The Charlotte Observer from Charlotte, North Carolina • 22

1 ---14- 22A THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER Sun Mar 25 1973 6o atIPWW-Vc 14 77 :7 'Iti z' A 4 1'41 '11-Frkrocr7104 '4-1- ik '1! ile'''' 6t-ilkity4 )et vmsg VII i-4 k44-si4 ''k i zji 1 i PT -t----- --l'ottttkt 0 411 '11-': 4frtINkf1 4:47: 111- 4'1 i 'I 41 7 7 i '7 4 4 i 4 i i t---- -4 1 :47 '-d3i 1m-- 31 i-Nt ft A' 4 i 0 i t1 3 51:::1:1 -700 A -7 I 1-: 1: 4 '4e 1 -0 i i-4 1-c -s- i--ii '''''''N -4 Ni li- II r-irrry A ''-'-vi' i -1-i a i fi 011 5 'ie i 0 mt 414ttiliAt 1r :7 -k Itsagroo'a' 1 ''''(t'' l''''t -44' 1 1 14: i cilli 11 ei 4' '1'- 4 ski T1 rrIro kd -1 ''k 3' VW ii 106 41 7 11 jor'2I'4t'7: 0617 1411 4a'4 -i ---7 I 1411 04t40340: V3 1 it a 1 ''4t 4 kt- -rt I t- p- 1 17nl el F41 If4 ttI7t' tsrds-tos 4 '10 i4 2 tzss li s-4 silk sss 7 i': sa 7 '4 :44 'CI 44r4- k14-1' "'313-044: if wifw ri i q1 ---7-: '---d-- if 1 77 '7' '7 I hi 4- 77: 4 01 :4 15''''''''14 kg '7 09: 1''''N i 51 i'' 's 0 ''''''4 l''iA 4 K1 A 'W 9:: A 4 zr114 131 4 t-: 4-: :::1 -s 47:1012 -A -3 wr 41 t44t 1:3 1 r4 4 1 5i 1 AIHe i ti ---i -oe r'''ti 0 i '444 ''41'''''''''''''''-l': 0101 itfrioe 3 t) i 1 0 -o 71 4 ig ir' AA 1 64 -4 -11: 0- A 9t le A' If 34 --t- 4 1-4: 7---st- 4: i- -Ii 41V4 1 Asf qsi ft ---s A 4 -is 1f r- 4 tri-: i 9t '''-'474 ''il ii47 4 WATY 'i 1'4'-'01 77-iit'440t thA 1 -t '1 i-t ''10vCi' 4 "y-0'ii: 2 A A eN 4'i 44 04-alrlr' r'Itk elr0'-4 l''1ktf i' -k- 3 ----I''''' -t 0 I 4 1 I tp Al A 4 4 A' -Siq 7t -71t0 4 2 7-Irtali e-: -T: "NI 4 rIPA 44' "4 A 1' 40''Ti'i 4 0 4ir c''' 1 ''4" 4 c4i64z)I43 4: 3-311YA 1 i--' 5 -4 -P 1 --w -4 't4 -4 it 'el iii 4 -14 ii-241c -i 4 -413- 1iityVT 11-lio '5p 8 4 'i -7' 44 ze )174Xlier4144' It' 'Ifs'''Cift'''44? 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'''1Lq -5 ''i '''''1i'-41tff'' 's- kli Vil 'fli i'411-4 '''w'T- t4m )It A iz41r74A44alt! toti ltiletii4Jti 'f ''ve: :1 'fig'? 1 -i Oi lir ::164 qt'it rk 44444r'4'tfr1 sk''' vPA -1111'1-- :1) 1': 'Ai4i-e41: g-ivii''i -1 r) -1 Itra 1 ''''44: 114 o- -1--4 "0 1 Blood Hoped To Give Alanhurst Drive A Sense of Permanence By Planting Trees Bat Observer Photo by JOHN DAUGHTRY She Gave Up The Idea 4 Hard1y em 11 1111 I II I I 4" 4114 IIPP'- 0 NC 16 1 City ties 17ir I 8 '5 wo 5 i 4 be US 14 Wilkinson Blvd ilk e' 411P Central Al r- It i 19 cl) e) 4t 111 1 i 4 cz 0 4 -c 44 4 -0 7 Zk ta' I Cat limits 1 It I I 10 Ali Neville Matt mi Matthevi Rd ere pastor of Carmel a ptist Church talked recently about losing one of his deacons to a company transfer and lamented "This really hinders the continuity It's like starting all over again" Transience has also become a political factor to be reckoned with in Charlotte and Mecklenburg changing the voting pattern from Southern Democratic to more often than not Republican The corporate nomads many of them registered Republicans before they came here are not an unmixed blessing to the local GOP however "It has become difficult to recruit qualified candidates because so many registered Republicans work for national corporations and know they 'won't be here long enough to run for public office" says Hen Wilmer Mecklenburg Republican chairman Last year Wilmer was unable to recruit GOP candidates to run for three of four state Senate seats The lone Republican who ran for the Senate lawyer Mike Mullins won handily If Charlotte's politics doesn't resemble those of the old-time South anymore it's because there isn't much of the old South left in Charlotte Even native Challotteans are er Mecklenburg County Council of the Boy Scouts When Frezen was transferred to At lant a "it was more than a year before we found somebody as good to replace him" Wilkes said And Rev A Patterson fabric of the community" Although Brookshire Mc Intyre and other local leaders are not immediately concerned about the effects of trans ence urban experts elsewhere In the United States paint a disturbing picture Author Alvin Tot' fler has written that transience is a major factor in causing the 20th century malady of "future shock" (the title of his best seller) the "shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time" Vance Packard focused his latest book 'A Nation of Strangers" on transience naming Charlotte as one of a number of "towns for company gypsies" Packard writes "Great numbers of inhabitants I eel unconnected to either people and places and throughout much of the nation there is a breakdown in community living We are confronted with a society that is coming apart at the seams" Charlotte may not yet be coming apart at the seams but the impact of transience on the community is showing clearly For one thing Charlotte's Most Transients Live In The Southeast moving vans also visit shaded areas frequently 11 1 1 I pitch into community work they sometimes create a whole new set of problems Charles Frezen an Eastern Airlines executive was one of the best men in the Cub Scout program" according to Bill Wilkes an executive of the eaches 40 Continued From Page lA of Charlotte's 60000 newcomers half or 30000 are these corporate nomads and their families They are people like Jim McLean Charlotte branch manager for the Xerox Corp who has been here just two months McLean transferred from the Atlanta office says the normal tour in Charlotte for his job is two or three years "You either do a good job or you don't" he explains "If you do her e's usually an opening somewhere else for somebody with experience" Charlotte government and civic leaders like former ISI ayor Stan Brookshire be lieve transience has been good for Charlotte "The new people are very fine citizens" says Brookshire "They bring new ideas and enthusiasm to the city and they contribute to our growing economy" William McIntyre director of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission a ys that up to now local planners haven't been very concerned about transience But he added "We might want to be concerned about how it is affecting the stability or instability of places for people to live its effect on the WELCOMING Penny Brawley's high heels click along the sidewalk of a Charlotte subdivision as she seeks out the house of someone she has never seen before and probably won't see again a newcomer to Charlotte After six months of doing it she has the routine down pat the introduction the presentation of information and gift certificates rom area merchants and then the pleasant chat perhaps over coffee With a "I know you must have flings to do" she excuses herself after an hour or so and sets out to welcome another new "neighbor" somewhere across town She does it she says be cause she likes the work But for Penny Brawley a young well-groomed woman who has lived in Charlotte only faur years herself welcoming newcomers is also just a day'3 work As one of 11 hostesses for Welcome WLgon International in Charlott she is paid to welcome newecmers clearing after taxes and expenses more than $250 a visit She makes about 20 visits each mooch The Welcome Wagon woman or hostesses from any of a half-dozen welcoming services is often the first person to visit a newcomer in Chariot le and some of Charlotte's 60000 annual newcomers see up to six different hostesses wi hi a few months of their arrival But with paid greeters the practice of welcoming newc ome dt esn't seem much like the neignbor-to-neighhor over-the-backfence affair it once was Indeed quite apart from moving iid buying a new home welcoming newcomers has become a multimillion dollar business and in Charlotte a city of nomads business is booming The businesses and organizations that cater to the newcomers range from the traditional Welcome Wagon-type groups which simply introduce newcomers to local merchants to highly sophisticated total relocation services that plug transferred executives out of one town and into another all with minimum hassle In between are companies like one in Charlotte that compiles and sells lists of names and information about new i4 "'4Tee? 411- -4- P' 10 fr t' 44710IA At 4444 I 'A- vit'1 ci't k-7 I It' ellev -1to s' :44 1 4r 6 -N it I i A 1 Mrs NEWCOMERS PAYS kind Also )rofits or I'm rarities these daYs they rep resent only 20 percent of the population and Charlotte is filled with strangers who know little and care less about the city's past So it is also fast becoming a rarity to find any reminder that Charlotte existed before 1950 roughly the time when the great corporate transient influx began The old house on Tryon Street where the Confederate Cabinet met in April 1865 is a Scars parking lot now Charlotte children will have to go to the new multimillion dollar Carowinds amusement park on the South Carolina line to learn that Charlotte was once a major gold mining town Today Charlotte is symbolized by more than anything else the dozens of bright new motels that line Interstate 85 and Independence Boulevard For like them the once-sleeping Southern City of Charlotte has mushroomed out of the red Piedm on clay spreading parking lots and plastic living across the landscape Charlotte's new $30000 to $40000 suburbs are intentionally designed by local developers to be "instant communities" for transients giving them homes and lawns just like the ones they left behind in Atlanta Armonk NY or Minneapolis "This is the time of the disposable house" says A (Humpy) Wheeler public relations director for the Ervin Co Charlotte's biggest home and apartment builder "People move in stay a few years and then discard them like Kleenex tissues" So says Wheeler "Houses have to be interchangeable and at the same time have the 'instant community' that people can move right into something they can associate with the place they lived before" The Ervin Company names streets in its development for that purpose names like Blue Heron Drive Windsong Lane Riding Trail Road They don't have anything to do with Charlotte but newcomers have probably encountered the image of carefree living somewhere else The hottast item for transients On the housing market according to Wheeler is the condominium "the epitome of the disposal house" Three years ago there were no condominiums in Mecklenburg County Now 830 are built or under conctruction Hundreds more are planned Selling for $20000 and up condominiums offer transients tax and equity advantages of a house with minimum involvement no need to ever paint a plasterboard wall or mow a blade of grass Condominiums and the new subdivisions like Stonehaven Olde Providence and Montclair South plunked down on patches of what used to be open farmland are the only places transients can go" according to real estate broker Catie Cocke "In the older neighborhoods there just isn't much available in their ($30000 to $40000) price range" said Mrs Cocky who does half her business selling to transients Even so other local real estate brokers say most transients show little interest in buying older houses anyway because they are not as easy to sell when the transient moves away Bill Reynolds a DuPou Corp executive at the company's headquarters in Wilmington Del says a DuPont man transferred to Charlotte should keep in mind that his house "shouldn't be an old one that will take two years to fix up" The transients' demands for instant split level elegance has created around Charlotte an ever-expanding ring of subdivisions reaching from Hidden Valley in the Northeast past Idlewi Id Farms in the East to Montclair South directly south of the city And that pattern worries some city officials civic life is suffering from a doublebarreted blast of transience Transferring in and out of Charlotte with metronome regularity most of the corporate nomads feel little desire to get involved here We know there's a lot of latent talent out there among the transients but they just aren't getting involved" says Mrs Virginia Bowser a local Red Cross worker who tries to recruit newcomers as volunteers Often as not she gets turned down She regularly visits groups of newcomers such as the New Neighbors League where several corporate wives have frankly told her that they know they won't be in Charlotte long and just didn't want to bother Even young people who move to Charlotte from nearby Carolinas towns like Ron Tate who works in First Union National Bank's marketing department seem to care little about the city though many of them have no idea of leaving "1 in not a Charlottean" Tate says "I'm a goy from Kannapolis who just happens to be working in Charlotte' When transients do bother to survey showed it would be wise to make contact with the large number of people new to town" The survey didn't show what the purchasing power of an average newcomer is but competition for the newcomer dollar is fierce North Carolina National Bank tries to contact the corporate transferee by mail even before he moves to town If that fails Ann Strawbridge a blonde who favors pantsuits with an NCNB patch will drop in On the newcomer in Charlotte with information "a couple of gifts from NCNB" and the inevitable map "A map's a very useful thing" says Ms Strawbridge who has lived in Charlotte since she was 10 "I still need One to get around myself" She doesn't need the map however to find one particular house where she says she's welcomed new families three times in 22 months The 30000 corporate nomads who arrive each year have also spawned in recent years a host of national firms that specialize in handling complete executive transfers for companies At least four such firms have member firms in Charlotte one of which is Driscoll Realty member broker for Previews I of New York which runs Executive Home-search We meet the family at the airport find them a hotel give them a tour of the city and find them a place to live" says president Robert Driscoll of his Executive Homesearch clients who number about 20 a year The fee for the service is the normal 6 per cent realtors fee according to Driscoll ''We have two basic obligations when dealing with the corporate transfer for Previews" Driscoll said "We're obligated to the company to get the husband settled and on the job as quickly as possible and we'r obligated to the family "Of ten these people have never been here before They don't know a soul in town We try to act like we're the only personal friend they have here" O' "Explosion away from the center is what has destroyed cities" warm City Managcr David Burkhalter "When you have that property values in the city go down and taxes go up" And Kelly Alexander Sr a Charlotte native and president of the North Carolina branch of the NAACP argues that transients who move to all-white suburbs are having a harmful effect on race relations by "not addressing themselves to the problems of the central city" In addition transient apartment dwellers who didn't list their cars for taxes cost the county about $200000 in revenues last year By the time we find them and the county assesses them" explains County Tax Collector A Stone "they've moved" Because transience is such a major fact of life in Charlotte local businesses direct much of their advertising toward the transient's pocketbook In January for example an electric ban advertisement flashed from the Charlotte Coliseum scoreboard: "Newcomer to Charlotte? Let First Union help Call Mike at An entire new business furniture renting has flourished in Charlotte entirely because of transience The first furniture rental company here opened its doors 10 years ago Now there are six all specializing in filling apartments with every style of furniture from Early American to a half-dozen different contemporary style from $141 a year for a bedroom set to $480 a year for the fanciest living room Jim Freeman owner of Rent-It Co Charlotte's oldest furniture rental company offers transients a standard one-year lease but lets them out if a transfer comes sooner "That happens just about every day" Freeman says Not everyone in Charlotte is a transient of course Well over 100000 Charlotteans call this city home and are touched only indirectly by the phenomenon of transience Many of them live in the older sections of the city like Dilworth Myers Park or Mid-wood they know many of their neighbors and often are deeply involved in community activities like Scouts bridge clubs and PTA Take for example Mrs Caroline Myers 39 who lives with her husband and children in the same two-story house on tree-shaded Providence Road in Myers Park where she grew up She still plays bridge every Wednesday with a circle of women that includes several she has known since they were first graders together at Myers Park Elementary School in 1940 But much more common in Charlotte today are people like Dennis Ertimann a Burroughs Corp field engineer who moved here in 191i8 Erdmann was born in Oconomowoc Wis but when he was asked to name his hometown Ile paused a moment and then stammered "I can hardly remember where I'm from" Ile likes Charlotte he says hut adds: "I probably would accept a transfer because my Job is goodand I wouldn't want to leave it The people are good here but theyre probably as good elsewhere" Erdmann like many other transients will probably leave Charlotte knowing few natives having remained uninvolved in civic life and still checking a map to find his way around the city Tomorrow Part II: A visit to Windyrush Road a whiff-ban street where nearly everyone is a stranger from somewhere else 4 :0 i'''''' I S' ''''''''4 1 0 'A'6''' I X'r t11f p'! 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''Y I': 1 I I i 'v'''' i' 1A4 -J 1 so i la ti --) 4 1 il----' --'1' cite' '-f4---' kr Fs1 -o71'T-rrl-m -s 1:::::::: i 4: '''7' i 5: 1 A- 1 A 1 t- 1 1 's "7' 'r '1: -7- 4-- i -t 2 I t4so 1 '0 -0-4-' 1 ri '4 -5 1- 7 0t'4rr: k7 1 to 0: -7 1 i '-1 i ii 4 i I 4i i 4' 4 '''N' ie' 4''' lciN' i 4 ftma04407bogiA04744" 40 ''6 'l ''''1t'' -''''r1'' Ai t'- J-- y4 --42 -4 ''t 7 4 -t'' I 4 er 7t- "'il ''ri ii A -4-- -s---: 1 ''1: q' 4 i 1 comers to a bank a newspaper and whoever else might be interested Charlotte merchants and civic organizations sponsor groups like Welcome Wagon and the New Neighbors League whose hostesses give newcomers a slick 50-page booklet about evenly divided bet en information about a rl otte and advertising keyed to the newcomer in town The League also sponsors a club and arranges social activities such as card parties bowling leagues and dances to help newcomers meet people in Charlotte mos tly other newcomers "In addition to letting them know what's available here we try to make the wives feel like it's a good move for their husbands" explained Connie Marcotte head of the League's local chapter "Businesses encourage us It's important for them that their new man be happy here" The Charlotte Merchants Association sponsors another group Welcome Newcomers whose function It Is to run credit checks on newcomers to Charlotte Mrs Cantrell who directs Newcomers' Hostess of Charlotte obtains names of newcomers fro churches utilities and other sources and then visits the new family to hand out maps and coupons for discounts with local merchants She leaves with information about the family's religion financial status occupation car style and children and sells the information to The Mecklenburg Times which publishes the data weekly It is read eagerly by salesman real estate brokers and others anxious to get a piece of the newcomer action Another buyer of newcomer lists is First Union National Bank which has established its own welcoming service Bank employes visit- newcomers with maps information and a soft-sell about the virtues of banking with First Union "Our share of the market was not what we would have liked it to be" explained Mike Bailey the "Mike" in First Union's newcomer ad at the Coliseum "A 1970 marketing Ob5erver Photo by ANDY HOWELL Penny Braw ley Welcome Wagon Hostess Greets A Newcomer waking strangers feel at home is a big businessin Charlotte.