Uptown Living

Viewed from an upper level in one of Charlotte’s glitzy skyscrapers, the uptown roofs below look like an ever-changing sea.

There’s new construction everywhere - high-, mid- and low-rise. And a good many of those roofs represent homes: penthouses, condominiums and apartments, even the rare single-family home.

Uptown is one of the city’s fastest-growing areas, with 7,500 residents now and perhaps double that in another five years. In fact, there’s so much housing growth that the Multiple Listing Service has given uptown its own designation, Area 99.

As the numbers grow, so do the amenities that add so much to life. Some uptown residents find so much there to entertain them that they park their cars on Friday and don’t move them the entire weekend.


They’re within walking distance of much of the city’s culture and entertainment, with more headed their way. Planning for Charlotte’s major sports, civic and entertainment ventures centers on the area, where excitement already reigns during football season.

Block-long, massive Ericsson Stadium presides over the southwest end of uptown. Its snarling panther statues hint at the passions inside as the Carolina Panthers take on NFL opponents.

The Charlotte Hornets of the NBA have for some time been negotiating for their own uptown arena. The Charlotte Knights AAA baseball team, now knocking home runs out of the park in Fort Mill, S.C., is also interested in moving either in or near uptown.

Opportunities to eat, drink and be entertained abound. The number and variety of uptown restaurants keep growing, with fine dining, down-home Southern standbys and ethnic cuisine all part of the mix.

Prefer to dine on your rooftop terrace or by your urban window? Reid’s Fine Foods at Seventh Street Station parking garage supplies uptown kitchens. In summer, you can supplement the fare with farm-fresh produce from the North End Green Market, in the Station’s plaza.

Other shopping opportunities have been limited, but stores are one of the elements planned for a new hotel/retail/ residential/office complex replacing the city’s old convention center at College and Trade streets.

Step out your door and you’re in the cultural district, which extends northward from Independence Square along Tryon and College streets in what has been dubbed North End.

There you’ll find Discovery Place science museum, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library, North Carolina Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, Spirit Square, the Mint Museum of Craft + Design, the Tryon Center for Visual Art and a handful of private art galleries.

The area shortly will include an elaborately renovated Museum of the New South and a new $27.5 million Children’s Learning Center, an ambitious project of the Library and Children’s Theatre. The Mint Museum of Art, now cramped in its Eastover neighborhood location, wants to move to a new, larger site uptown. In the next couple of years, the Charlotte trolley, a tie to the city’s past, will be clanging from South End just outside I-277 up to 11th street, between College and Brevard. One proposal would link the tracks in the future to railway tracks near Ericsson Stadium, creating a trolley loop through uptown.

Voters have already approved money for a light-rail system to link Charlotte to outlying towns, beginning with Pineville by 2005. That station will likely be uptown, with light rail sharing the trolley corridor, and there’s been discussion of moving the Amtrak station, now farther out North Tryon, to the center city as well.
 

For a long time, Fourth Ward was the only residential pocket in what was the concrete expanse of uptown. The turn-of-the-century homes in this quaint quadrant between North Tryon and West Trade streets had fallen into disrepair, but were restored by determined homeowners and the bank that became Bank of America.

It’s still one of the most charming spots in the city, with its sidewalks and street lamps, its cozy front porches and Fourth Ward Park, where a playground is being added to accommodate the small set.

A new wave of construction is joining the condominium mid-rises already along Tryon and Church. Projects include 715 North Church, where some units are reserved for artists working at the Tryon Center for Visual Art, and Fifth and Poplar, a 234-unit mix of penthouses, rental units and townhomes. Several buildings attempt to preserve historic charm: See the 1928 Frederick Apartments, being renovated as condos, and Settlers Place condo community, which incorporates the 94-year-old N.C. Medical College building.

Even Elmwood Cemetery, the historic green spot separating Fourth Ward from Third Ward, is getting a face lift as it plays host to strollers and joggers.


In Third Ward, in uptown’s southwest quadrant, small, renovated homes mix with new condos and apartments. It’s flanked on its southern side by Ericsson stadium and the Panthers’ practice field and on its northern side by West Trade and new Gateway Village, Bank of America’s mammoth new mix of homes, retail and office space.

When all its buildings are completed, the Village, which will also contain a YMCA, will stretch along five blocks of West Trade. Slower to start than Third and Fourth wards but coming on strong now is First Ward, the center city’s northeast quadrant. A public housing project was torn down there and is being replaced with homes suitable to a mix of incomes: condos, apartments and even single-family homes, a rarity in the center city. In the area’s Garden District around Ninth and Davidson streets near the trolley line, condos and “townloft” townhomes are going up in a wide price range.

The last piece of the uptown residential puzzle is beginning to fall into place with the announcement of an upscale condominium high-rise in Second Ward.

In the southeast quadrant of Trade and Tryon, Second Ward is an area that’s been largely devoted to the Government Center and institutions, but other residential development around Marshall Park is called for in the city’s 2010 plan.

The condominium high-rise, called The Park, will rise atop a parking deck at Third and Caldwell and at 19 stories will be uptown’s tallest residential structure. Its rooftop will include gardens, sitting areas, a walking trail, a pool and a small forest of trees.

The excitement that attracts people to uptown home ownership is evident also in commercial life. A convention center hotel is due to be built along Stonewall Street near the convention center, and several other hotels are going up nearby.

The Hearst Tower being built on North Tryon Street by Bank of America will rise 46 stories, making it the city’s second tallest building after the BofA tower. Across Tryon, the 30-story IJL Financial Center is new. First Union Corp. has not only put 32-story Three First Union on South Tryon, it’s also set a park nearby, preserving the quaint Ratcliffe’s Florist building in the process. A 27-story tower is rising at 300 S. Tryon. WBTV, Charlotte’s large CBS affiliate, will keep tabs on the busy uptown scene from a new studio overlooking the Trade/Tryon intersection.

It’s uptown that civic leaders have in mind when they talk of a future aquarium, an expanded Afro-American Cultural Center and a renovated Carolina Theatre. It’s all happening within a relatively small area, the blocks radiating outward from the intersection of Trade and Tryon streets. For the city at large, that’s the center of action.

And for an increasingly large number of Charlotteans, it’s the place they call home.

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