Charlotte Observer article- 24 October 2010
The revelation was bittersweet: There were Michael Williams and Mike Standley, Charlotte's hot-shot architect duo giving me a glimpse of their crazy, futuristic rendering of the now-mothballed Eastland Mall.
The designers of the U.S. National Whitewater Center say they're eager to explode Charlotte's mall culture by rebuilding old Eastland into an environmentally sustainable facility devoted to, of all things, "urban agriculture."
"It's time to think beyond the same mall and town-center concept," Williams says. "It's just a matter of someone stepping up and taking the initiative."
The pair's big idea came on the heels of a smaller one I encountered a couple weeks ago. At a swank cocktail party in NoDa, I watched as mega-event planner Clarke Allen and his newly hired COO, Leslie Palmer, worked the room explaining to some 130 guests that they were not actually at a party, but rather a "social experiment."
They then herded guests over to large charts, and began diagramming the relationships in the room. The goal: Deconstruct Charlotte's networking circles and prove, a la "Six Degrees of Separation," that this "small big city's" business relationships can be leveraged more efficiently and productively in this downturn.
While very different in scope, both experiences suggest that on any given day you can witness Charlotte's creative capital being put to work in ways large and small.
What's also apparent is that we now face the uphill battle of proving to outsiders - and to ourselves for that matter - that we've actually got a fully functioning right brain.
Charlotte is slowly awakening to the fact that we're good for a lot more than a credit check and bank loan. We've got some hot ideas of our own.
Of course, we can thank this dark economy for this epiphany. After years of heady growth, for example, Williams and Standley, co-owners of Liquid Design, hit the proverbial brick wall in 2008 as the banking crises brought construction projects to a virtual halt. The firm was forced to not only lay off several employees, but to rethink its overall market strategy.
As Williams deadpans: "Even a seasoned developer can't borrow $50 to fix his own house right now. We can't keep waiting on the side of the road, waiting for developers to get some money."
These days, along with designing modern single-family custom homes, Liquid Design is rolling out a new business unit called Motus (that's Latin for motion, earthquake, influence). Motus shifts away from Liquid's traditional model in that it bypasses developers and markets really big ideas such as the "urban agriculture" directly to investors.
"I'm a realist," says Williams. "I know that something of this scale will not happen overnight but it's important to start thinking about projects of this nature today."
Built in 1975, the now-empty Eastland Mall is a 1 million-square-foot behemoth occupying 95 acres on the city's east side. One of the mall's new owners recently proposed reviving a chunk of the mall by using a Latino theme with small stores and merchant stalls.
But Liquid Design says it has been pitching an "urban agriculture" project to investors interested in sustainable development. The firm proposes: 300,000 square feet of solar technology through a Duke Power cooperative; more than 2 million square feet of agriculture; corporate headquarters for a life science company; and multi-family dwellings.
Modeled after a fledgling program in Detroit, urban farming aims to create a healthy new food source by planting gardens on unused land and space in inner cities, while also using the farm to educate communities on the virtues of a sustainable environment. Says Standley: "What's terrific about our Eastland idea is that it's all off the grid."
Williams says that his firm has wrapped up its conceptual design process, and it has interest from two progressive investor groups (one based in the U.S. and another overseas) that are vetting the economics of the project. If Liquid Design can secure initial financing, the next step would be to seek support from the city, which has been vocal about turning Eastland Mall back into an economic driver.
Clarke Allen's networking experiment finds its roots in author Malcolm Gladwell's bestseller, "The Tipping Point," which, among other things, explored whether human connections are merely random or the result of an elaborate interlocking web.
Anyone who knows Allen also knows his grandiosity. Not so long ago, when big galas were all the rage in Charlotte, Allen's event planning company, Charlotte Arrangements, threw parties that would have made Gatsby blush. Of course, in today's killjoy economy, the mood - and market - for lavish soirees has all but disappeared.
His "Six Degrees" experiment grows out of his new reality. Allen invited 30 contemporaries from the hospitality industry and asked them each to invite six people from the business community. His goal, he says, was to offer a more fruitful antidote to today's frenetic, superficial networking, LinkedIn, Facebook-obsessed business culture.
Charlotte is only two degrees of separation.
"We're getting more high-tech, but we need more high-touch," Allen says.
"The point is that we're all connected somehow," says Palmer, a former Mitsubishi Motors operational exec Allen hired in June to help him expand his brand and business. "Because people don't have jobs and they don't have sales and they don't have advertising, the old way of networking isn't working anymore."
Allen plans to roll out his "Six Degrees" program to business groups, from local chambers of commerce to social networking sites, across the country. The firm has already signed up a corporate client that will use the model in a private networking event later this year. Says Allen: "I just spoke with a guy who came to my event. He says he's had five meetings because of it, with three potential pieces of new business."
Whatever comes of these ideas, I like how architect Michael Williams characterizes the movement: "We're all trying to survive the New Economic World Order. But for the first time, I feel like the recession has given Charlotte's creative community a louder voice."
Only time will tell whether anyone is really listening.
Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/10/23/1782629/charlottes-connecting-with-its.html#ixzz13fGyE8ey
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