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My thought is if I have a condo or apartment uptown it is because of convinience of being next bars, work, etc. I would want to be able to shop as well instead of driving out to the the malls (which I must say I love the malls here) kind of defeats the purpose.
Sorry, suburban malls are the trend right now. I'm certain Charlotte isn't the only city to suffer from this style of "development". I don't see it changing anytime soon, either.
Look at it this way, would you rather live uptown and be able to walk to work/restaurants/theater/groceries/etc. and drive to the mall - or walk to the mall and have to drive uptown to work and go out?
I guess my choice would be to live uptown and be able to walk to those places ( I am lazy) lol. With the economy the way it is right now I would never expect any changes in the future.
...With the economy the way it is right now I would never expect any changes in the future.
I think this is the sad truth of it. Also, with parking the way it is uptown, I'm not sure how viable retail really is. My *guess* would be that retail businesses would require a lot of people to come into uptown from the 'burbs to shop there vs. the malls to be able to make a go of it. That is not likely to happen, either, IMO. Not when it's closer/easier to go to one of the suburban malls.
I dont think enough people live in Uptown to support a major retailer. More people live in the burbs than live in the city. I dont think most people would drive to Uptown just to go to a Macy's.
To me there's no comparison with shopping in a mall to shopping in a downtown area. I find malls claustrophobic.
Love to be able to wander around it a town/city, get a coffee and sit outside and do some (window)shopping.
I think that retail in uptown would be sure to attract people and surely the light rail would be suited for this (if they reduced the prices!)
The city of London is a weird place.All the restaurants and pubs close at around 8pm and very little is open at the weekends, even though they do get tourists as St Pauls and the Old Bailey are just around the corner .
Makes it seem like a ghost town.
No retail in Uptown? I never really noticed. There's a bevy of cool bars down there and a Fuel pizza for late night munchies after the bars. That's enough for me.
I miss Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, b/c I am not big on shopping in malls, either. However, I can usually park in front of a particular store, pop in and pop out, so I never even venture into the mall itself. I learned to cope after moving back here.
Shopping as recreation, hobby, sport, etc is going out of vogue anyway. Economists are predicting that we won't really see things normalizing with jobs for five years, so it is a good thing retail is not in uptown Charlotte at this point in time. People are going to figure out by 2012 that shopping means spending money, lol - and folks are just not going to have disposable income as taxes go up and the cost of healthcare continues to rise - plus if this Administration gets their way, add on all sorts of energy consumption taxes/fees/fines, and there goes the COL for us all (and less disposable income all around).
So the mall concept - where you can park a car and wander around- is probably going to actually get MORE popular, especially in a city such as CLT, wh/ is suburban - and mostly a business district uptown. What retail is uptown is gonna struggle mightily. Probably a good thing that there aren't many retailers uptown as they may not make it til 2016.
If you wanna shop in an urban setting, you are gonna have to do what I started doing in 1980 - fly to Chicago. :-)
Where I lived in the UK, there were great shops of all types and size in the city (around half the size of Charlotte) plus several out of town shopping locations including one HUGE mall.
Now that was in the North of England which isn't blessed with good weather, but mostly the city and the malls were popular all the time.
The city retail has stuff to offer that the malls didn't and vice versa.
Recession? Well we def' had that in the UK, but looking at the car parks in the city and at the malls you would never have known it.
I miss Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, b/c I am not big on shopping in malls, either. However, I can usually park in front of a particular store, pop in and pop out, so I never even venture into the mall itself. I learned to cope after moving back here.
Shopping as recreation, hobby, sport, etc is going out of vogue anyway. Economists are predicting that we won't really see things normalizing with jobs for five years, so it is a good thing retail is not in uptown Charlotte at this point in time. People are going to figure out by 2012 that shopping means spending money, lol - and folks are just not going to have disposable income as taxes go up and the cost of healthcare continues to rise - plus if this Administration gets their way, add on all sorts of energy consumption taxes/fees/fines, and there goes the COL for us all (and less disposable income all around).
So the mall concept - where you can park a car and wander around- is probably going to actually get MORE popular, especially in a city such as CLT, wh/ is suburban - and mostly a business district uptown. What retail is uptown is gonna struggle mightily. Probably a good thing that there aren't many retailers uptown as they may not make it til 2016.
If you wanna shop in an urban setting, you are gonna have to do what I started doing in 1980 - fly to Chicago. :-)
Already 2 steps ahead I go back home to NYC in 2 weeks I will get my fix then
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