- Yeah.

Here's one East Side project that is pretty hard to miss.

It's the seven story Irvin Building, which towers over Independence Boulevard.

Drivers on Independence can see the sixties architecture from the outside as they drive by, but how about what's happening on the inside?

(uptempo piano music) Seven floors up, here's a view of uptown you don't see very often.

Nothing between you and the skyline beyond these old brick walls, and not much within these walls either, as the Irvin building gets a major makeover end-to-end, and top to bottom too, as workers on ladders install new duct work in the ceiling.

They're also framing in new halls and walls with new doors, and new floors, slowly returning 40377 East Independence Boulevard into what it used to be.

Not just another address, but a destination.

(camera snapping) Back in 1964, the Irvin Building was the first skyscraper east of uptown.

(camera snapping) Developer, Charles Irvin, building an anchor for the new suburbs, and suburban shopping centers that were also growing in Southeast Charlotte.

(camera snapping) But as Independence Boulevard changed, so did the Irvin building, including a name change to the Varnador building instead.

(camera snapping) And, when those once popular nearby stores started closing their doors, (camera snapping) well that's when the former Irvin Building became a seven floor eyesore.

(camera snapping) These photos from the historic Landmarks Commission pretty much tell the story.

(camera snapping) Seven stories of broken glass and battered office space, boarded up on the outside, but still overrun by trespassers on the inside.

All the way to the building's rooftop.

(car zooms by) Today, that same rooftop is getting ready for a new bar and restaurant.

And here's what all those new offices at the Irvin Building will look like too.

(car zooming by) Drivers whizzing by on Independence Boulevard also can't help seeing this giant, digital billboard outside the building.

But here's something you might miss, behind the building, and just barely visible to all that passing traffic.

It's a new 200 foot hidden mural linking the Irvin Building's future with its past.

- The Irvin building is the anchor to this wall.

We decided to put his portrait as the, as the beginning of the mural.

And, so because I'm a portrait artist, I got to paint him.

(laughing) Well that was my little touch.

- [Jeff] We're walking and talking about the mural with the two artists who created it.

Eva Walker, and Hilary Siber Edwards.

- Well, the overall concept was that we would celebrate the history of the city of Charlotte through its skylines.

(gentle piano music) We called out the 60's, the 80's, the 2000's, and then the 2020's and beyond.

(gentle piano music) As Charlotte continues to evolve and change, we want the mural to celebrate that.

(gentle piano music) The color palettes along with the city skylines from each of the decades that we celebrate.

(gentle piano music) So in the sixties you see more mid-century type styles.

And then as we kind of move into the 80's and 2000's, you see more of the celebration of the skyscrapers and the night scenes, and kind of a more lively- - And of course you get assigned to work, right?

Right.

(laughing) Nice and big.

- [Jeff] Yep.

Everything about this mural is nice and big, including the six week commitment it took the artists to paint it.

♪ Just feel the motion While getting to know the new mural's East Side neighbors in the process.

- Yeah, we had a meeting with one of the women from the Neighborhood Association that's right back here.

And she was really excited to see some dignity brought into this place, and just a sense of ownership that it gives the community.

- [Jeff] That sense of ownership also includes many mural memories that all of Charlotte shares.

Places like Charlotte's original coliseum, and it's still surviving landmark dome, and faces like Dorothy Counts, one of four students from Charlotte's earliest days of landmark desegregation.

- So we wanted to pay tribute to her, especially during the 60's, even though that was late 1950s.

But we just felt like she's a iconic image, so we wanted to include her.

- Very much part of the city's history during the period of this building's history.

- Right.

Right, right.

- It's a shame that those cars passing by don't see this when they see the building.

- So yes, it is a smaller locale that sees it, even though it's right next to 74, but in that way it's kind of a jewel that you have to go out and seek.

- It's the same story for other East Side Charlotte projects.

You have to go out and find them.

Slowly coming online after years of waiting by East Side neighbors.

At the old Eastland Mall property on Central Avenue, you can't see the uptown skyline from ground level, but you can see the first housing developments finally rising out of that ground.

The Eastland Yards project will also include new shopping and restaurants, and eventually a new recreation complex.

(crowd cheering) And while the Charlotte FC soccer team won't have its headquarters at Eastland Yards as originally promised, the soccer team's new practice facility did relocate elsewhere in East Charlotte, to this new complex in Monroe Road, with a training center and practice fields, and a no cost youth soccer academy that will share those fields with the pros, which sort of brings us back to the East Side's hidden and historic new artwork.

- Like how do you end this mural?

- The artists, pointing out that there are more empty walls, more blank canvas to work with here.

(beeping) The Irvin Building mural itself, may be more of a work in progress, just like Charlotte's East Side.

- That suggestion of the future.

'Cause this is the 2020s and and beyond, and I love that, just that glitched edge that suggests what's to come.

- We're not finished.

Yeah.

(gentle piano music) - By the way, you saw those photos we showed you a moment ago of just how rough it was inside the Irvin Building before this renovation and restoration project began.

Well actually there's still plenty inside worth saving, including the original 1960's terrazzo and tile, and many other architectural details from the mid-century modern era that still survive into this century.