A big part of the QC’s Official Development Scheme —- as Meck Deck puts it — is kaput. The Home Depot Design Center and its surrounding retail development– aka The Metropolitan — was supposed to let the world know that Charlotte was down with the New Urbanism, but all it did was bottleneck a major corridor between downtown Uptown and Myers Park. Now they’ve got vacant anchor space that could stay that way for a while. And do I even need to mention the fact that Charlotte and Mecklenburg County offered up to $17 million in tax breaks for the developer?

The official excuse is the store opened just as Charlotte’s housing market was imploding —admittedly bad timing. But in my mind, we now have the answer to a burning question: Who the hell wants to walk to Home Depot? Evidently nobody.