Banking blues hit Charlotte

ByABC News
November 4, 2008, 10:01 PM

CHARLOTTE -- Business has slowed some at Lupie's Cafe, where a home-cooked Southern meal of chicken and dumplings served piping hot with a side of cornbread costs $5.35.

Lupie Duran, owner of the cafe, says her second location in suburban Huntersville, about 15 miles away, has taken an even bigger hit than the original location here.

That, she figures, is because it is in one of the places where many big homes are owned by Wachovia employees whose job security is in question in light of the financial crisis and a proposed merger with Wells Fargo Bank.

"They were already spending more than they had. You could tell," she says.

Duran, 56, hopes her affordable menu will keep her door swinging. But she and her most optimistic customers know that the world economic crisis and the banking industry issues at the center of it mean Charlotte faces an uncertain economic outlook after years of heady growth.

Charlotte, the largest city in North Carolina, saw its population swell from 541,000 in 2000 to 672,000 in mid-2007, according to Census Bureau figures this year. The city added more people in 2007 than all but eight other U.S. cities. The Charlotte Chamber of Commerce reports 7,500 companies, from Ikea to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, have added 69,000 jobs in Mecklenburg County in the past decade.

Much of the job growth has been in banking. Charlotte continues to be second only to New York City as a headquarters for U.S. banks after a month of upheaval, chamber spokeswoman Erica Johnson says.

Bank of America, a Charlotte company that had shed more than 3,000 jobs nationwide in the past year, announced in September it would take over New York's Merrill Lynch for $50 billion.

Weeks later, Wachovia another Charlotte bank saddled with the mortgages that are the seed of the financial industry's problems abandoned a deal with Citigroup and decided to sell itself for $15.1 billion to Wells Fargo.

No cuts have been announced for the city's 20,000 Wachovia workers or the 14,000 at Bank of America. But the possibility hovers over the city.