A Buyer's Market 

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WEST OF DOWNTOWN

Seversville

Where? If long-time Charlotte residents associate the beginning of the Rozzelles Ferry/West Trade Street/Beatties Ford Road corridor with anything, it's probably crime, which is why the rapid change there has gone on largely under the radar. That's amazing considering that the area is just a half-mile walk to the I-77 bridge on the edge of downtown.

About eight years ago, bungalow-addicted renovators like real estate agent Dan De La Portilla descended upon the well-maintained, historic neighborhood of Wesley Heights (located between West Trade and Morehead streets) and were laughed at by their friends for plunking down $80,000 for a house in an area that still had gunshots, crack addicts and prostitutes. Today, those homes, fully renovated, start at about $300,000, but there are still enough of the original residents left to leave the neighborhood flavor. Now the momentum is beginning to spread past Walnut Street down Trade Street and Tuckaseegee Road to the Bruns Avenue area in Seversville and beyond.

Seversville is bounded by Wesley Heights Way, Beatties Ford Road, Rozzelles Ferry Road and Turner Avenue and is across the street from Johnson C. Smith University.

Neighboring Concepts, a local architecture and urban planning firm, is planning to redevelop a rundown acre along Bruns Avenue and West Trade Street, which was home to an old icehouse, with new shops, offices and multifamily units. Renters still dominate the Seversville area, but word about the momentum in this historic, diverse neighborhood is spreading fast.

On State Street, about five blocks from downtown, among the boarded up, renovated and partially renovated houses, sits a brand new 1,850-square-foot home a young attorney is in the process of buying. It has all the extras you can afford to put on a house over here -- soaring ceilings, detailed trim work, hardwoods, the works.

click to enlarge

• Tara Servatius
• A tree-lined street in Shamrock Gardens, just north of NoDa

Along the edges of the neighborhood, on the other end of State Street, runs the new greenway that stretches from here into the heart of downtown. Forget paying hundreds a months for a downtown parking spot. Here, parking downtown is what you do in your own driveway.

Biddleville/Smallwood

Again, where? About six years ago, attorney Charles Jones and his tearful wife, both residents of Trade Street, showed up at a Charlotte City Council meeting hollering for help in their fight to keep their neighborhood from descending into further criminal chaos. At the time, they said they feared for their lives every time they stepped out their front door.

Two weeks ago, Jones, his wife, a realtor and a community police officer caught up with each other across the street from Jones' home. Sure, it used to be bad here, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Officer K.D. Faulkner admitted as an area prostitute, clearly intoxicated and singing at the top of her lungs, strolled by, waving enthusiastically as she passed on through. Despite the ongoing presence of some of the neighborhood's more colorful characters, Faulkner says you're now more likely to be mugged or accosted in a SouthPark parking lot than you are here.

"Ten years ago, people were moving out," said Faulkner. "Now they are moving in and crime is decreasing. It's very safe. Everyone keeps their eyes on others' stuff now."

Today, if the neighborhood, which is located between West Trade Street, I-77 and Brookshire Boulevard, were to be associated with anything, it would have to be dumpsters, lots of them, parked in front of authentic period bungalows in the midst of renovation or along lots where new homes are rising from the ashes of what just a few years ago was a neighborhood on the edge.

The place is coming along so fast that unrenovated houses that sold for $35,000 two years ago go for $90,000 to $100,000 now. Half a block down from Jones' home, on the street where he and his wife once feared for their lives, renovated and new homes built in bungalow-style with beautiful hardwoods and soaring ceilings that sit next to boarded up 1930s mill houses go for more than $250,000.

For those who love areas where every resident is different, great deals and a ground floor opportunity to help build a neighborhood are still here to be had. The residents here will tell you that investor and real estate agent Mike Doney has poured his life and his money into the neighborhood, buying and renovating houses. Doney and a handful of investors, renovators and homeowners are behind the dumpsters popping up in yards all over the place, and his enthusiasm is catchy. Every fifth house, it seems, belongs to a friend of his who is renovating and moving in.

Like those the neighborhood seems to appeal to most, Doney, who is in his late 20s, isn't from around here. He grew up in a suburb of Pittsburgh, so he came here in 1999 with no preconceived notions about the west side. People who aren't from Charlotte see the housing stock and the proximity to downtown and just assume that the property will be valuable, Doney said. People from here have a harder time getting past old perceptions.