South Charlotte
The wedge. Myers Park, SouthPark and Ballantyne run southeast from uptown in a widening band of money, and the city's most expensive housing has been in that band for a hundred years.
Photograph: Arrowood Station · Mark Clifton · CC BY-SA 2.0 · source
6 neighborhoods in the wedge. Myers Park is the 1911 development that gave Charlotte its self-image. Curving streets, willow oaks planted at the developer's expense, and the second-highest average sale price in the county, after Eastover. SouthPark is what happened when a shopping mall was dropped into farmland in 1970: it now has office towers, apartment blocks and more retail than anywhere else in the Carolinas. Ballantyne is two thousand acres of master plan against the South Carolina line, built out of a single family's farm from 1994 onward.
The wedge is the most legible pattern in Charlotte and the most consequential: wealth has run southeast from uptown since the streetcar era, and school assignment, tree canopy and price all follow the same axis. What that buys and what it costs are both worth naming. It buys the county's strongest school assignments and, in Myers Park and parts of SouthPark, a walkable street grid that newer suburbs do not have. It costs a commute up one of two clogged corridors (Providence Road or I-485 to I-77) and, at the Ballantyne end, a genuine distance from everything: uptown is a 25-minute drive at 6am and an hour at 8am, and there is no rail in the plan.
6 communities, guide by guide
Ballantyne
Two thousand acres of master plan at the South Carolina line, built out of one family's farm, with the schools and the commute that follow from that.
- 1992
- 2,000 acres rezoned: the largest rezoning in Mecklenburg County's history
- 1995
- Smoky Bissell buys out his brothers-in-law's shares and names the development after a great-aunt
Beverly Woods
Split-levels and brick ranches on curving 1960s streets between SouthPark and Quail Hollow, priced like SouthPark's overflow because that is what it is.
- $728,152
- Average home sale price, 2023: Quality of Life profile area 359, which covers Beverly Woods
- 97.4%
- Owner-occupied share of occupied housing units in 2023, against 36.5 percent in the SouthPark profile area next door
Madison Park
Six thousand people in mid-century ranches between Park Road and Woodlawn, the answer south Charlotte gives to anyone priced out of Dilworth who still wants a yard.
- 1960
- The year Charlotte annexed Madison Park, built out through the mid and late 1950s
- 6,013
- Residents of Quality of Life profile area 393, which covers Madison Park, at the 2020 census
Myers Park
Willow oaks planted a century ago over the city's wealthiest square mile, on streets drawn to curve rather than to grid.
- 1911
- George Stephens starts the development on his father-in-law's cotton farm
- John Nolen
- The planner who drew the curving streets, one of the first professional city planners in the United States
SouthPark
A shopping mall that became a second downtown: office towers, apartment blocks and the highest concentration of retail in the Carolinas.
- 1970
- SouthPark Mall opens on farmland, developed by the Belk and Ivey department-store families
- 3,850
- Residents of the Quality of Life area covering SouthPark, 2020 census
Starmount
The South Boulevard corridor's cheapest detached houses, close enough to the Blue Line's southern stations to be rebuilt and far enough out to still be affordable.
- 1965
- Charlotte annexes Starmount: ordinance 297X, effective 27 December 1965, per the county's annexation history
- 3,952
- Residents of Neighborhood Profile Area 383, which covers Starmount, at the 2020 census
Photographs: Ballantyne Village from Johnston Road by City Dweller 2, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Park Road Park by Mx. Granger, CC0, Wikimedia Commons · Freedom Park by James Willamor, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons · Withers Building Queens University campus by James Willamor, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons · SouthPark from the air by Bz3rk, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.
