Before the Charlotte City Council voted on I-77 South Monday night, District 6 Council Member Kimberly Owens framed the project as something other than a highway expansion.
"No one on this dais made the decisions that originally prioritized growth and progress over people when these roads originally tore through black neighborhoods," Owens said. "But that doesn't absolve us of responsibility now."
The council took two votes on I-77 South Monday. The first was a non-binding resolution that calls for an independent third-party reevaluation of the corridor and asks NCDOT to pause the draft RFP for toll-lane development until those findings are in. It passed near-unanimously. Council Member Renée Johnson cast the only no vote.
Immediately after that result, Johnson moved to rescind the council's October 2024 approval of the I-77 public-private partnership at the regional level. That motion was the binding action. It drew six votes. It needed more. Mayor Pro Tem James Mitchell Jr., who had publicly committed in April to supporting rescission, reversed and voted no. The Black Political Caucus had asked the council for rescission for three months. Rescission did not pass.
For uptown readers, the takeaway is the gap between what Owens described from the dais and what the council voted to do. The resolution does not compel NCDOT to do anything. The rescission would have directed the city's representative on the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization to seek removal of the P3 approval. Council Members Ed Driggs and Malcolm Graham, who supported the resolution but opposed rescission, argued that pulling out of the P3 would forfeit $600 million in committed state funding and the broader NCDOT relationship Charlotte needs on other state-road projects. The council put the position on the record. It did not take the action.
The same night, the council unanimously scheduled a 150-day data center moratorium, the second time in two weeks this body has pushed back on growth assumptions it once accepted without question. The next I-77 conversation on the council's calendar is an interchange feasibility presentation Thursday. Council Member Victoria Watlington brings an independent evaluation from UNC Charlotte researchers to the transportation committee in early June, before the budget vote.
The full account is in The Charlotte Mercury, including Mitchell's reversal in full and the procedural mechanics at CRTPO. It is also the first major civic vote since Vi Lyles said she will resign June 30.