Pineville bristles at 'South Charlotte' car dealerships

Plus: City attorney says investigation needed of 2 council members; First day of e-school; Tepper buys Wells Fargo stock; Covid hospitalizations lowest in a month; First 'Flyover Friday' this week

Aug 17, 2020

Good morning! Today is Monday, August 17, 2020. You’re reading The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with local business-y news and insights for Charlotte, N.C. If you need to sign up for a free or paid subscription, here you go.

Today’s Charlotte Ledger is sponsored by Carroll Financial, one of the Charlotte region’s oldest and largest independent financial planning and investment management firms:

Town in southern Mecklenburg takes a stand against ‘South Charlotte’ sign; ‘Slighting the town’ — or ‘Whineville’?

by Tony Mecia

A plan for a new Hyundai of South Charlotte car dealership in Pineville hit a snag last month, after town council members objected to the dealership prominently displaying “South Charlotte” in its name.

According to meeting minutes released last week of a July 14 Pineville Town Council meeting, council members said that “putting South Charlotte on their building when they were actually in Pineville was slighting the town.”

Mayor Pro Tem Melissa Rogers Davis, the minutes say, “advised that the dealership is going to be in Pineville, not Charlotte. She does not want to see ‘South Charlotte’ on the building, as was the case with Council Member [Amelia] Stinson-Wesley.”

Car dealerships that label themselves as “South Charlotte” when they are actually in Pineville — a town of about 9,000 residents that’s to the south and west of south Charlotte — is apparently a touchy subject. Mazda of South Charlotte and Mercedes of South Charlotte are both located within Pineville town limits. Making matters worse, the Hyundai dealership had proposed a clock tower that contained the words “South Charlotte” that was in Pineville just 40 feet from from the town’s “Pineville Welcomes You” sign.

The dealership agreed to remove the “South Charlotte” reference on the clock tower before the meeting:

BEFORE AND AFTER: Hyundai of South Charlotte agreed to remove the words “South Charlotte” from a planned clock tower as part of its project in Pineville, apparently at the town’s request. Original image (left) is from a proposal presented May 26. A revised image (right) from a June 16 letter to the town by the project’s architect said: “Clock Tower ‘sign’ no longer has the words ‘South Charlotte.’”

A company representative explained to the council that the term “south Charlotte” was part of the company’s brand, which it had “spent a significant amount of money investing in.”

Council members agreed to postpone the rezoning needed for the project. They discussed it again on July 27 and approved the project on a 3-1 vote, minutes say. There will still be “south Charlotte” on the dealership’s building, but smaller than what is legally allowed. The site is on the southwest corner of where I-485 crosses South Boulevard (which changes names to “Pineville Road” when it crosses I-485).

The issue was discussed over the weekend on the Charlotte page of Reddit, where people took turns lambasting Pineville’s leadership with barbs that included:

“Are we in an episode of Parks and Rec?”
“It must suck to be that insecure”
“Sounds more like Whineville”

On Sunday, contacted by The Ledger, two of the council members most opposed to the “South Charlotte” name declined to elaborate.

Davis referred calls to the town manager. Stinson-Wesley told The Ledger: “I don’t really have anything to add to what would have showed up in the minutes.”

New exclusive drone video series this week: ‘Flyover Friday’

The Covid pandemic has upended many parts of life in Charlotte — but one thing that keeps charging forward is big construction projects. And we’re going to show them to you in an exciting new way.

The Ledger is proud to announce that we have joined forces with Kevin Young, owner of the video production company The 5 and 2 Project, to launch a new weekly video series that will give you an exclusive look at some of Charlotte’s biggest developments — with a drone. We’re calling it “Flyover Friday,” and it will debut … on Friday. We’ll hit a new site each week, and the series will run for several weeks.

We’ll talk to developers for the inside scoop on what they’re building, and we’ll show it to you through a professionally produced short video with vantage points that you’ve never seen. It’s going to be cool.

City attorney: More investigation needed of Mitchell and Ajmera

Charlotte’s city attorney said in a letter to council members over the weekend that ethics complaints filed by the state Republican Party against Democrats James Mitchell and Dimple Ajmera meet the threshold for appointing an outside investigator.

He concluded that complaints filed against Republican Tariq Bokhari do not require further investigation.

The letter, sent Saturday night by City Attorney Patrick Baker, says he reviewed the city’s ethics policies and the complaints to see if they meet the standard for further investigation. “It appears to me that the August 6 complaints against Councilmembers Mitchell and Ajmera contain the minimum requirements set forth in subsection D(1)(a) for referral to an independent investigator,” Baker wrote in the letter, which was obtained Sunday by The Ledger. “As to the complaints of August 7 and August 11 against Councilmember Bokhari, I am not able to conclude that they meet the requirements.”

Baker said he will start to identify an outside investigator with no ties to the city of Charlotte to look into the complaints against Ajmera and Mitchell.

The complaint against Mitchell stems from a taxpayer-funded 2018 trip to Detroit. WBTV reported last year that city emails show that Mitchell had communicated with Carolina Panthers executives about touring sports facilities. The Panthers played the Detroit Lions on the weekend of his trip, which cost taxpayers $1,421.26. Mitchell wouldn’t discuss the trip with WBTV.
The complaint against Ajmera stems from contributions from developers that she disclosed on campaign finance forms. In a supplemental form, the complaint lists contributions from nine development groups that had business in front of the City Council, particularly rezoning requests. The contributions from developers cited in the complaints were from Kevin Higgins; Erskine Bowles; Peter Lash of Beacon Partners; the Fallon family; Bobby Drakeford; Christian Ogunrinde; Tim Melton; Jonathan Visconti of Gvest Capital; and Bart Hopper and Clay McCullough of Hopper Communities.

The Ledger reported last year that people in real estate and construction tend to make outsized donations to City Council members. Many believe donations make council members more willing to listen to their ideas and expertise on land planning. About 39% of donations to council members in August 2019 came from people in real estate or construction, with Ajmera having the lowest share of donors in those fields that month among council members who had filed reports, according to The Ledger’s analysis.

Ajmera cited The Ledger’s study in a statement to the Observer on Sunday: “CLT Ledger’s analysis of campaign finance data from the last election cycle clearly shows where I stand.” The Ledger’s analysis covered a single month as a snapshot of political contributions by the real estate and construction industries. It did not examine the entire election cycle or compare the timing of donations to issues before the City Council.

She also told The Observer she welcomed the investigation and that real estate interests made up less than 10% of her contributions in the last election.

Ajmera is an outspoken advocate for affordable housing, and in public meetings she is sometimes critical of developers. Like her colleagues, she typically votes in favor of rezonings. A study last year by UNC Charlotte’s Urban Institute found that in the last decade, the City Council voted down only 27 rezoning petitions out of more than 1,200 filed.

When the complaint was filed against her this month, Ajmera denied wrongdoing and called it a “racist, sexist and political attack” meant to deflect attention away from complaints about Bokhari, one of the council’s two Republicans.

The complaint against Bokhari stemmed from the city’s proposal to spend job-training money on a program Bokhari runs. In a second email, on Sunday, Baker said he received two additional ethics complaints against Bokhari and will review them, WFAE reported. —TM

Run on routers?

This was the cleaned-out router aisle at the Best Buy in the Blakeney shopping center on Sunday. Remote learning starts today for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, which means many families will be streaming multiple video calls simultaneously and are turning to routers to boost their home internet speeds. The Ledger wrote about routers, with tips, last week.

In brief:

First day of e-school: Those back-to-school Facebook photos are going to look different this week. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools starts virtual instruction today. Many Charlotte private schools start this week, too, and most of the big ones seem to be going with at least some in-person instruction. The Observer has a helpful back-to-school FAQ.
Hospitalizations fall: The number of people hospitalized with Covid in North Carolina fell to its lowest figure in at least a month on Sunday. The state said 934 people were in the hospital — the first time since July 8 that the number has been below 1,000, according to WBTV. New cases, hospitalizations and the percentage of people testing positive for Covid in Mecklenburg and statewide have been moving downward in recent weeks.
Homeless encampment cleared: A tent city by 12th and Poplar streets near uptown was taken down on Friday. The site had become home to several dozen people, but the property owner had told police that it wanted the encampment gone. On Friday, “all that remained were several tents, furniture, debris and other abandoned possessions.” (WBTV/Observer)
Testing standards loosened: Mecklenburg health director Gibbie Harris says people should be tested for Covid even if they are not displaying symptoms of the disease: “We really need more testing of individuals that are not just feeling ill or know that they’ve been exposed but are in environments where they may have been exposed.” (Observer)
Beacon Partners closed Friday on a 54-acre parcel on Nations Ford Road in Pineville at a price of $6.55M, county property records show. Beacon has said it is acquiring land for a 288-acre development called Carolina Logistics Park that can accommodate up to 3.5 million s.f. of industrial space.
Tepper bets on Wells stock: David Tepper’s hedge fund, Appaloosa Management, bought 1.2 million shares of Wells Fargo stock in the last 45 days, now valued at $30.4M, part of a number of big bets on major companies. It also sank major money into AT&T, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Disney and tobacco company Altria Group. (MarketWatch)
RNC street closings: Officials have released details on street closings during the Republican National Convention. “To establish a security perimeter, certain streets near the Charlotte Convention Center and NASCAR Hall of Fame will be closed” between 6 p.m. on Aug. 23 and 6 a.m. on Aug. 25. (Observer)

Taking stock

Unless you are a day trader, checking your stocks daily is unhealthy. So how about weekly? How local stocks of note fared last week (through Friday’s close), and year to date:

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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Contributing editor: Tim Whitmire; Reporting intern: David Griffith

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