Well, this should come as no surprise … The Charlotte City Council on Monday, April 20, approved the rezoning of a parcel of land that is currently home to the Chop Shop and Ultimate Gym and being purchased by Crescent Communities. When the request was originally announced, there was a lot of opposition — on social media. Not one person spoke out against the proposal at a public hearing last month.
The Chop Shop and Ultimate Gym are both weighing options as to their respective fates, while Crescent Communities is expected to break ground on the land before the end of the year.
This article appears in Apr 15-21, 2015.
Welcome to Charlotte where there are lots of places to live and nothing left to do. Yuppies are nothing more than cultural locusts. They take everything over, price everyone out, and then act miffed when all of the “culture” is gone. Since no one stood up for these 2 businesses for fucks sake people at least fight to save Tommy’s Pub on Central from the same fate!
I have seen music venues come and go in Charlotte… for every one that gets torn down, another is built somewhere in its place. We want new and improved infastructure so we don’t look like a out of shape/run down city with empty buildings and ghettos everywhere you turn.
I hate that the Chop Shop isn’t being preserved or worked creatively into the new development…hopefully they find a new home nearby (because Neighborhood Theater damn sure isn’t pulling its weight in terms of bookings lately). However if this was inevitable, which it sounds like it was, at least its being done by the only developer who currently seems to give a crap about quality design around here. The neighborhood needs to put pressure on them, but scare them off and you’ll probably get something worse like the value-engineered POS that Mercury turned into (the apartments wrapping NT).
Hopefully CS can find some new space further out Davidson St or on the other side of Tryon like NoDa Brewing. Anywhere btween west 16-32 still has old industrial space. But I understand that as cities grow, arts and music venues will migrate to escape the rising rents or be forced to find new space. Its the reality in every growing city.
The cheap space Mercury is crap. I remember when the developer closed on the property and later had to scale back the number of units at the request of neighborhood assoc. Is this the unintended consequence? because the original renderings looked much better. The only saving grace with Mercury is that it’s such a pos, it’s actually endearing.