THE GOOD LIFE
NEVIN QUICK FACTS AREA: 1,514 acres POPULATION: 4,947 MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME: $38,171 (Mecklenburg County average: $66,641) RACIAL BREAKDOWN: 62% Black; 16% Hispanic/ Latino; 12% white; 7% Asian; 3% other WHY “NEVIN”? The Wardins, one of the community’s founding families in the 1880s, chose the traditional Irish name in tribute to their ancestors, according to former community organization president Jean Davis Burris. The name was fully established in 1891 with a post office on Statesville Road.
NEIGHBORHOODS
Spotlight: Nevin The ‘little secret area’ 4 miles from uptown that looks curiously like the country
BY GREG LACOUR | PHOTOGRAPHS BY HERMAN NICHOLSON
NEVIN, A HISTORIC NEIGHBORHOOD 4 miles due north of uptown, can leave you mildly disoriented. Better-known Charlotte neighborhoods, especially these days, proclaim their identities loudly, often with prominent specimens of what advocates and urban planners refer to as “signage.” In Nevin, depending on which part you’re driving or walking through, you’re not sure whether you’re in the city, the country, a suburb, a forest, or what. You may not even know you’re in a distinct community called Nevin. “It’s definitely a little secret area,” says Theresa McDonald, a member of the area’s community organization who also works there as a real estate agent. “It’s kind of a little pocket, right?” says Pamela Glass, who drives in from Lincoln County to work there. “It’s a sleepy community,” adds Mary Huntley, who’s lived there for 26 years. “It’s got its own kind of slowness to it, and I like that.” Nevin is one of a few Charlotte neighborhoods—Derita, immediately to the
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southeast, and Newell, a few miles east, off Old Concord Road, are others—where the roiling river of Charlotte’s growth seems to have eddied; where you can get lost in the mixed Piedmont hardwoods of RibbonWalk Nature Preserve or pass the old farmhouses along Gibbon Road and easily forget you’re a few miles from the middle of the 15th-largest city in the United States. The illusion doesn’t last, of course. Soon enough, you come across Harrison Trace, a development of 85 rental homes under construction on Gibbon, near Nevin Road; or new affordable units going up on Cochrane Drive, just across Statesville Road from the neighborhood’s southwestern edge. And inevitably, you catch a glimpse of the skyscrapers of uptown to the south, close enough to lend the illusion that you could hit them with a well-thrown rock. The signs of new development are creeping rather than rushing in, although residents can see where this all is going. “I would say we’re on the cusp of some gentrification because of the location,
Sources: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer; Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission; U.S. Census Bureau
(Above) Kids enjoy the sprayground on a hot summer day at Nevin Community Park. Pamela Glass (below) drives from Lincoln County to work in Nevin.
