The Boulevard Co., said
the South End building will become the centerpiece of a restaurant, retail
and most likely residential project.
The location next to a planned trolley and
light-rail stop is crucial to the company's development plans, he said.
The Boulevard Co. will construct a patio in back of
the building, which likely will become a restaurant, and develop a
four-story structure that could be either offices or residential condos.
Lower level shops will include services oriented
toward passengers -- a newsstand and a coffee shop, for example -- and the
outdoor patio will emphasize skyline views from track side.
Branch estimates the project's value will exceed $10
million. It's one more layer of private investment along the trolley
tracks, where the city estimates condo, apartment, retail and office
development has exceeded $400 million between uptown and South End over
the past few years.
Light rail trains will run on those same trolley
tracks and then continue on their own tracks to near Pineville.
The Charlotte Area Transit System expects to spend
$26 million to buy property along the rail line for stations and parking
lots.
The $371 million line will have 14 stations from
Seventh Street uptown to Interstate 485 in south Charlotte.
Encouraged by the momentum, developer Andy Heath
started work last summer on the first private development designed to tie
directly into a transit stop -- $17 million 3030 South at New Bern Street
Station.
He's building 36 units in the first phase of the
4.2-acre project, which eventually will include 96 condos and two small
office-retail buildings.
Condo owners will be able to walk 50 yards to the
station -- behind the Pepsi-Cola Bottling plant -- for a six-minute ride
uptown when passenger service begins in about three years.
The first condo buyers are expected to occupy their
units in February.
Activity also will pick up next week when Edifice
Inc. starts construction of a CATS bus operations and maintenance facility
north of Clanton Road between South Boulevard and Tryon.
The bus hub will dovetail with a light-rail yard and
rail shop to be developed in a later phase on the 23-acre site.
At my old stamping grounds around Park Avenue,
Camden Road and South Boulevard, new restaurants and shops already are
clustering in close proximity to the tracks.
Four-story Park Avenue Condominiums, one of the
first residential projects to be developed along the trolley line, has a
rooftop terrace overlooking the tracks between uptown and South End.
The 67-unit residential project and the adjoining
Park Avenue Building were developed on a block that once housed a
drugstore, a furniture store, a shoe shop, a barbershop, a jewelry store
and other retailers.
Across the tracks on Camden Road is a neighborhood
mainstay: Price's Chicken Coop, which evolved from the Dilworth Poultry
business I knew in the 1950s.
Next door to Price's an old tire store has been
demolished and rumor has it someone wants to develop an office building
there.
All along the line, construction is changing the
landscape. The Design Center of the Carolinas has emerged from the old
Nebel Knitting Mill at Camden Road and Worthington Avenue, and the Westin
Charlotte had opened at College and Stonewall streets.
Restaurants and shops that arrived in the first wave
of South End revitalization a decade ago now are talking about reorienting
toward the tracks with signs, patios and additional entrances.
Forget my mom's advice.
Stay away from those tracks today and you'll miss
out on good eateries, cool places to live, quaint shops and perhaps even
an attractive real estate deal.
