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NCFC MLS bid/General Soccer Bizzo

Yup ... all of that is funded and approved, so it should actually happen in due course. And it all will help. As would better management of the flow of cars once they're on the property, which to date has been mysterious and unpredictable.
 
For those that did not hear yet , Tepper fired the Panthers coach Rivera who had been coach since 2011. That's a long time for a coach to survive in the NFL
 
For those scoring at home ... word has leaked out of Charlotte that the City government has unofficially committed to provide roughly $110 million in public funds for the MLS venture, mostly to help development of the team HQ and practice facility to be built on the site of the former Eastland Mall which was demolished about 5 years ago. That's in the area of Charlotte near where Highway 27 splits into Central Ave and Independence Blvd ... about 3 miles west of Bojangles Coliseum. That was a thriving commercial area back in the 70s and 80s, but it fell into disrepair over time as Charlotte grew south and north of the town center. That's pretty much the same blight that almost brought down the old coliseum. The City is banking on that investment to pay off like the investment in renovating the Boj has done for them. Word has it that MLS is quietly setting up for a big media event either Monday or Tuesday next week, as they engage in final negotiations with Tepper over what upgrades he's willing to fund at Panthers Stadium. This thing will be very public very soon.

Fun side note ... my family's company built Crabtree Mall in Raleigh (opened 1972) for our in-house development company and then soon after went down to Charlotte and built Eastland Mall (opened 1975) for Henry Faison. Pretty much the same core construction team worked on both projects, including my Dad ... who was the senior project manager for both malls. That same construction team went on to stay together and build the "old" Raleigh Civic and Convention Center which opened in 1977 and was demolished in 2006 to make way for the modern version we have now. That was one productive bunch of rednecks and mountain boys ... the majority of them either being from Eastern NC farm country or transplanted from West Virginia. When Eastland was done it was the largest enclosed shopping mall in North or South Carolina and one of the 2 or 3 biggest in the Southeast. The indoor ice rink there was also where I learned to ice skate and that I vastly preferred hockey skates to those nonsense figure skating rigs with the stupid toe-picks. That was about the same time that I got into the NHL. Yes. I'm old.
 
I’ve been to the rink at Eastland Mall. I helped run a women’s hockey tournament there in advance of the girls Southeast District Tournament that was held at the Factory later that season.

Took a walk around the mall in between games to see if I could knock out some Christmas shopping, it was about this time of year. Needless to say, I came back empty handed.
 
You want to see a dead mall? Go the Cary mall. You and your nerd friends could LARP all day in that thing and there would be no one there to notice except the sports card dealer and the model train guys. Maybe I'll swede Dawn of the Dead in there
 
I remember when Crabtree mall opened in 72. After that North Hills mall was a ghost town for a while don't know how it survived. Of course they ended up later tearing down the mall except for Penneys which is now closing. It's a very nice area now even though it's no longer a mall.
 
NoMich said:
You want to see a dead mall? Go the Cary mall. You and your nerd friends could LARP all day in that thing and there would be no one there to notice except the sports card dealer and the model train guys. Maybe I'll swede Dawn of the Dead in there
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I'll cop to being a huge nerd, but I'm no LARPer. Still ... a running Nerf sword fight in what's left of that mall would be hella fun. My family built the mall in Cary too, FWIW. And tried to save that stupid oak tree.
 
Elsker said:
I frequently use the tale of that oak tree as an example of what not to do.
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Trust me when I say that absolutely every alternative was discarded before the stupid idea of leaving it in place literally 30 feet above a parking lot was settled on as the "right" thing to do. And blame Smedes York. It was his dumb idea.
 
Cary mall is going to be replaced with stores and places to live. I think they don't have the final plans yet but they probably will soon.
 
I moved down here in July of 1995, so I think that this oak tree was before my time. My wife is an Imp class of '91 and she told me all about it. I think the students of Cary HS tried to make a big stink over its removal
 
NoMich said:
I moved down here in July of 1995, so I think that this oak tree was before my time. My wife is an Imp class of '91 and she told me all about it. I think the students of Cary HS tried to make a big stink over its removal
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To be fair ... we never removed it. The thing finally died. In an effort to preserve the oak, it was left in it's natural setting in what turned into a LARGE mound in the middle of the parking lot for the food court area of the mall. It looked stupid towering over the Toyotas ... but it lived for decades like that.
 
My wife is worried about the big trees around the new library in Cary*. They'll probably have to come down sometime in the future once the rest of that greenspace gets more developed in the coming years.

*She's the manager of the adult services part of that library so she's not some random busy body complaining about trees.
 
NoMich said:
My wife is worried about the big trees around the new library in Cary*. They'll probably have to come down sometime in the future once the rest of that greenspace gets more developed in the coming years.

*She's the manager of the adult services part of that library so she's not some random busy body complaining about trees.
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Big trees are nice. They're also a problem in developed areas, no matter how much care is put in to trying to keep them alive. One thing to keep in mind is that the Raleigh metro area is blessed with the kind of development that has allowed for a tremendous amount more greenspace than virtually any other area of it's population density in North America. There will always be areas where new use and green areas grind against each other, but we're in pretty good shape in the big picture.
 
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