Some of it, yes I had been involved with both of the Pacing Progress
Committee things, one as I recall was in '60 and the other was in '63.
And then there was the Central Charlotte Committee, itself. And Herbert
Wayne, the same fellow, he and I had become friends in the other group,
and so I sort of got lashed into that, not as an official member, but as
a sort of a seventh member who sat down at the end of the table and
wrote it all down periodically. That was the one that involved the
production of the scale model by A.G. Odell, Jr., the architect and just
the general design for the central city. The proposal for the Civic
Center was part of that. There was at least at one point an idea for a
major stadium back over on the west side, just about where Fourth Street
runs into Interstate 77 now, in that flat over there by the creek, and
that kind of thing. But that first for revitalizing the central city, I
think was a very practical set of ideas. But apparently, it was about
four or five years ahead of the city. They wanted to take out the
railroad tracks that run behind the Civic Center, for example. That
track had to stay there because of a long series of negotiations with
the Southern Railroad, and it finally occurred to Southern that they
owned some of the most valuable property in downtown Charlotte. It had
been sitting there, well, it's most profitable use had been as a parking
lot for years and years. That kind of thing. Now, some of that property
has got, you know, twenty and thirty story buildings on it. But all of
that was a part of the thing. We took the first vote in '66, I have to
look up some of my dates to be sure, and check my memory. But in '66, we
took the first
Page 5 vote on the Civic Center and at that
time, the proposal was only for, as I recall, a million and a half
dollars to buy the land from the Urban Renewal Project, no money for the
building at all. You know, just agree that that was the site, go ahead
and get it and have the money to buy it when the title gets cleared up.
That will be the city's promise, and then we will see if we can get
private business to come in and do the rest. We lost that one, but in
losing that one, we gained for the first time, at the polls in that
city, the approval of about $5 million for urban renewal in bonds, an
issue which had never gone to the polls before in Charlotte. So, all of
the Greenville project, portions of the project north of East Trade
Street, on which that terrible housing project was built and a small
project on South Boulevard where the new high-rise public housing for
the elderly is located, down by Pritchard Memorial Church, behind the Y.
All the city's share of those were approved at the same time, so, it was
not a complete loss in that sense. But the focal point of the central
city, it didn't carry. So, it was not, as I recall, until '69 that they
were able to go back and take another whack at the Civic Center. By that
time, $10 million for the building and everything else, which was
approved. So, you know, things do change. Apparently, people in cities
do occasionally make up their minds.