History Of Midtown Charlotte NC

The Metropolitan at Midtown, was a renovation project to replace Charlotte’s first indoor shopping mall along Charlottetowne Avenue. This Charlottetowne Mall, was the first enclosed shopping mall in the Southeast, opening on October 28, 1959. This mall housed the anchor store Bon Marche, a department store based out of Asheville, NC. in 1964 Bon Marche close, and was replaced by Ivey’s. Around this same time two other malls were opening, South Park Mall and Eastland Mall.

With these two newer, larger malls in town, the smaller Charlottetowne Mall began to decline. It soon went through two renovations in the 80’s, as well as two names – Outlet Square and then Midtown Square. These efforts fell flat to revitalize this mall. It went through several owners, going from an outlet mall to a grocery store before finally closing down in 1988.

Kings Road and Charlottetowne Avenue Intersection

The old mall and cinema houses were bulldozed in 2006, to make way for what is the midtown Metropolitan. This is now a mixed-use building providing living, retail, and dining all in the same area. The surrounding roads, and Sugar Creek Greenway were all renovated to improve roadways, traffic, and beautification. You can see the great improvements to add complete pedestrian walkways, and bike lanes to the Kings Road and Charlottetowne intersection.

Charlotte History

Charlotte is one of the fastest growing cities in the US. The latest census of the population was around 751,087, making Charlotte the 17th largest city in the states. The Queen City first started around 1755 when European Thomas Spratt and his family built their home in present day Elizabeth neighborhood. Charlotte became incorporated in 1768. The growth of the city was due to the trade roads, Great Wagon Road, running north to south, and the second trade route running east to west, which is current day Trade Street. These crossroads are the center of Uptown Charlotte.