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Charlotte leaders encourage region to CONNECT

Jim McNally | .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | April 1, 2008

While folks in Iredell County — particularly the northern third of it — may not fully have signed on to the notion of being an extension of Charlotte, a group that gathered Monday in a downtown Queen City hotel hopes residents here and those in other counties soon will.

The 200 or so people who met for a lunch at the Charlotte Hilton were there to hear more about a kind of metaphorical umbrella that leaders of an organization called CONNECT hope to raise over the 17 counties that make up the Greater Charlotte Bi-State Region.

“We are no longer competing with Raleigh and Atlanta,” said Al Sharp, executive director of Centralina Council of Governments. “We are competing with the world.”

And to do that most effectively, Sharp and others believe the region must act more in unison.

Sharp was speaking on behalf of former Statesville Mayor John Marshall, who was stuck in a traffic jam on Interstate 77 at the time he was slated to make his comments.

Marshall is now the co-chairman of the group’s visioning task force.

Cyndee Patterson said Marshall’s traveling woes helped illustrate the need for communities to work together on matters such as infrastructure and transportation.

Patterson is president of the Lee Institute, a Charlotte-based nonprofit organization whose motto is “Collaboration Builds Strong Communities.”

She asked everyone in the room who had arrived at the meeting via Charlotte’s new light rail train to raise their hand, and about one-fourth of the group did so.

“If everything goes well,” she said, “people who live in the northern part of the region will be able to ride in on the train some day as well.”

But virtually everyone who spoke at the meeting said before that day arrives, government officials, business and civic leaders and the citizens in the 17 counties — five of which are in South Carolina — would need to make a commitment to be part of the common cause. Gastonia Mayor Jennifer Stultz noted that the region’s population will double to about 3 million people by the year 2030, and to manage that kind of growth would require cooperation and participation from all sectors.

“None of us is as smart as all of us,” Stultz said.

Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory pointed out the “all” part of that equation may require some diplomacy.

McCrory held a short question-and-answer session near the end of the meeting where it was pointed out that very few elected officials had shown up for the event, though all in the region were invited.

Not a single council member from Statesville, Troutman or Mooresville was present at the meeting.

“And we don’t blame them for not coming,” McCrory said. “That’s our problem. We’re not selling regionalization well enough to bring the city, county and state officials out today.”

Mooresville Planning Director Tim Brown did attend and gave a possible explanation for the paltry showing of city leaders.

“I think it’s always a challenge to make things happen at a regional level,” Brown said.

He said Mooresville “has always had a good relationship with north Mecklenburg County and its towns,” but said this vision is far more inclusive.

However the growth is labeled and packaged, McCrory said after the meeting, it is coming to the Statesville area, and it’s coming hard.

“Just look at the demographics and look at a map and you’ll see how important Statesville is to growth in this area in this state,” said McCrory, who is a leading gubernatorial candidate.

McCrory said Statesville’s location puts it at the nexus of expansion from two different directions.

“Statesville is right in the middle of North Carolina’s major growth,” he said. “Coming from Charlotte from the south and Winston-Salem from the east, Statesville may well be right at the convergence of largest part of the state’s growth.”

But will it be a willing part of the Charlotte mega-region?

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