The Concord Regional Airport is just about to complete their new $12.2 million expansion, which will include a new 32,000 sq ft terminal as well as a 700 space parking deck. The city is anticipating a grand opening for this coming September.
Most of the construction costs (about 90%) are coming from a federal grant, and the rest is on the shoulders of the City of Concord and the State of North Carolina.
The city is hoping to recoup most of their cost from fees generated from the parking deck, which will cost $5 per day for covered parking and $4 per day for uncovered parking.
The airport is now estimated to generate about $200 million in revenue for the Concord region, and now with the expanded terminal and parking deck, the city is hoping to attract new airlines and significantly more tourism and revenue.
Allegiant Air is currently the only commercial airline service that flies out of Concord Regional Airport.
What airlines would you like to see come to Concord? What flights would you like to see added? Please comment below;
An incredible new story about a slave descendant and a plantation owner, sitting down to eat dinner together is now going viral.
Nkrumah Steward‘s post, which has already been shared over 1,000 times on Facebook, has been picked up by ABC News, Good Morning America, USA Today, and dozens of other news outlets;
In his post, he writes; “Tonight my family and I were dinner guests at Wavering Place, an old plantation founded in 1768 near Hopkins, South Carolina where four generations of my grandmothers lived and worked as slaves when they were emancipated in 1865. The reason I was there tonight was because 181 years ago, in 1835, Joel Robert Adams and my 4th great grandmother, one of his slaves, Sarah Jones Adams had a daughter, Louisa. Louisa had Octavia. Octavia had James. James had my grandfather JD. JD had my mother Linda.
And now 181 years later, after almost two centuries, my mother and father, my two sons, my wife and myself sat down in that very house and broke bread with the descendant of those who owned members of my family. We are cousins by blood. And tonight we took the first steps together towards also becoming friends.”
Although about 99% of the reactions to his story have been positive, there have been a number of negative replies.
One person commented, “It’s very convenient to say we all should get along now, but not long ago it was white people who wanted the nation to be segregated, who terrorized people in this country, who acted like black people were less than 2nd class citizen. I mean it’s very convenient to say let’s move on from the past now when you’ve had so much time to create and perfect a system that allows the white race to stay in such a strong hold position of power as the dominant group in our society.”
In spite of the handful of naysayers, the two families are now focused on moving forward together as friends.
Adams still owns the property, now called the Wavering Place Plantation. It’s been passed down through the family since it’s initial construction in 1766, and is now offers educational tours, a bed and breakfast, and for weddings. They couldn’t have been more thrilled to hear from Steward and invite his whole family for dinner for the opportunity to learn about each other’s past.
“We thoroughly enjoyed it, our history is a shared one, and we celebrate our family connection. There’s a dark part of that history that was an unfortunate part of our nation’s past, but we don’t let that keep us from moving forward and getting to know family members,” said Adams.
A Gastonia couple has just been arrested this week after local police say they were throwing pizza rolls at each other.
At around 1 a.m. on Monday morning, Gaston county officers responded to a home in the 3100 block of Spring Valley Drive.
When officers arrived, the couple told them they got into an argument that led to the tossing of pizza rolls. Brad Scott Beard, 24, and Samantha Brook Canipe, 21, were each charged with simple assault.
Beard will now be facing 60 days in jail and Canipe will be looking at 30 days.
Thousands lined up down the light rail and around the Convention Center in Uptown Charlotte Tuesday afternoon to witness President Obama’s first stop on Hillary Clinton’s campaign trail.
Charlotte Stories was on hand to capture the highlights of the event:
The significance of Obama’s visit to Charlotte is shown in many polls that indicate North Carolina being in a political stalemate – Clinton with 44% of the vote, and Donald Trump with 43.3%. No Republican since Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 has won the White House without winning the Tar Heel State.
The Clinton campaign commented that there were 7,000 people in the main convention center, with another 2500 in the overflow upstairs (citing the official numbers from the Fire Marshal) – this makes her stop in Charlotte the largest attended campaign stop of her tour.
After their speeches at the Charlotte Convention Center, Hillary and Obama traveled in the presidential motorcade over to Midwood Smokehouse to grab some BBQ before heading back to Washington.
65 year Larry Thomas from Rock Hill was sent to jail after denying service and pulling a handgun on a black man.
Fort Mill resident Arthur Hill walked into Thomas’s small barber shop to grab a quick haircut, but within moments of walking through the door he was denied service and threatened with a pistol.
“I asked him does he shave, Can I have a shave?'” commented Arthur Hill, after which Larry Thomas said, “I don’t do black hair.”
Hill then asked Thomas to clarify, ‘Are you referring to African American hair?’ He said, ‘Yeah,’ and at the time I noticed he already had his hand gripped on a .38 snub nose chrome revolver.”
Hill then told Thomas he didn’t want any trouble, left, and immediately contacted the Sheriff.
Police then came to the barber shop and locked Larry Thomas up for the night.
They also banned him from possessing a firearm until the investigation concludes.
The City of Charlotte is now the proud new owner of the old Adult Super Store off Wilkinson Blvd., across from the airport. For over 2 decades it was one of the first and last things thousands of Charlotte Douglas Airport passengers saw as they drove by the airport.
They city purchased the former Adult Super Store property for $755,000 from the Keener family (who originally bought it in 1994 for $22,500), according to city tax records;
The property was purchased as part of the ‘Airport Area Strategic Development Plan‘. The plan’s primary objective is to “Leverage the Airport’s connectivity to enable and accelerate existing and potential economic clusters and stimulate employment opportunities.”
The city is basically working to buy up real estate all around the airport to allow for future expansions and attempt to rejuvinate the area through development partnerships.
We ran into Jonathan in his South Park neighborhood where he told us about his summer business and what Africans mean when they say ‘leg bone’.
He also gave us some incredible advice about taking advantage of every moment. “There are three things in life, which, once they pass you by, they’re never gonna return again. Those three things would be; time, opportunities, and spoken words…”
It’s VIPs like him that make this city great;
We are now posting daily stories from the people of Charlotte on our Facebook page, our Youtube channel, and here on CharlotteStories.com
Gaines Brown began his wildly popular food truck Fridays on his small triangular piece of land in Southend about 4 years ago. As Southend increased its building addiction, that small piece of land became more and more attractive to developers and investors. Brown finally caved to Dimensional Fund Advisors so they could build their massive new 285,000 square foot headquarters on the site (although they are promising ground-floor retail in the building).
Thankfully, Brown has announced that he’s not only found a new Southend location, but that Food Truck Fridays have now also expanded to Plaza Midwood as well. Food truck Fridays are now taking place at a Mecklenburg County-owned property at South Tryon and Kingston, as well as Plaza Midwood’s Light Factory (on the corner of Central Avenue and Nandina Street).
The new plan for South End will be to completely shut down Kingston Street for the food trucks to park, and the hundreds of people to gather to find new food and new friends. The new Plaza Midwood location will be on paved lot, but it’s centrally located to the new Harris Teeter, Common Market, Dairy Queen, and dozens of other Plaza Midwood hang out spots.
For the first time in history, the U.S. Paralympic trials in three sports – track and field, swimming and cycling – are being held simultaneously in the same city – and so far, Charlotte has not disappointed.
7 American records have already been broken today at the Mecklenburg County Aquatic Center, and at least 1 world record was broken at Johnson C. Smith University’s Irwin Belk Complex.
Over 400 athletes from across the country will be competing in Charlotte this weekend to try to earn a spot on Team USA for the 2016 Paralympics in Rio this coming September.
We visited the Irwin Belk Complex today to film some of the action;
Today’s world record was broken in the women’s 800-meter T34/53, Paralympic newcomer Alexa Halko (Williamsburg, Virginia) broke her own T34 world record by just under a second with a time of 2:01.83 to claim third place in the combined field.
Seven American records and three Pan American records were also broken over at the aquatic center today by seven different swimmers with nine of the 10 total records coming in breaststroke events.
All of the trials are free and open to the public, here is the complete trials schedule for this weekend:
SWIMMING
June 30 – July 2, 2016
Mecklenburg County Aquatic Center
800 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, Charlotte, NC 28202
Preliminaries Warm-Up: 7:30 am
Preliminaries Start Time: 9:00 am
Finals Warm-Up: 3:30 pm
Finals Start Time: 5:00 pm
2016 U.S. PARALYMPIC TEAM CELEBRATION
July 3, 2016
Romare Bearden Park
300 S Church Street, Charlotte, NC 28202
11:00 am – 2:00 pm
Join us in celebrating the athletes who will be nominated to Team USA for the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games with a festive and patriotic send-off on Sunday, July 3 at 11:00 am at Romare Bearden Park.