Public art was the subject of WFAE’s Charlotte Talks on Monday. A representative from the Arts and Science Council and two other guests spoke at length about the need for our city and its neighborhoods to tell their stories through art.
It made me wonder what city they thought they lived in. What Charlotte tends to do any time a neighborhood does start telling its story through art is level it to the ground and build sterile condos and apartments where the culture used to be, and price them so high most artists are forced to vacate the area.
NoDa has seen its fair share of this behavior. Many of the galleries that Charlotteans once flocked to “crawl” through on a bi-monthly basis are gone. The neighborhood is now more a nightlife destination than arts enclave, and it seems to welcome these developments. Even as it was announced earlier this year that the beloved Chop Shop would be demolished in favor of a mixed-use development, not one NoDa resident showed up to protest at the rezoning hearing.
Plaza Midwood residents, on the other hand, aren’t going down without a fight. They don’t share real estate developers’ vision for a generic apartment utopia, and they plan to say so loudly at a public hearing on May 18.
“We cannot continue to sit idly by and watch what we have built be torn down, whitewashed and homogenized for the sake of more high-end apartments and more tax revenue,” said Jenna Thompson, a neighborhood resident.
Thompson is organizing 100 speakers for the rezoning hearing and circulating a Change.org petition online to save the latest neighborhood cultural landmark in the crosshairs of developers: Tommy’s Pub.
Tommy’s Pub is a bar/live music venue that has occupied a small building on Central Avenue at Westover Street since the 1970s. It’s easy to miss. It doesn’t book big national acts like the Chop Shop. Sometimes an indie act on tour will roll through and play for donations, but usually artists from the neighborhood are getting down on its stage.
“It’s never needed anything fancy,” says musician and regular Wyley Buck Boswell. “Just some dim lighting, racing posters and ice-cold domestics made it the charming dive it’s been for so many years.”
A charming dive bar seems like nothing more than an amuse-bouche for the insatiable apartment-building beast planning to crap out 97 units plus some retail space after he devours it.
But Plaza Midwood residents should not be underestimated. Remember the backlash the Thirsty Beaver’s landowner received when he tried to force the beloved tenant out by erecting fences around the building perimeter? Long story short — the Beaver’s still there. The fences are not. And who would’ve thought a neighborhood boycott could shut down the most iconic restaurant in Charlotte — the Penguin? But it did. If any ‘hood of Davids can drive out Goliath, it’s this one.
The condo boom died during the recession, but, as the economy recovered, an apartment boom took its place. (Thanks, Obama.) Apartment vacancy was at almost 7 percent in March with 10,000 units under construction and 10,000 more planned. Developers are counting on our metro area’s projected growth to fill them. They’re also big believers in marketing studies that tell them millennials don’t want to buy a house; we’d rather pay obscene prices for a little box in a trendy neighborhood we’ll never own a piece of.
The prices are the bigger problem. Art and history, as deep a connection we feel to them, are luxuries. Housing is a necessity. Where are Plaza Midwood’s many working-class residents going to live when their rent and property tax prices skyrocket or their current homes are replaced by apartments they can’t get approved for?
Median rent for Plaza Midwood in 2011 was $746, according to city-data.com. In 2015, after the opening of several high-end apartment buildings like Metro 808, it’s $1,395 (Zillow.com).
“Plaza Midwood was built by the working class when no one else wanted to live here; by people who have established themselves as integral to our very close-knit community with their hard work, perseverance, and vision of what their neighborhood should be. These are many of the same people who, if this pattern of ill-planned gentrification persists, will be pushed out of their homes,” Thompson said.
Our area population is expected to surge in the next 15 years and grow to 2.74 million by 2030. It appears all these new people will have an apartment waiting for them, as long as they also have high-paying salaries and no interest in culture or authenticity.
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This article appears in May 13-19, 2015.
For those who have emailed (and anyone else interested), here’s the link to the online petition to save Tommy’s Pub: http://tinyurl.com/rezoning2015-56
Thank you for posting this. It doesnt look like wages will be going up as the rents do. Im wondering how the city expects to house its low income workforce. It obviously has no idea what affordable housing actually is. We need safe inner city neighborhoods like Plaza Midwood where we can still afford to live. We work hard, We serve your food and drink, we are not welfare cases, and we don’t deserve to live in slums too far from our jobs. Where are you going to put us? Most apartments require that someone earn 3 times the rent to be approved. People working in retail and restaurants rarely earn $3,000 a month.
I love when people are united for just a great cause. Go pick on other hoods & leave this one alone!!!
After renting apartments and buying homes, I would rent an apartment any day. Everything this financial expert says is true, especially the freedom just to get up and move:
http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2011/03/31/…
After a recession caused by people believing that owning homes was the only option, is it any surprise that the demand for apartments is so high now?
Housing is indeed a necessity, and with so many people wanting to live in Charlotte (and Plaza Midwood, for that matter), more supply has to be created to meet demand otherwise prices will continue to rise. While I’m sympathetic to those who don’t want to lose their dive bar, as a resident of this area, I feel that this development is going in an area that is currently underutilized, and a mixed use, multi-family development would help improve this stretch of land and bring in some new residents/customers for existing PM businesses.
Despite the propaganda, people aren’t being pushed out of their homes for this development. The owner of the building needs the money and wants to sell, so I think the frustration is a bit misdirected here. I do think the residents need to work with the developer to ensure the development fits with the neighborhood and isn’t “cookie cutter” in appearance, but otherwise I think this is an efficient use of land along a busy corridor and I welcome it to the area. I also think more of these types of development are going to pop up with the extension of the Gold Line, so those that are opposed to high density development along Central are going to have a tough road ahead. Would I love to have all of the PM bars and restaurants to myself, sure? But it’s not feasible and I’d rather build up and keep people off of the farm land in the suburbs.
Jenna Thompson nominates herself for Idiot Of The Year with this statement:
“We cannot continue to sit idly by and watch what we have built be torn down.”
Ummm… to paraphrase another idiot, Ms. Thompson, you didn’t build that. The owner of the building built it (or purchased it from those who built it). You have NO stake of ownership in the building. NONE. So don’t try to steal the labor of others.
I watched the council meeting online this week and council unanimously voted to approve the rezoning. I think the official vote is next month, but the opposition needs to rethink their arguments. They said PM is too expensive to move into, but building new apartments is precisely what has to happen to stabilize prices so lower income people who can’t afford a house can move to (or stay in) the area. As such, that argument doesn’t hold water. I also shook my head at the “what we built” comment. I think she has only lived in PM for two years, and a lot of the more active voices on the FB page said they didn’t even live in PM.
The bigger issue is that even if the city didn’t approve the rezoning, the building owner needs the money and wants to sell, so Tommy’s Pub will cease to exist unless the operator can purchase the building.
With that said, I think the takeaway for the opposition should be that in order to affect change, they have to be involved with the neighborhood association on a continuous basis. If the PMNA supports it and is working with Patsy and the developers, it’s going to happen. I agree that Plaza Midwood’s culture needs to be protected from dilution and over-development though, so hopefully some of these people will stay involved and informed and help protect it.