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Few neighborhoods in Charlotte generate as much debate as Cherry, the neighborhood tucked between uptown and Myers Park. From its history to its future and everything in between, Cherry always seems to be a hot-button topic. Misconceptions abound, some intentional, most quite unintentional but the history of Cherry shouldn’t be missed.
Few neighborhoods in Charlotte generate as much debate as Cherry, the neighborhood tucked between uptown and Myers Park. From its history to its future and everything in between, Cherry always seems to be a hot-button topic. Misconceptions abound, some intentional, most quite unintentional but the history of Cherry shouldn’t be missed.
The controversy you’ll stir up with any talk of Cherry runs the gamut of difficult conversations in the South. Racism, of course, but also class, wealth and poverty, government intrusion and social engineering, gentrification, segregation, mismanagement, and lastly, but most importantly today, change.
One question I’ve always had, though, is ‘Why Cherry?’ With so many neighborhoods changing all the time, many older and historic properties being knocked down in the name of progress, rampant development occurring all over Charlotte, property values rising and gentrification occurring anywhere within a mile of two of center city, what makes Cherry so special?
Cherry shares much of its history with another well-known neighborhood in central Charlotte: Myers Park. Though their historical demographic and housing types differ greatly, their locations and origins are quite similar. The two show the difference in living conditions between poor blacks and wealthy whites in the early 20th century.
John Springs Myers inherited a 306-acre tract of land just south of the city in 1869. After amassing as much as 1000 acres, Myers and his wife, Mary Rawlinson Myers, conceived a ‘suburban’ neighborhood to be connected to the center of town by the new streetcar system. Charlotte was just beginning to see a construction trend of building new suburban neighborhoods just outside the downtown area. The advent of the streetcar allowed people to live further from the central business district, their jobs, and commercial and retail districts.
They named their subdivision Myers Park and their plans included a small separate neighborhood to be built on part of their acreage. Cherry was born. According to the Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission (CMHLC) the idea was “to provide good, low-cost housing for black laborers and craft workers well before development began in Myers Park in 1912…” These workers lived near, and helped build and shape, what is now Myers Park.
Though the concept of building housing for the labor pool sounds paternal by today’s standards, records indicate that the Myers family had an honest intent to provide better housing than the standard of the day. It was also common at the time for textile mills and other large employers to provide much more than just a paycheck for their workers. Housing, company stores, recreation, and, at times, schools, were part of the package. The Myers were members of the St. Peters Episcopal Church on Tryon Street and, according to the CMHLC, “…For some time, the church had been involved with ministry to blacks in the city, which included the founding of churches, a school and a hospital (Good Samaritan).” The Myers family itself had a history of working with the black community: John Springs Myers’ father, Col. W. R. Myers, donated the land for Johnson C. Smith University after the Civil War.
The Myers platted Cherry and erected many rental units for its residents. They also sold many lots to black homeowners. At a high point in 1925, as many as 65% of the residents of Cherry were homeowners, a very high percentage for the day. The Myers family continued to hold and rent housing in Cherry long after the deaths of John and Mary Myers. Their children continued the family involvement in Cherry with both land sales and rental units. After 1930, grandsons John Dwelle and Brevard Myers took over the rental properties and slowly began modernizing the properties with indoor bathrooms and enclosed foundations. They continued to build rental units in the Cherry neighborhood into the 1950s. Most houses were of the brick ranch style popular in the post-World War II era.
The explosive growth of Charlotte in the fifties began to affect Cherry as it did most close-in neighborhoods. The central business district was expanding outward, and Cherry was no longer a small pocket of isolated homes at the edge of town. Myers and Dwelle began developing the outer edges of Cherry with commercial properties along main thoroughfares. Even at the time they were quoted as saying “Cherry’s land was becoming too well located for its ‘highest and best use’ to continue to be low-income housing”.
Also driving the pressure for redevelopment was the construction in 1958 of Charlottetown Mall (later renamed Midtown Square). Built at the intersection of Kings Drive and Independence Boulevard, it was literally across the street from Cherry. History seems to repeat itself, and much of the redevelopment pressure found in Cherry today is the result of again redeveloping Midtown Square – the Pappas Properties Metropolitan development is being constructed on the same site and will include high-end condos, stroll districts along the reopened Sugar Creek Greenway, and shops and cafés.
From its high of nearly 65% homeownership in 1925, Cherry saw a gradual but consistent change from ownership to tenant occupancy. By the time the Urban Renewal era arrived in the 1960’s, it was estimated that the percentage of owners living in Cherry had dropped as low as 17%. As a result of many things, including the loss of homeowners and the redevelopment all around the neighborhood, the Cherry Community Organization, or CCO, was formed. The city’s Neighborhood Improvement Program had proposed installing new sidewalks, curbs and gutters, and storm drains for Cherry. Residents actually protested, claiming that it made no sense to add these improvements “while their homes were falling down.” They formally created the CCO as a non-profit organization and persuaded the city to donate $1 million for the purchase and restoration of many homes owned by absentee landlords and major Cherry property owners Myers and Dwelle. The CCO also maintained and collected rents from city-owned properties in Cherry.
The efforts of the CCO have been scrutinized since its inception, and its mission and goals seemed to have been more difficult to fulfill than originally anticipated. From the beginning there seemed to be problems, and in its initial year only nine of the 26 promised homes were renovated. The ensuing years didn’t bring much more progress than the early ones, and as recently as 2005 the Charlotte Observer reported that the CCO “…hasn’t filed IRS documents required yearly from nonprofits since 1998.” The organization was audited in 1987 and again in 1991, and both times undocumented payments and inadequate financial records were found. Many of the properties held by the CCO for low-income residents have been boarded up for years, and many others are in such disrepair that there is no option other than tearing them down and starting over.
What ails Cherry today is a combination of factors. Its close proximity to a rapidly growing center city in a rapidly growing region is the main one. Land close to downtown has always brought a premium, but with the recent migration of residents back to the city’s urban core, land values in central Charlotte have skyrocketed. Just as numerous towers are popping up like spring tulips inside the loop, the ring neighborhoods have had just as much, if not more, mid-rise and mixed-use development. There has been no shortage of buyers, so demand has put extreme pressure on neighborhoods like Cherry. Combine these market forces with a housing stock that in large part has fallen into disrepair and you have a very tough situation. Short of a government agency or some other organization purchasing the properties in Cherry and properly maintaining and holding them, there is very little that can be done to preserve Cherry as it is today
The idea that Cherry is only now beginning to lose the battle to protect its historic identity is just a myth. Town homes along Torrence Street just south of 3rd Street were built eight years ago, and many of Cherry’s homes have been purchased and renovated by both homeowners and investors over the last few years. Prices have been driven upward already, and it isn’t uncommon when one of the few properties that happens to hit the market will fetch prices of $70,000 - $130,000 for vacant single-family lots and $180,000 to $230,000 for existing homes. Two relatively new developments are the construction of condominiums inside the neighborhood, rather than at its edges, and the sale of community-owned property. Cherry was in the news in recent months with the announcement of condos and affordable housing being built by StoneHunt, LLC, a Charlotte real estate developer.
The StoneHunt project will sit upon acreage purchased from the Cherry Community Organization where there are now homes. It is slated to combine market-rate condos with an affordablehousing component. Many in the neighborhood are wary of the new development, while others support it. It helps to a certain extent that StoneHunt partners Anthony Hunt and Stoney Sellars are African Americans who have lived in Cherry. Those with objections to the plans have been quite vocal about their concerns in local media. Sellers addressed the discontent in an interview in Creative Loafing: “The debate ironically is not coming from the long-term residents. It’s coming from those who are new to the neighborhood, those who are primarily individual investors and absentee landlords.”
It does appear that a few of the most ardent anti-development residents do fit these categories, most interestingly the new residents who have been in Cherry for only a year or two. They exemplify the very problem they profess to oppose – were there not people who wished to move into and live in Cherry, there wouldn’t be the demand that has created the higher property values.
Much of the protectionist attitude towards Cherry is a result of a government sponsored “cleansing” of central Charlotte in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Federally funded “Urban Renewal” was going on all over the country, and in the black neighborhoods of Brooklyn (Second Ward), Greenville, First Ward, and parts of Third Ward there were residences and businesses leveled to make way for I-277, Independence Boulevard, and large business blocks.
At one time, Second Ward was a thriving black community complete with businesses, professionals, housing and community. The neighborhood was called Brooklyn and is now completely gone. The city bought up the properties via eminent domain and enacted sweeping changes in the area. The homes and business properties came down, I-277 was constructed, as was Marshall Park, and large commercial properties were erected. The black residents were displaced. Many of the displaced moved to the Belmont, Wilmore, and other close-in neighborhoods. This forced displacement spared Cherry, but the emotions connected to the forced destruction of Brooklyn linger in Cherry today.
Cherry finds itself now in the midst of redevelopment on all sides and within its borders. This phenomenon isn’t unique to Cherry, but it is apparent that Cherry is special for historical reasons. Maybe it is not special because of its homes or its location, but for the social statement it makes and for the tenacity it has shown in remaining home to lower income black families while being surrounded by some of the most expensive real estate in Charlotte. Few neighborhoods in Charlotte could claim to have remained as close to their roots as Cherry has. Ironically, one neighborhood that does is Myers Park.
Whether Cherry can retain its character and historic fabric remains to be seen, but most signs seem to indicate that change is coming. As Stoney Sellers stated recently, “What we hope is to maintain the spirit of Cherry, in that it was originally developed so that basically workforce-oriented African-Americans, black folks, would have decent housing close to the core of the city. What I hope will happen is that with this model of doing mixed-demographic -- market-rate and affordable housing -- within the neighborhood, we can now build revitalized neighborhoods by taking them out of at-risk status.”
~Scott Lindsley
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