Textiles
Why is restoring NoDa’s textile mills so hard?
In any other time, the request might not have been so hard. But a nonprofit developer’s plea last week to use $2.3 million in city money from federal grants to help repair Charlotte’s historic Mecklenburg Mill came after a recession and a brutal, lingering downturn. It also came after the City of Charlotte had already […]
A Charlotte primer: A city that thinks big
Welcome, Democrats! You have received loads of material on restaurants, sights and the strange habits of the locals. Here is a primer quick enough for you to digest while you spoon through your breakfast grits. First and most important, Charlotte is not some other city. It is not by the sea (that’s Charleston), it does […]
The decline (and rise?) of Carolina manufacturing
After decades of decline, manufacturing jobs across the country have seen a modest uptick. This long period of industry restructuring has left a strikingly different geography of manufacturing in the Carolinas; we still make furniture and textiles, but that’s no longer the whole story. New industries have taken root. Many offer higher wages than the […]