CHARLOTTE—Interstate 485 is almost finished, and now the final section has a name. The final section, stretching 5.7 miles from Old Statesville Road to I-85, is now officially the H. Allen Tate, Jr. Highway.
“It feels cold to tell you the truth,” said Tate. “But I hope it's going to warm up now that we get this new road open.”
Normally a road naming isn’t such a big deal, but this one's different.
“I came here in 1953, first. And opened my business in 1957, and Charlotte was barely 100,000 people,” Tate said.
“I met Allen 25 years ago. He was a legend then, for the business he had built, through the leadership he had provided to the community through things like his chairmanship of the planning commission in previous decades,” said Charlotte Chamber CEO Bob Morgan.
“An awful lot of what you see around us right now here is his legacy,” said Charlotte Mayor Dan Clodfelter.
The section of highway's not open yet, but it already means a lot to plenty of people.
“We've been waiting a long time for that. It's great to see it finally happen,” Clodfelter said.
“It's a marvelous feeling, but it feels much better if I think of it in the perspective to this is the final section of this road, that we've worked so long, and so hard for,” said Tate.
“Hopefully-- in a couple of short months, we'll no longer be the largest metropolitan area in the United States without a completed outer belt loop,” Morgan said.
“Exciting isn't it? It'll be here for 100 years!” Tate added.
And the way Tate talks, you'd think he will too.
“Somebody delivered to my office this week the next map. It's the outer, outer loop. So as I took this one down, finished, I put the new one up. There's another one to go to,” he said.
“We have a unique situation here in Charlotte. We're a beautiful new city, and there aren't many of those around,” Tate said.