Oh dammit Phat Burrito, not you too
A small burrito joint that brought a little soul to Charlotte’s South End is closing, and you already know why.
A small burrito joint that brought a little soul to Charlotte’s South End is closing, and you already know why.
There are, by my estimate, nearly 150 places that will sell you a burrito in Charlotte including (big shrug) Taco Bell. But I swear to you, none of them made my cheap ass happier than Phat Burrito. If I had lunch there, I was still full enough hours later to skip dinner.
Phat Burrito’s closing for good on Saturday, and the owner says he’s a victim of development. Most notably, the vacant lot across the street is finally being turned into something new and shiny, and since that’s where most people parked, his customers have slowed to a trickle. Since 1998, when Phat Burrito opened, South End’s development has been akin to a pot boiling over. First came the cool businesses, then the light rail line was built right behind the restaurant, then came the apartments, then the millennials, and then, ostensibly, higher rents. The property Phat Burrito sits on is worth four times as much as it was 20 years ago. Building permits in its neighborhood are nearly 10 times higher than the rest of the county.
It’s easy to have a knee-jerk reaction that’s akin to WHY MUST EVERYTHING COOL DIE, STUPID DEVELOPERS, but, I mean, what did you expect? Whenever a neighborhood gets some sort of alternative cool in Charlotte, people go there, and then it becomes a thing, and then developers move in, and then there’s no place to park. People in Plaza Midwood have been complaining about this for as long as I can remember. Because, thanks to The Penguin, it happened there too.
Same with NoDa. And South End. And it will happen again, ostensibly in some neighborhood that we don’t know about yet. (Looking at you, Oakhurst.) And in all the cases, the things that made those neighborhoods cool are really no longer there. Plaza Midwood lost The Penguin and Repo Records. NoDa lost Fat City Deli. Elizabeth just lost the Double Door Inn and will probably lose Jackalope Jack’s as well. These are convenient Patient Zeros, and they’re not the only reasons why the neighborhoods around them took off, but they’re the ones that provided a little soul. When they’re gone, you look around and realize the place where you are looks nothing like the place you used to go.
I was in NoDa in 2014 for a story, and talked to a woman who owns a store that sold $8,000 paintings, but also sold $20 t-shirts because she didn’t sell a lot of $8,000 paintings. She moved her shop there from Plaza Midwood in 2010 because the rent went up there and corporations and chains started pushing small independent businesses out. It was half the price in NoDa then, so she moved. Now that Charlotte’s extended its light rail line from Uptown to University City, and when two stations open up on 36th Street and Sugar Creek Road later this year, people in NoDa expect the rents to go up again. What happens then? Would she leave? Where would she go? “I don’t know” she said, shrugging. With all of the development happening, new apartments and new storefronts, it’s getting to be that only restaurants and bars can make it there. And if that’s the case, NoDa will change again, the last of Charlotte’s truly eclectic neighborhoods until another one becomes better, cleaner, safer and busier.
This is not merely Charlotte’s problem. A few months ago, I was in West Asheville, which Thrillist calls “North Carolina’s Brooklyn.” The people who live there are fiercely trying to protect their little enclave at all costs. Housing prices there have doubled over the last 15 years. The businesses, with a few exceptions, are all small ones, and if they don’t own their own property, their rents are going up. People there are furiously vetting outsiders. For instance, Ace Hardware is okay. New Belgium had to work hard to win them over. But development is spreading out from downtown and heading their way. You can see it closing in from the other side of the French Broad River, where new apartments are sprouting up above the treeline. “A rising tide lifts all boats,” one of the city’s economic development guys told me for an upcoming story. “But you don’t want the tide to carry the boats away.”
So, anyway, Phat Burrito. I never walked in there and thought to myself, “oh, thank you for being the anchor of this neighborhood.” I just liked the burritos. The salsa was great. The price was right. I enjoyed the people and the atmosphere. It was different. And now it’s going away, because as we all know, the more things change, the more things become the same.