Estella Patterson didn’t need more trouble. She’d returned to Charlotte this past December to become our police chief after four years as Raleigh’s, and her schedule filled up like a Tetris board. Reporters wanted to ask her about being Charlotte’s first woman chief. Her employees wanted a strategy to fill a 200-officer staffing shortage. The business community wanted her ideas for addressing crime in uptown. And the city’s immigrant corridors were shaken by November’s erratic border patrol raids.
Then came Dante Anderson, chair of the city council’s safety committee, with something else: Anderson wanted Patterson’s help with a persistent petri dish for crime — the hotels along I-85 and Sugar Creek Road.
For at least a decade, the area’s been a hub for trafficking drugs and weapons and sex. Several neighborhood groups, nonprofits, and business owners have exhausted themselves trying to improve the quality of life there. In 2023, the city purchased the old Economy Inn along Reagan Drive, which had devolved into an open-air drug market, and demolished it for affordable housing…