How did Charlotte come to concentrate so many cultural institutions downtown? It’s one of the more surprising stories of culture-led urban revitalization in North America.
As a sleepy southern city that rose quickly in the 1980s and 1990s, largely due to corporate growth, Charlotte still had a drowsy downtown dubbed Uptown by civic boosters. In a city driven by business, it was business leadership that pushed for major cultural institutions (and sports venues) to be centered in the heart of the city to speed up a hoped for transition into a vibrant urban center.
Business Leadership and Charlotte’s Urban Revitalization
The city’s Arts & Science Council then created a 25-year Cultural Facilities Master Plan. It called for a new museum and performing arts campus to be part of a large office/residential development on the south side of downtown augmenting existing attractions a few blocks north.
Funding Urban Revitalization Without Family Foundations
The question was how to fund all this? Charlotte, in contrast to cities in the Northeast, Midwest and West, didn’t have a roster of wealthy family foundations, so a public-private strategy took hold involving the city and county as well as heavy corporate and some private philanthropy.
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While filming our story about the ImaginOn children’s library/theater complex in Charlotte, we caught up with Michael Marsicano, longtime head of the Foundation of the Carolinas, who helped shape the cultural facilities that enliven Charlotte’s city center. Here, he describes how philanthropy in southern cities has differed from their counterparts elsewhere:
There are now two cultural clusters in the square mile urban core. The Levine Center for the Arts anchors the south end of downtown with the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Mint Museum Uptown, Knight Theater and Harvey Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, while Discovery Place, the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, Carolina Theatre and new Central Library with adjacent theaters, are to the north.
Also north is ImaginOn, a unique public-private partnership between the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library and Children’s Theatre of Charlotte aimed at toddlers through age 18 that we filmed for our story about downtown kid magnets.
The Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, part of the larger Levine Center for the Arts on South Tryon Street in Charlotte, is below:
Charlotte’s largest art center is the Mint Museum, still partially housed in the former first US Mint dating to 1837. Its much larger 145,000 sq ft downtown expansion opened in 2010.
Charlotte’s Mint Museum Uptown, also part of the Levine Center for the Arts, is below:
Meet Michael Marsicano, longtime head of the Foundation of the Carolinas, on the philanthropy behind Charlotte’s urban revitalization. Watch more videos.
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Read our previous post: The Disney Effect on Urban Design and Cities.