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Carolinas Medical Center is planning a major surgical tower expansion, office buildings, a large parking deck and a new energy plant. Latta Pavilion, a high-rise building housing retail and apartments, has sprung up on East Boulevard. Developers are eyeing Dilworth's major arteries for more multifamily and mixeduse projects. The city has worked up designs for changes to make major thoroughfares friendlier for pedestrians while encouraging high-density growth.
Current and future projects promise to redefine Dilworth, at least along the streets that form its perimeter, and are sparking mixed and strong reactions from residents. Some see recent growth as a threat to its continued vitality Others see the development - much of it high-density or high-rise -- as a natural step in the Dilworth's evolution and a means to help curb sprawl.
If there's one thing backers and detractors can agree on, it's that the centuryold neighborhood has never been more popular with home owners and commercial users than it is now.
Jill Walker, an 18-year resident and board member of the Dilworth Community Development Association, says city planners and developers are using the language of smart growth and high density to justify projects that contribute to
neither. The area, she says, "is not adequately sized to accommodate their ideas." She says their comparisons of East Boulevard with Brooklyn Heights in New York or Newberry Street in Boston are "like comparing a mouse to an elephant."
David Walters, a professor of architecture at UNC Charlotte and a 10-year Dilworth resident, disagrees....