Full interview with Michael Smith of Charlotte Center City Partners

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Michael Smith on Tepper, a new light rail stop, Gateway Station and all that streetcar construction along Trade Street

Nobody knows more about what’s going on in the center city than Michael Smith, CEO of Charlotte Center City Partners. The Ledger sat down with him this week to discuss the organization’s new 2020 State of the Center City report, the remarkable growth of the uptown area, the challenges that growth presents and future of the center city and the region.

Remarks were edited for brevity and clarity.

(This is the full interview, portions of which were excerpted in the Feb. 7, 2020, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter covering local business.)

Q: What is the biggest takeaway from this new report?

The state of the center city is strong. It’s balanced across all categories of development. We are fortunate because having a strong center city serves as a foundation for a thriving region.

When you look at this decade, it was our most prolific — prolific in development of things. But if that’s where we stopped, that wouldn’t be very interesting. What makes center cities great is the people.

We created office space for an additional 41,300 workers, 81 shops and restaurants, a million overnight guests and 19,500 new residents. This community created that within one decade.

When I look at what were the more exciting things coming out of ’19, the big game-changer for the center city was jobs — 5,000 jobs announced: Honeywell, Truist, AvidXchange, Better.com, EY, Lowe’s, LendingTree. And those were just the big announcements. That doesn’t capture all the organic growth along the way.

Q: Where are the challenges? Right now, we are going on all cylinders, but where can we do better?

We’ve got all this killer momentum going into the next decade. It will provide us the raw material to articulate our evolving values. There are only four other cities ahead of us in the creation of office space in 2019, in terms of square footage.

With that kind of momentum, the issues that we are going to be facing will be around congestion and affordability. You’re going to find that inclusivity and affordability are two of the highlighted values in the 2040 Center City Vision Plan. We are still in the listening phase. We are getting close to nailing down our goals.

Q: If you look at peer cities, it seems as though we are still doing pretty well.

We used to brag about our affordability on office and residential. That was part of how we attracted jobs here. Now it’s a question that we’re answering in terms of how are we going to manage it better than our peer cities?

You’re 100% right. It is still a relative advantage for our community. But I quickly point to Denver, which did not have an affordability problem five years ago, and they do now. We’ve got to get ahead of this. We’re making good leadership moves. What the mayor and council did with more than tripling the housing trust fund bonds, big move. The corporate community — many of which are in the center city — raising $350M in commitments, big moves.

As we grow in investment, jobs and tax base, we’re going to have to proportionally grow in the way we create affordability. If we do it the right way, it will actually become an asset.

Q: What is the most surprising part of this report to people?

It’s not an exciting answer, but it’s the balance. That’s not sexy. But for the work we do, it means we are hitting on all cylinders.

Q: Let’s talk about the retail landscape. There’s talk of an entertainment district by the stadium. You have the EpiCentre having some of its problems. Where do you see the retail and restaurants and that sector fitting into the center city?

We’ve had exciting moves in retail. One of the most exciting — and it’s more exciting for downtowns — is the amount of disruption that’s going on. There’s an evolution that is occurring in the retail space, where it is becoming more integrated between brick-and-mortar and online. People who go out and shop are looking for experiences and entertainment. The stores will change a lot. It allows for places that are multilayered like center cities to have a fresh crack.

Without change, this was not a shopping district. It was a place that did a good job of supporting the needs of urban pioneers and a workforce. It was not destination retail.

It’s going to be really interesting to see what South End looks like in five years. We have really smart, well-financed investors, in Asana and in Edens. They are creating a 21st-century, completely woven urban shopping experience. It’s more of what the malls want to become.

Q: And the entertainment district that’s being talked about by the stadium? Do we know what that is going to look like?

It’s pretty exciting to have North Carolina and South Carolina’s #1 entertainment asset be recapitalized and to see what’s possible. The statement that [Panthers owner David Tepper] made that he sees something in Charlotte and our opportunity as an entertainment destination that we don’t see yet, I think is exciting. He has an ability to capitalize and advance big ideas. He’s a big-idea guy.

Our hope is that the stadium district becomes a complete place, that it does have regional entertainment assets, but it’s also a neighborhood and employment center and all of the above, which will allow it to be better woven into uptown. It will also help trigger continued development west into FreeMoreWest.

Freedom Drive, I don’t think people appreciate how close it is to popping. There has been a lot of [land] assemblage over there by Beacon and by the Browder Group.

It wasn’t that long ago that Charlotte was two-dimensional. It was Tryon, College and Church streets. Now, it is so multifunctional in the way it has gone out into each of the wards and into South End.

Q: The Convention Center is undergoing a big overhaul. What about the connectivity of the Rail Trail through the Convention Center? What’s going on with that? Will we see an uptown that is more connected?

One of our big commitments is we have to have a multimodal center city. When I think about the things we are excited about in the next decade, [one of them is] the big moves we are making in mobility.

Mobility is the giant moves, like the Silver Line, but it’s also the Uptown Connects project, which is protected bikeways.

It is also the Rail Trail connectivity, which begins with the connection via the pedestrian bridge and across Stonewall. I don’t know how soon it happens, but the idea is to take it all the way through the Convention Center. The interim model of that will be on the streets and using sidewalks around the Convention Center.

Q: But eventually the idea is to go through the Convention Center?

It is.

Q: How would you put uptown and South End’s growth in national context? What are you hearing as far as the recognition of this area and how it competes nationally?

We are so close to it, I don’t think we fully appreciate how rare it is. It’s allowed us to have closing speed on our competitors. We’ve got some great competitors in Denver, Atlanta, Austin. And it takes a lot of creativity to stay with and sometimes close in on some of those competitors. The thing we keep hearing again and again is the development community and the institutional investment community have recognized that Charlotte is leading the way in our investments in infrastructure and the preparation for growth, and that’s particularly around the 2030 Transit Plan.

That’s one of the things I think we take for granted. For anybody who works uptown and has endured the creation of the Gold Line streetcar bisecting uptown, we are paying a price. There is great congestion. A lot of gnashing of teeth. But it is moving from a line to a system, and these are the moves that every big transit-oriented city has had to endure.

Q: What about that Gateway Station? What is the status of that, and what is that going to mean for uptown and the region?

We are under construction, creating new bridges, adding the parallel track, so when trains come in, they will be able to pull off the active tracks. We are in an RFP process with master developers. We have good quality teams that are interested, and hopefully by this fall, we will be working with a master developer.

The opportunity is so much more than transportation. It is creating a new center of gravity inside of uptown, so that we will have three major centers: Stonewall and Tryon, Trade and Tryon and the Gateway Station. If we do this right, it will become a very important employment center but intense mixed-use as well.

Q: Can the central business district keep up this pace of growth?

We are growing in the right way. When you look at the way we are densifying as a community and growing in concentric circles, wider and wider, the concern is it degrades the quality of life that all of us moved here to participate in.

The trick will be, how do we complement and develop and evolve our transportation systems for a place that will be denser than what was originally planned?

We are making good moves in the transportation tools that we have. We’re going to have to remain open to the disruptive transportation trends that come ahead.

Q: You want to plan, but you don’t know what the technology will be, like, are we all getting around in jet packs in 10 years or something?

Or is it pods? Is it some new kind of bus system that has super-small headways and that are smaller and that can use some of the existing right of way?

The reason that mass transit is so powerful is because of the permanence that it creates, that smart money and debt and the development community respond to.

Q: What is the latest on the possibility of a new light rail stop in South End [by the Publix and Atherton Mill]?

We are very interested in augmenting that gap. You look at the rhythm through South End, no matter where you are, you’re a quarter-mile from a station when you’re on the Rail Trail, until you get just beyond East-West, and there’s a gap. It was value engineered out. There is interest in trying to create some kind of public-private partnership that would add a station in South End.

Q: Are you working with private businesses and the city on that?

There’s not much more I can share at this point. That was very generous, what I just shared. [laughter]

Q: Any other secret projects you are working on that you would like to tell me about? I’d be happy to listen.

In the right time. [laughter]

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The Charlotte Ledger is an e-newsletter and web site publishing timely, informative, and interesting local business news and analysis Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, except holidays and as noted. We strive for fairness and accuracy and will correct all known errors. The content reflects the independent editorial judgment of The Charlotte Ledger. Any advertising, paid marketing, or sponsored content will be clearly labeled.

The Charlotte Ledger is published by Tony Mecia, an award-winning former Charlotte Observer business reporter and editor. He lives in Charlotte with his wife and three children.