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Each month, we’ll throw a dart at a map and write about where it lands.

LOCATION: WESLEY HEIGHTS 424 S. Summit Ave.

424 S. Summit Ave.

Good Morning, Wesley Heights

Neighbors find their place and each other in a historic neighborhood

FIVE YEARS AGO, Lud Hodges was test-driving a bike on Charlotte’s west side when he rounded a corner and found himself in a little patch of paradise: the intersection of Litaker and Summit avenues in historic Wesley Heights.

A greenway connector sliced through an expanse of clipped green grass next to Frazier Park. Homes from the 1920s and 1930s dotted the leafy streets, but Hodges could still see Bank of America Stadium and the city skyline.

“When I got to right here,” Hodges says, motioning to the intersection’s center, “I just went, ‘Holy cow.’”

It’s before 9 a.m. on a chilly fall Saturday, and Hodges now owns a house less than a block from the spot that took his breath away.

He’s taking his 13-year-old yellow lab, Lucy, for her morning walk when his neighbors, Mark and Alyson Miller, come strolling down the greenway. The Millers are two weeks away from their rst baby’s due date and renovating the historic 1911 Wadsworth Estate they bought in Wesley Heights last year.

They live in the estate’s carriage house with their 9-monthold Rhodesian ridgeback, Chief—a crazy proposition, but one they gure will be worth it when the payback is one of the city’s most distinctive houses, in a diverse, historic neighborhood at the foot of uptown.

“Puppy, baby, house,” Alyson says, smiling as she shakes her head. “We’re like, ‘Why not do it all?’” — Cristina Bolling