THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 3, 1995 TAG: 9512010489
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALEX MARSHALL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHARLOTTE LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines
For years the elite of Hampton Roads have looked with envy and wistfulness at this city some 300 miles to the southwest that spreads out over the foothills of the Appalachians.
Although Charlotte is actually smaller than Hampton Roads, the Queen City has both an NBA and an NFL team. It has a skyline that, for a few densely packed blocks, rivals New York. It includes the 60-story NationsBank tower designed by world-famous architect Cesar Peli. It's a city that, once mentioned in the same breath as Norfolk, now is mentioned first.
While Norfolk is trying to catch up to Charlotte, Charlotte is racing after Atlanta.
After having spent a week in Charlotte touring the city and interviewing scores of community leaders, I believe we can learn something from Charlotte.
I should first say though, that I was reminded how every place develops under its own set of advantages and restraints. Charlotte has grappled with its own unique challenges. The same goes for Hampton Roads.
But keeping that caveat in mind, it's still true that in Charlotte one can sense how much Hampton Roads damaged itself by splitting into parts in the 1960s. By becoming five competing cities - Norfolk, Portsmouth, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake and Suffolk - rather than a metropolitan region with Norfolk as its clear center city, the region set itself into internal competition, blurred its national and world identity, and damaged its chances of taking a greater role on the world stage.
In Charlotte, there is little question of identity: Whether in Monroe or Rock Hill, S.C., it's all the Charlotte region. And this has given the town greater ability to work together.
One of my biggest shocks was hearing a Charlotte economic development official say that if his staff persuades a new business to move to Gastonia or Concord, they should consider that ``a win.''
The official said their motto was ``It's the market, stupid'' - meaning that the staff tried to keep in mind that all cities in the the Charlotte region gain when any city gains a new business. After all the person who works at the new office in Gastonia might shop in Charlotte.
``It's only a loss if it goes to Cleveland,'' the official said.
Can you imagine a Virginia Beach development official telling his staff not to care if a business goes to Norfolk, or even to encourage such a move?
But many metropolitan areas have avoided Hampton Road's fate of being split into parts. Charlotte may be more unique in its culture of inclusion and cooperation - which might be the principal lesson for us Hampton Roadites.
More than most cities, citizens in Charlotte are encouraged and expected to help out, to participate in government and civic projects. The city has built more Habitat For Humanity homes - close to 250 - than any city in the country. Charlotte has a good pile of what the political scientists now call ``civic capital.'' This has helped its industries grow, and its politics work.
It's also a town that is open to outsiders. As one person put it, in Charlotte, you can move from just-arrived-to-town, to head of the opera board, in six years.
This openness to strangers, so foreign to a Richmond, a Charleston and perhaps even to Norfolk, combined with civic involvement, has given Charlotte an enormous quantity of energy and ideas. It has also helped limit the number of fratricidal turf battles.
This isn't to say that everything is perfect in Charlotte. The city is at a crossroads, say many city leaders, and could become a victim of its own success. Charlotte is having problems digesting the thousands of newcomers who now live in suburbs inside city limits but many miles from downtown.
A coalition of six, anti-tax, anti-government Republicans, who come from those suburbs, now control the 11-member county commission. This scares the old guard of both parties. These New Right conservatives are anti-downtown. They cast a suspicious eye on the convention centers, arts centers and other projects that the city's bank presidents and other elite have built there with some public funding.
A watershed event occurred in May, when voters, urged on by the new Republicans, rejected a $300 million-plus school bond referendum. The city's more established leaders now speak emotionally of ``the suburbanites'' when referring to the new Republicans and say ``they will kill the goose that lay the golden egg.'' The new Republicans, in turn, say the city's leadership must open up to people beyond the traditional circle of downtown business executives.
The test for Charlotte is whether it finds a way to navigate through these troubled waters and keep its generally harmonious civic culture. If it fractures permanently, it will damage the city's prosperous economic path.
The test for us in Hampton Roads may be whether we can mend our fractured political and civic structures to have some measure of the unity and foresight that Charlotte has demonstrated. MEMO: This summer, Alex Marshall assisted national urban affairs writer Neal
Peirce in reporting and writing The Peirce Report on Charlotte, which
was published in September in The Charlotte Observer. More than 100
community leaders were interviewed for the report. by CNB