Big cloverleaf is out, tighter urban interchange is in

To create an attractive gateway to downtown Charlotte, North Carolina, and to serve the future NASCAR Hall of Fame, a 30-acre Interstate highway interchange near the city’s center is being replaced with a more compact urban interchange.
The $21 million project will reduce the interchange’s footprint, make the area accessible to bicyclists and pedestrians, and bring cars and trucks down to “speeds more appropriate for an urban environment,” says Jim Kimbler, a transportation planner in the Charlotte Department of Transportation. The makeover should pay for itself through sales of 12 acres freed for development.
In August 2007 the city, in partnership with the state, began reconstructing several ramps on Interstate 277 and modifying nearby surface streets — largely because NASCAR decided to build its Hall of Fame adjacent to the interchange, a short distance southwest of Charlotte’s center. By the time the hall opens in 2010, the new interchange should be complete.
The interchange was built in 1988 with the large looping ramps typical of suburban and rural expressway connections. Two of the loops are being removed, and a third is being altered. The new interchange will feature a tighter diamond configuration, which “allows the addition of a buffered pedestrian and bicycle path across I-277,” Kimbler says. The changes will improve safety while making the area more aesthetically pleasing. Two one-way streets in the vicinity are being converted to two-way.
The dozen acres of land being made available for development lie between the downtown and the close-in Dilworth and South End neighborhoods. Last May the city indicated that it expected to reap approximately $60 million from selling the land to developers interested in erecting hotels, retail, restaurants, housing, and possibly other kinds of buildings.
The national economic slowdown has temporarily interfered with some of the land sales. Nonetheless, officials believe the interchange project will still generate considerably more money than it will cost. Some of the surplus will be used to contribute $20 million toward construction of the $158.5 million NASCAR hall.
The reconfigured interchange will not be as tight as some older controlled-access roads, like Memorial Drive and Storrow Drive in the Boston-Cambridge area of Massachusetts, but the changes mark a substantial shift for a Sunbelt metropolis where the suburban style of transportation planning had long reigned.
The land has been zoned for “urban mixed-use development.” The City would like to study the entire I-77/I-277 loop around the urban core with the idea making similar improvements, but the state currently has no funds for that purpose.