Connecting Past to Present
Rail Line Saves the Day Twice for South End
By Courtney McLaughlin

The area now called South End has a history of being resurrected from almost sure obsolescence, both times by a rail line.
In the 1830s and 1840s farmers’ crops were bountiful in Mecklenburg County, but without a rail line, it was difficult to get goods to market. As a result, the population in the county dropped from 20,073 in 1830 to 13,914 in 1850, according to historian Dan Morrill’s book Historic Charlotte. Area leaders decided a rail line linking Charlotte to Charleston, S.C., by way of Columbia, might be just the thing to keep the area from decline.
Their vision came true as more than 20,000 people gathered at what is now the Charlotte Convention Center on October 28, 1852 to watch the first train roll into town.
The economy responded and by the 1890s several large companies had set up shop in the area, including the Atherton Cotton Mill, the Charlotte Trouser Co., the Southern Card Clothing Co., the Charlotte Pipe and Foundry Co., the Park Manufacturing Co., the Parks Cramer Complex, the Lance Packing Co. and the Nebel Knitting Mill. To serve plant employees, housing developed in Dilworth and Wilmore and shops popped up along South Boulevard and nearby streets.

‘The Manchester of Charlotte’

In his book, Dilworth, The First 100 Years, author Tom Bradbury wrote: "Anchored by mills to the north and south, South Boulevard became Dilworth’s industrial and commercial corridor: home to factories and stores…While many of the early factory buildings remain and several of the churches, South Boulevard’s gap-toothed street frontage today scarcely hints at the humming life that once made it the Manchester of Charlotte."
The area prospered through World War I, however by World War II, the advent of the automobile and affordable gas prices had made transporting goods cheaper by vehicle. Families began moving farther from town and drove to work. Car Number 85 made its last trip to South Boulevard’s trolley car barn on March 14, 1938.
The manufacturing giants eventually vacated their South End buildings in search of newer ones on cheaper land, also farther out. Momentum had shifted to the suburbs, and the decline of South End was in full swing.
By the early1980s, South Boulevard had become a tawdry place. Drug dealers and X-rated shops had moved in; most properties were rentals, and the city’s minor-league ballpark on Magnolia Avenue burned down in 1985. When exhibit designer Gaines Brown wanted to buy commercial property in South End in 1983, he took his banker there one day at lunch. "He wouldn’t even get out of the car," Brown remembers. "Luckily, I was able to convince the owners to finance the deal."

Dilworth Funds Study

That same year, 1983, the Dilworth’s neighborhood organization asked Lane, Frenchman and Associates to study six blocks of South Boulevard that border the Dilworth neighborhood. The group wanted to see what could be done to improve the area. Out of the study came the Dilworth Urban Design Plan, which was presented to the Charlotte City Council in May 1984.
The study got the ball rolling to clean up the corridor. "Dilworth has been very involved and very committed to that area," says Mary Hopper, a Dilworth resident and former president of the Dilworth neighborhood group.
Another big boost came in 1987 when Charlotte voters approved a $1.5 million bond referendum that funded infrastructure improvements for five urban corridors, including South Boulevard from Morehead Street to just south of Tremont Avenue.
The bond money improved sidewalks and added lighting, representing the first major milestone in South End’s resurgence, says developer Tony Pressley, whose company, MECA Properties, has been a redevelopment pioneer in South End.
Since the late 1980s, his company has built Olmstead Park on the old ballpark site, adapted the Atherton Mill into a commercial marketplace and restaurant (Southend Brewery & Smokehouse), redeveloped the old Atherton Cotton Mill into the Atherton Lofts condominiums and reworked a host of old manufacturing sites to form the Design Center of the Carolinas.

Forging a Common Vision

In conjunction with the bond money to spruce up the area, the city formed a stakeholders’ group comprised of Wilmore, Dilworth and South End property owners to advise the city on the improvements. This group evolved into the South End Development Corp. and is now called Historic South End. "We had property owners who wanted to make a difference and were willing to put their money where their vision was," says the city’s Tom Warshauer, who convened the original group. "Out of many meetings grew a common vision between the public and private sector."
By 1991, South End’s image was turning around. The Spaghetti Warehouse opened for business that year in the Old Nebel Knitting Mill. In 1993, Interiors Marketplace became the pioneering first anchor tenant in Pressley’s renovated Atherton Mill, a 13-acre complex at Tremont and South Boulevard. Southend Brewery opened 1995 and quickly became a popular spot for people from all over the city.
The name "South End" came into being in 1994. According to Charlotte’s South End: The Early Years, a history produced by MECA Properties, the name, South End, was inspired by an area of Dallas, Tex. "We saw that the West End was making a strong comeback (there), and that inspired us to come up with the term ‘South End,’" Kevin Kelley of the Shook Design Group says in the publication. "It amazes me how quickly the name South End took hold," Pressley adds. "Branding can go as far as anything to change perception."

Today, South End is prospering again. Its closeness to the resurging uptown area and its history have been drawing cards. "It’s one thing to show an old grainy picture of a mill and say ‘They used to process cotton there,’" says Kevin Gullette, executive director of Historic South End. "It’s another to walk into the building itself. It gives you that connection."

Full-time Trolley Likely in 2003

The Charlotte Trolley fused the past and present even closer when it began offering electric trolley service through South End on a weekend, demonstration basis in August 1996. The trolley began offering limited service during the week on October 1, 2002. A full-time trolley has been funded by the city and is projected to start running in summer 2003.

The trolley will run from Atherton Mill, through the heart of South End, as far as Ninth Street uptown. Initially, passengers will only get off only on the east side of the track. But once a second track is laid for light rail -- which the trolley will use as well -- there will be platforms on both sides. Construction of the second rail bed begins in 2004, and light rail is projected to start running in 2006.

Once again, South End has found a solution to decline — and once again, it involves a rail line.

Thank you to the Charlotte Regional Realtor Association's magazine: Realtor Reflections for allowing this reprint.