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What's Charlotte got over Tampa?

Curious Tampa leaders took a tour of its rival Sun Belt city and came away impressed.

By James Thorner, Times Staff Writer
Published October 29, 2007

Charlotte City Council member Pat Mumford waits for a seat as he and other council members took a ride on the new light-rail line. A group from Tampa took a ride on the train last week.
	[Charlotte Observer]

ADVERTISEMENT [Daniel Wallace | Times] Looking east from the Interstate 275 junction with Interstate 4 in Tampa during rush hour recently.

CHARLOTTE - Michael Smith, poised in his slick hair and navy blue business suit before a delegation of visiting Tampa business leaders, seemed to relish his role as a successful urban promoter.

President of Charlotte City Center Partners, he's the guy who helped the North Carolina city snag such developments as a Ritz-Carlton Hotel, a $155-million NASCAR museum, a flashy restaurant row and a soon-to-open electric commuter train.

"The only thing we do better than plan is execute," Smith boasted to his Florida audience.

Even Charlotte's negatives didn't seem so bad: Office space in the shiny towers that compose Charlotte's skyline is so scarce that even windowless crannies crawl with tenants.

"We've got the tightest office market in the U.S.," Smith said.

A murmur arose among the 50 Tampa delegates, all too familiar with their downtown's nearly 20 percent office vacancy.

"That's a high-class worry to have," Tampa council member Linda Saul-Sena said.

There were plenty of such moments when a contingent from the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce trekked north last week on fact-finding trip to answer an urgent question: Amid uncertain economic times, how can Tampa stimulate its urban core as a place to live, work and shop? Along with the likes of Dallas and Atlanta, Charlotte is one of the Sun Belt cities Tampa competes against for jobs, residents and status.

"We're not seeing what we're doing wrong," cautioned Tampa chamber president and lawyer Fred McClure, "but what other people are doing right."

Until a few years ago, the Tampa Bay area might have owned the intracity bragging rights. We had the football, baseball and hockey teams, the beaches, the concert halls in triplicate and the housing market that wouldn't say uncle.

True, they had a couple of large banking headquarters in Bank of America and Wachovia and hosted a few auto racing teams, but Charlotte had the sleepy feel of a former textile town.

But Mark Vitner, an economist in Charlotte with Wachovia who used to live in Florida, said North Carolina's biggest city has recently established an economic and quality-of-life edge over Tampa-St. Petersburg.

Charlotte didn't enjoy our housing boom but neither did it suffer our housing bust. It boasts the nation's largest concentration of German-owned businesses, owing in part to the presence of a BMW auto plant about 1 1/2 hours away in Greer, S.C.

The Tampa delegation got a bus tour of an "uptown" (so named because it's built on a hill of slate) engulfed in an unprecedented boom. In the past five years, about 10,000 people have moved into apartments and condos in the city center, a demographic surge that's attracting shopping gallerias, a movie theater and a bowling alley. The Harris Teeter chain worked up the courage to open a supermarket uptown, though it's losing money.

Dean & DeLuca gourmet food store, a Ruth's Chris Steak House and McCormick and Schmick's seafood restaurant grace trendy Tryon Street, far removed from its 1980s reputation as a haunt for hookers and drug dealers. Budding white-shirted chefs spill onto the sidewalks from 3-year-old Johnson & Wales University, a branch of the well-regarded cooking school.

"It's on fire," enthused Roy McCraw, a Tampa Wachovia bank president and eastern North Carolina native who led the delegation to Charlotte.

When the tour guide pointed out a proposed Donald Trump Charlotte condo project, the Tampa crowd on the sightseeing bus burst into laughter. Trump announced something similar in Tampa 2 1/2 years ago and the plan remains stuck in limbo.

"Don't do it!" someone shouted. "Diligence! Diligence!" another Tampa businessman chimed in.

Unbroken parks will allow unhindered hiking and biking all the way to the South Carolina border. Nearby is the region's first light-rail system, 15 stations over 10 miles that will serve the southern suburbs and inaugurates a spoke-and-hub multibillion-dollar rapid transit system.

Opposite of the urban fragmentation of the Tampa Bay area, Charlotte's Big-Dog-of-the-Carolinas status has been a source of strength. It's metro region even integrates nearby counties in South Carolina.

City leaders decided early on that keeping uptown alive was a wayto compete with Atlanta. If streets are boarded up, people assume the region is dead, Charlotte's Republican Mayor Pat McCrory told the Tampa folks. If that means depriving the suburbs of some growth, so be it.

"I call them corridors of crap," McCrory said of typical suburban strip development.

The two megabanks that dominate Charlotte economically employ more than 30,000 there. Just as important, Bank of America and Wachovia are civic leaders that have donated land for sports arenas and museums. Hugh McColl, BoA's legendary former CEO, commissioned the 60-story signature tower that natives jokingly call Taj McColl. Since 1992, it's been the tallest building between Philadelphia and Atlanta.

Charlotte's also lucky that two other corporate sugar daddies settled near the Queen City.

Billionaire David Murdock, who owns the Dole Food Co., is building a $1.25-billion biotechnology center in Kannapolis, an old mill town 20 minutes north of Charlotte. Murdock's an 84-year-old health fanatic who's pouring in tens of millions of his private fortune to lure the state's top universities.

"It's amazing what they're doing up there," said Hillsborough County economic development director Gene Gray, who toured the first buildings rising on former textile mill land.

Lowe's, the home-improvement store chain, is based just beyond the Charlotte region in North Wilkesboro, but takes credit as the biggest new employer in Charlotte.

"Charlotte does not think of itself as a city, but as a region," McCraw said, in reference to divisive rivalries among communities in the Tampa Bay area. "It's hard to imagine Florida and Georgia agreeing."

For all of Charlotte's accomplishments, Tampa delegates got a feel for their city's comparative strengths, too. Charlotte leaders declared their love for the University of South Florida. UNC-Charlotte remains a homely stepchild of the North Carolina university system.

Charlotte has no complete highway loop to rank with the Tampa Bay area's interstates 75 and 275. It's biggest tourist attraction is Concord Mills, a mall north of the city.

And despite Tampa's desire to emulate the city's light-rail line, Charlotte's push for trains isn't just for sport: During the Tampa visit, the city was wrapped in a haze of diesel and construction smoke. It's on the verge of failing federal air-quality standards.

Even Smith, the Charlotte booster, didn't want to leave his audience with the impression they'd created an urban utopia.

"I encourage you to look at us critically as well to see what works and what doesn't," he said.

Some comparisons

Metro area size, population: Tampa: four counties with 2.6-million people; Charlotte: six counties with 1.6-million people

Class A downtown office vacancy: Tampa: 18 percent; Charlotte: 1.7 percent

Unemployment rate: Tampa: 4.3 percent; Charlotte: 4.8 percent

Biggest Tower: Tampa: Bank of America Plaza, 42 storiesCharlotte: Bank of America Corporate Center, 60 stories

Major League Sports Teams: Tampa: Buccaneers (football), Lightning (hockey) and Devil Rays (baseball). Charlotte: Panthers (football) and Bobcats (basketball)

[Last modified October 26, 2007, 21:40:48]