How Charlotte’s west side became a culinary hot spot
August 30, 2024
The area spanning Wesley Heights and Lower Tuck is a destination for some of the city’s buzziest restaurants — and what’s next.
by Kayleigh Ruller
Destination dining is in full swing. But it doesn’t have to involve long road trips — really, just a quick mile-and-a-half drive from uptown Charlotte.
Charlotte’s west side — the geographical area stretching from Wesley Heights to the Historic West End near Johnson C. Smith University — has emerged in recent years as a hot, flashy, cool-kid area to wine and dine. However, this locale has been on a steady climb since just before 2020.
Westsiders like Restaurant Constance, Counter-, Pizza Baby, Not Just Coffee, Noble Smoke, Pinky’s Westside Grill and Maiz Agua Sal are some of the strongest names in Charlotte’s food-and-beverage scene — and they’re all within a few blocks of each other.
From risk to reward
For restaurateurs, building a hospitality concept in this burgeoning food corridor today seems like a smart, maybe even obvious, choice. However, just two years ago, “it felt very much like a risk,” says Alyson Davis, one of the pioneering restaurateurs in the area. Davis co-owns Wesley Heights’ new Maiz Agua Sal (MAS), along with a trio of South End spots including Lincoln Street Kitchen & Cocktails.
So far, the risk has been worth the rewards: affordability of the adaptive-reuse location in the Lower Tuck development, ample space to be creative, and supportive neighbors. Plus, killer skyline views — a universal draw to the area.
“As long as affordability is there… and the neighborhood is supportive of the risks you’re taking … you can offer something unique to the community,” Davis says. MAS’ semi-experimental offerings: tortillas pressed daily from heirloom masa, mural art along the patio, funky agave cocktails and an impressive lineup of nonalcoholic drinks.
The patio at Maiz Agua Sal, sangria and interior bar. Photographs by Peter Taylor.
Residents of Wesley Heights — largely white-collar workers around 30 years old, according to the latest census — have embraced the new restaurant. Davis has been pleasantly surprised by the amount of young families and locals that have visited MAS since its April debut.
But trendy restaurants often transcend location. Despite being in different parts of town, the clientele at MAS and Lincoln Street — largely younger millennials, couples and even some young families — are similar: Build the culinary hot spot, and Charlotteans will follow. “Rumor on the street is that there will be more restaurants coming, and maybe even some more experiential concepts coming out that way,” Davis says.
Summer is notoriously quiet for restaurants in Charlotte, and while Davis admits foot traffic has been slower than expected, she’s heartened by the reception so far. “It feels like we have been embraced by the community,” she says.
In conceptualizing MAS, neighborliness — by way of minimal overdevelopment and an approachable menu — was a primary consideration.
It has to be, because while revitalization is exciting in many ways, it can’t be separated from the active gentrification happening in the area.
Revitalization meets gentrification
Just the striking increase in both commercial and residential market values in this area over the last five years alludes to the area’s gentrification.
“I think we are well into calling this an established, dense urban area,” says Keely Hines, senior vice president of Foundry Commercial, noting the proliferation of apartments under construction in the neighborhood. The real-estate development firm is repurposing Savona Mill, a century-old former textile mill on the west side, into a retail, hospitality and office hub. Single-family home values have also soared in Wesley Heights, which appeals to millennials and others with its bungalow-lined streets and greenway access.
Alyson Davis and chef Jonathan Olvera at MAS. Photographs by Peter Taylor.
With revitalization comes change, not only for the newcomers, but for the locals who were here long before the recent developments. “I see some people being left behind,” says Sam Diminich, chef-owner of farm-to-table Restaurant Constance in Wesley Heights. “I definitely see elements of capitalism that are very, very sad.”
At Original Chicken ’n Ribs off of Beatties Ford Road, third-generation owner Jermaine Blackmon acknowledges that new business and restaurant growth is exciting. Still, “pricing is driving a lot of the blue-collar workers out of the community,” he says. These adverse consequences of economic and residential development are especially concerning to Blackmon because working-class residents — construction workers, teachers and service employees — and older generations are “the heart and soul” of his clientele — about 90% of his customers, he says.
Younger families are also being affected. “The community used to have a lot of kids in it,” Blackmon says. “And you can see it kind of dwindling down because of the growth.” He sees the change firsthand, as he has provided free lunch for schoolkids once a week every summer.
In service of the neighborhood
Many restaurateurs are mindful of their effect on local communities. “It’s not lost on me what the commercialization of the community has done to the locals,” Diminich of Restaurant Constance says. “What I can control is our intent behind what we do. We stay in service… that’s our job,” Diminich says.
Staying in service, particularly in service of this neighborhood, is markedly poignant for Diminich, because Wesley Heights was where — just 10 years ago — Diminich was unhoused and in active addiction.
Sam Diminich, chef-owner of Restaurant Constance. Photograph by Peter Taylor.
Fast forward to today, Diminich is well into his next chapter: sobriety and owning a restaurant, where he practices “living amends,” a tenet of sobriety and recovery. His living amends are exemplified in the type of reciprocal relationship Diminich has with the neighborhood. He hosts Ben’s Friends, a sober support group, dishes out community-impact meals 365 days a year to treatment centers, and hopes to employ folks in the neighborhood to make meals and mitigate food insecurity in Charlotte.
“What we are trying to do is be a lighthouse of goodwill in Wesley Heights to attract other lighthouses that come in the form of people and businesses,” Diminich says.
All-encompassing change
The life-180 that Diminich experienced happened alongside a similar turnaround on the west side of Charlotte. “It looked a lot different than it does now,”
he recalls.
What’s changed? A sprawl of mixed-use, adaptive-reuse spaces have popped up, like Lower Tuck. Pierce Lancaster of Third & Urban, the developer of Lower Tuck, says the design is strategically “human-scale,” with single-story development and mixed-use warehouse-style buildings.
According to Lancaster, Wesley Heights’ proximity to uptown, its blend of affordability and character, combined with the “texture” that adaptive reuse offers, makes this neighborhood, and this retail center, an appealing location for up-and-coming restaurant projects. The Savona Mill team predicts future breweries and one-off, chef-driven restaurants will be a draw for the extra drive across town.
What place-making is all about
Developers often use the word “place-making” in their conceptualization of retail and hospitality spaces. However, spots like Black-owned Original Chicken ’n Ribs, which opened in the 1950s, were quite literally the original place-makers on Charlotte’s west side.
“Loyal customers remember me as a child, my father as a child,” Blackmon says. His counter-service restaurant is the only remaining Queen City establishment that was in the Green Book, a travel guide used in the Jim Crow era that outlined places where Black people could eat with dignity and travel safely.
Original Chicken ’n Ribs and third-generation owner Jermaine Blackmon. Photographs by Peter Taylor.
As a self-proclaimed foodie, Blackmon is happy to see more sit-down restaurants in a once primarily carry-out area “especially if it’s changing for the better and it’s bringing a positive exposure to our community,” he says.
Simultaneously, he acknowledges that the growth has to be coupled with investment strategies, be that from the immediate community or the city’s stakeholders, into locally-owned businesses that have been longtime neighborhood staples.
What’s next
Witnessing the growth of these sweeping mixed-use developments, new apartments and residential growth firsthand, many people on the ground on the west side — the chefs, neighbors and small-business owners — don’t necessarily want the community to become the next South End, where steep rent has decreased affordability for local businesses and led to a sprawl of corporate chains.
Diminich describes enthusiasm about the area’s growth as “guarded optimism.” Because alongside excitement, there seems to be a genuine care for honoring the legacy of this area while still leveraging the growth to introduce creative, culinary ventures to the city and really put Charlotte’s food scene on the national map.
“The more we grow, the more we can take care of people, which is the original mission,” Diminich says.
In this promising side of town, trendy restaurants and boutique cafes seem to be on everyone’s mind. These are the place-makers. Food spaces have historically shaped the built environment into a connected, vibrant place to live. Today, we see the food scene actively molding the culture of the west side, making it, at this moment, one of the city’s top spots for destination dining. SP
Featured image: The Lower Tuck development in west Charlotte. Photo by Clear Sky Images.
