Cabarrus Cheap Seats

In most places, people grow up hearing the advice to avoid making Politics and Religion topics of conversation.

In North Carolina, there are a few other topics that should be added to that list. Favorite NASCAR Team? ACC Basketball Rivalries?

Well, those are big issues. But neither is as big as Barbecue in NC.

Depending on where you grow up at in NC, your taste in Barbecue will vary quite a bit. I’ve had a bite from several of the local Barbecue places, and all were good, but not quite what I grew up with.

I was raised on Lexington Style Barbecue, and I’ve got a soft spot for that style, Its got a little bit of a kick, but not too spicy, a little bit sweet, and it’s a very thin sauce. Especially at Carter Brothers in High Point, Lexington #1 in Lexington and Little Richard’s in Winston-Salem.

Down East, you get a really strong Vinegar taste in their Barbecue sauce. Lots of people refer to Eastern Style and Lexington Style as the 2 types of Barbecue in NC.

The Style in Cabarrus County restarants seems to be a lot different from either. The sauces I’ve had were either a vinegar/spicy pepper sauce or else a thick sweet sauce. Most of the resturants around here had both of those kinds available. I’ve tried R&R, Troutman’s and Red Pig. All were good, but where do the Locals here eat at?

If you have lived here all your life, what’s your favorite spot for ‘Cue?

If you grew up in other places, what kind of Barbecue do you have to get when you go back to visit?

Everyday, I mark certain articles to share; but never do.

Here are five of them

[Read more →]

Our favorite Congressman Robin Hayes took the award of “Top Gun” at the annual Congressional Shoot-Out this year. I think this should make top campaign news across the district, but that might just be me. Who better to represent our district for two more years than a straight shooter on the issues, and with a rifle? Check the link to read the story, I thought it might be worth mentioning on here.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/

[link to article]

After my post last week on the Overcash project on Poplar Tent Road, there has been a flurry of activity from the concerned citizens of Gable Oaks, Carriage Downs, Freedom Acres, Kings Crossing and other nearby neighborhoods…and interestingly enough, from the Mayor’s office.

There are a few things coming out of the smoke and mirrors game that seems interesting and I am unclear as to exactly what they mean. I’ll list them off here and let you decide what you think it all means.

1 - There’s a fairly well grounded rumor that was voiced in a meeting recently that Pitts School Road is slated to be moved to intersect with Poplar Tent Road at the current location of Shelton Road. I say the rumor is fairly well grounded because.. .

• With the increase in traffic congestion that will come from the development of “site 1″ it will likely mean the elimination of the current awkward intersection of Pitts School and Poplar Tent to avoid traffic backups that could block the intersections for I-85.
• The development of “site 1″ will likely require the addition of a stop light, possibly a turning lane, and other changes to the traffic pattern in that area. This would be the opportune time to move the location of the Pitts School and Poplar Tent intersection.
• It’s.. um.. shown on the 2015 Concord Land Use Plan. It’s just a proposal, but it’s a proposal that people are apparently working towards.

The red and white dashed line indicates the proposed route for the relocated Pitts School Road. Grey indicates Industrial property. Yellow is residential. Notice that there is no agricultural (green) shown.

2 - On the 2015 Concord Land Use Plan the property for “site 2″ is shown as Industrial (above in grey)- even though it is currently zoned at the other end of the spectrum (agricultural as shown below in green) and is located immediately adjacent to residential areas, in contradiction to the CDO. A possible oversight, but potentially a prophetic one to say the least.

3 - The meetings with concerned citizens who are banding together to fight the rezoning of “site 2″ so far haven’t included the adjoining property owners who own the property to the West and South of “site 2.” This property is currently not zoned residential but is zoned agricultural. It is unclear to me where these property owners stand on the proposed rezoning of site 2 from agricultural to I2, but they potentially stand to benefit the most from a possible Pitts School Road relocation and also stand to gain if the precedence is set for agricultural land in that area being rezoned to the opposite end of the spectrum (I2), which precedence the current zoning request for “site 2″ would create. Their agricultural land would be on a major thoroughfare and adjoining land zoned either I1 or I2. So, the odds of their agricultural land being rezoned could be improved if the zoning request for “site 2″ goes through. It’s also interesting to note that on the 2015 Concord Land Use Plan, most of the adjoining land that is currently zoned agricultural is shown as industrial. (See below for current zoning - green is Agricultural and also see the image above where some of the same land is grey indicating Industrial)

4 - Some of the flurry of activity in recent days has been meetings between the Mayor of Concord and the citizens of the neighboring subdivisions. As the mayor is a potential voting member of the City Council that, in a quasi-judicial capacity, may decide whether this zoning request is accepted or denied, it should be clear that he should not be meeting with parties who have an interest in the decision. He has placed himself in a position to either excuse himself from a very controversial decision (and as an elected official it’s sometimes important to duck such decisions I suppose) or vote to approve and then he can claim he bent over backward to meet with the homeowners. It is unlikely to me that he will vote to deny the zoning change and allow an opening for appeal by the developers who can claim he was meeting with the homeowners and was therefore biased in his decision.

5 - The city is currently set to have the projects planned for “site 1″ and “site 2″ both considered at the same time rather than considering the separate applications for rezoning individually at their own pace and on their own merits. This puts the pressure on the homeowners of Gable Oaks, Freedom Acres, and Carriage Downs to support “site 1″ and NOT fully reject the zoning change to “site 2″.

6 - Ronald Gold Overcash owns well over 90 pieces of property in Cabarrus County. Could he find a better location in the county to put his concrete plant, trucks, and demolition debris than one that puts these very unresidential and unagricultural operations less than 100 feet away from $300,000 homes?

The main reason that my wife and I moved to Concord was for a job in Charlotte. I’m pretty sure that this is a common reason for lots of the population growth in the county.

Of course, this means a lot of commuting into Charlotte, and lots of money spent on gas.

If gas prices continue to climb, I know that this is going to make commuting long distances less and less attractive… And make houses that require long commutes to work less desirable. (and thus, Slowing/stopping residential growth)

I know that the County is trying to keep and attract new jobs into the county, which is a great goal! But given our proximity to Charlotte, the number of commuters will be a major factor.

What could the county do to handle this situation?

1) Improve the commute.

Look at smoothing traffic snarls the major arteries that take people into/out of Charlotte on a daily commute. 85 Northbound is a parking lot every day during the evening commute, starting around the Speedway exit. 29 and 49 are marginally better, but with frequent stoplights and events at the speedway, these are not exactly smooth flowing traffic either.

2) Promote Telecommuting

Obviously, this is not a solution for many jobs. However, there are a large number of jobs within Charlotte that could be done on a telecommuting basis, particularly a lot of jobs with some of the Banks, and other similar positions. Of course, we could not make an employer offer telecommuting, but are there things we could do to enable it? Expansion of Broadband Internet Access? Additional Tax Breaks for Home Offices if someone telecommutes regularly?

I’m not sure if these are all feasable, I’m just kind of brainstorming at the moment. Maybe work w/ some of the employers in Charlotte to open satellite offices, where instead of driving all the way uptown, workers could go to a building in Cabarrus county that has “Hotel Cubicles” that they could work from on an as needed basis.

Every car off the roads is less gas spent, and less road development/maintenance the county has to deal with.

3) Mass Transit.

I’m not a huge fan of the CATS/LYNX system as it stands now. I rode 80X from the Speedway Park and Ride into Uptown for about a year. There’s a lot of things that are wrong with the system, and I know it’s under CATS control, not Cabarrus county control. However, this might be something we need to look at working with Charlotte on. But if it was made a more robust and usable system, that might be another option.

There isn’t a lot that the county can do to change the Gas Prices, but we can think now about how to react to it down the road.

If you’ve not called your Mom.  Quit reading this and call your mom.  After that, enjoy this video.

Just a reminder, Race week is coming up soon. Starts with All Star qualifying on the 16th, and goes through the Coca-Cola 500 on 5/25.

So, if you want to get out to the Concord Mills/Speedway end of Concord for anything at all, be sure to do it this weekend so you can avoid the traffic over the following 2 weekends.

Since I started this community blog experiment about a month-and-a-half ago: the results have been phenomenal.

In a little more than one month, traffic has nearly doubled, page views have more than doubled, the number of unique visitors is climbing steadily, and the RSS and e-mail subscriber list is growing.

The quality of the articles have been great and pretty steady. Of about sixty articles that preceded this one, about a dozen were original material from me - the majority were original articles from others and “thread holders” that I put up (many of them from threads on others’ articles) to hold comments that evolved from other discussions.

Speaking of comments, of the 1,500 plus comments left in the 16 months - 1/3 have been left in the past 7 weeks.

All that being said, there was a request about clearing up the guidelines for participating here at the Cheap Seats. Here are the five rules of the Cabarrus Cheap Seats [Read more →]

Race too close to call

Provisional ballots count could change the 2 GOP commissioner nominees

Two Cabarrus County primary races are so close that they may not be settled until elections officials count provisional ballots next week.

School board member Liz Poole led the voting Tuesday in a race to determine the Republican nominees who will compete for two seats on the Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners.

But incumbent Bob Carruth led candidate Holly Blackwelder by only 46 votes for the second slot on the Republican ticket, according to unofficial returns.

[READ MORE…]

And the first person to use the phrase “Dimpled Chad” gets exiled to Mecklenburg county.

More seriously, any idea why 80-90% of the provisional ballots are on the Democrat side, with only 10-20% on the Republican side? Is that normal?

Check this out:

http://www.jibjab.com/originals/what_we_call_the_news

We have all been a little too serious lately…