Big frickin’ surprise.

The Charlotte Business Journal reports that the former Charlotte mayor’s firm will help design the $46m. Uptown building for UNCC, state funds for which were secured by former Speaker and convicted felon Jim Black. More:

The center city campus building will house classrooms, lecture halls, a 300-seat auditorium, faculty offices, an art gallery, an outdoor plaza, a small bookstore and a coffee shop.

Rodgers Builders Inc. of Charlotte will serve as the project’s construction manager. The school is targeting a fall 2010 opening.

Classes planned for the building include the MBA program, continuing education classes, professional/career development seminars in several disciplines and an urban architecture studio. All colleges of the university will teach classes there.

Rodgers Builders, recall, was responsible for turning the $25m. Uptown public library into the $46m. ImaginOn. The UNCC building will be next door to ImaginOn, at Ninth and Brevard, so I guess that makes it OK.

There are hollers in Kentucky with more diverse gene-pools than Charlotte’s business elite.

Bonus Observation: Remember that Gantt filmed a save-the-transit tax TV ad, the transit tax that UNCC needs for Phil Dubois to get his train line between his new Uptown Gantt-designed building and UNCC’s Harrisburg campus.

UNC-W and Coastal Carolina would seem to be naturals.

Of course, the NCAA being the NCAA it is calling the potential new women’s scholarship sport “sand volleyball” so as not to discourage inland schools from trying it. I am not making that up.

Talk about great timing for UNCC’s move to add football. Beach volleyball would be an inexpensive — and dare we say — extremely popular addition to its offerings, one that would help offset the football impact on scholarships for Title IX compliance purposes.

All together now — Rotate!

So Eastland Mall’s owner is walking away from the property and a $42m. balloon payment. Thus the city of Charlotte’s first whack at re-developing the site whiffs.

One of the goals of the city spending $150K for options to buy a couple of mall’s parcels was to entice a buyer to come forward before current owner Gilmcher walked away. That has not worked. I said it would not work.

All that matters now is what the note-holder of the property — the name of which oddly has not been reported by the Uptown paper of record, which means I have to go dig it up — will do next. All the talk of the city having a say in what happens next via the options it holds is irrelevant. What matters is cash.

Lots of it.

Don’t know why this was not a bigger story. The Charlotte Business Journal reports:

Existing-home sales in the Charlotte market fell 29 percent last month to 2,734 from 3,852 in June 2007, according to the N.C. Association of Realtors.

The average sales price dropped 6 percent to $233,670 from a year earlier.

Imagine the impact the Wachvia and US Airways troubles with have on the market going forward. I would expect another 10 percent pullback between now and next year, which will leave Mecklenburg County residents with tax valuations possibly much higher than market value.

I told you this was gonna be fun.

Jeesh, I knew things were tough. But…

A couple in Orlando claims that a local Wachovia branch gave them 10 counterfeit $100 bills when they withdrew $3600 in cash for their wedding. The fakes were caught when the couple tried to deposit the money with —- Bank of America.

Now Wachovia is saying it will not fork over $1000 in real money to replace the fakes because the bank does not know that the fakes came from its branch. Of course. The Secret Service is investigating, trying to figure out what exactly happened.

I sure hope that WB has not replaced its Pick-a-Payment plan with a Print-Your-Own plan. Bob Steel should know only the feds can use that bailout plan.

Bonus Bank Story: One time in DC an ATM spat out a $20 for me that was ripped in half. I marched into the lobby to show a teller what happened and she immediately said that the bill could’ve come from anywhere and the bank would not make me whole. She suggested that people tried to pull this scam before.

Fine, I said. Open up the ATM and you’ll find the other half of the bill. I demanded to see a manager, in a plenty loud tone. By then the bank guard was hovering around, hand on Glock, but the manager must’ve realized that I was not fooling around. Some fits and starts and multiple people later, a guy poked into the guts of the machine and pulled out the other half of the bill.

I gave both halves to the manager and he gave me a fresh, whole $20.

The Uptown paper of record wants to know.

Help ‘em out.

Quite the screaming headline: SEN. JOHN EDWARDS CAUGHT WITH MISTRESS AND LOVE CHILD!

Look, I have no idea what is going on, but unless and until Edwards sues the tabloid it suggests something weird is not being reported by the mainstream media.

Update: Kudos to Jim Morrill using his blog to advance the story. Instead of ignoring the report, Morrill tracked down Enquirer editor David Perel who suggested that there are photos yet to break. And longtime Dem operative Don Fowler correctly spelled out for Morrill the fact that Edwards’ widely sanctified relationship with his wife makes this story especially toxic for Edwards. And his media enablers.

Government-funded activists at the N.C. Justice Center are going after 287-g programs in the state via an incident last month in Alamance County. The first step is a story in the N&O implying that a sheriff’s deputy should not have arrested an illegal immigrant for driving without a license and displaying a false license plate.

Should not have because the woman was traveling with three of her children ages 14, 10, and 6 and another unrelated illegal immigrant man. When the mother was whisked away by the law, the kids were left with the man, who then abandoned them by the side of I-85. Not until some hours later did the father — also an illegal immigrant — of two of the kids arrive from Maryland to pick them up.

I see a patten here, but not the one the Justice Center and a co-opted N&O reporter intend. The theme is irresponsibility. The lefty lawyers at the center want to bury that and play up the notion that the 287-g program endangered kids. Bzzt. Fail.

The mother opted to endanger her kids by her actions. But heaven knows we do not expect citizens to behave responsibly. Why should we treat illegal immigrants any differently?

The guy who signed off on CMPD chief Rodney Monroe’s BA degree is no longer with Virginia Commonwealth University, a Richmond TV station reports. Don’t see that this has been reported in Charlotte yet.

Dr. Jon Steingass served as both the dean of VCU’s University College and the associate dean of the College of Humanities and Sciences. WTVR reported that Steingass was the only VCU official to sign-off on Monroe’s degree application.

Meanwhile, VCU’s president had heart surgery as the school’s investigation in the Monroe Affair continues.

Bonus Idiocy: In an email Mecklenburg County Commissioner Norman Mitchell wonders if our very own commenter dj “might be a racist” for continuing to raise questions about the process by which Monroe was hired.

Update: WTVR reported last night that a second top VCU administrator is also being demoted in connection with the Monroe Affair.

Let’s see, in today’s local section of the Uptown paper of record we have 113 column inches on fountains, local Buddhists, and awards for the paper compared to 3.5 inches on CMS’ No Child Left Behind performance falling by 70 percent since last year.

Last year 61 of 158 CMS schools made “adequate” progress as measured by the feducrats, this year the number dropped to 36 schools.

I’m starting to think CMS does not just have a massive PR department — it must have pictures of editors on the loose in Tijuana.

Update: Here’s a slightly longer take, expanding on the notion that there is nothing CMS can do about the slide.