Downtown wish list is expansive and expensive.

• Position: Charlotte

Charlotte boosters spent more than $700,000--most of it tax money--on a Center City 2020 Vision Plan that focuses on what they want to see downtown but is fuzzy on details of how to get it. Paid for by Charlotte Center City Partners, the city and Mecklenburg County, it's an exercise that's been done every 10 years or so since the 1960s. But this one, according to David Walters, UNC Charlotte professor of urban design, ignores the post-recession reality: "It's not a business-oriented plan except that it is trying to imagine that business will be just like it used to be."

Even the plan's architect has issues with it. For these kinds of plans to succeed, cities must form "implementation teams" to carry out the goals, says urban designer Daniel lacofano, CEO of Berkley, Calif.-based MIG Inc. No such teams are in the works. "They were not within our scope," lacofano says. "I would have liked to have made it our scope."

The City Council will vote on whether to endorse the plan this month, but the action won't be binding. "This is a vision plan for the next 10, 20, 30 years," says Cheryl Myers, Center City Partners senior vice president of planning and development. "Who knows what's going to happen? This is a plan getting ready for that."

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RELATED ARTICLE: THE 2020 VISION PLAN'S 14 PRIORITIES

* A baseball stadium for the Charlotte Knights in the Third Ward

* Develop land between Stonewall Street and interstate-277

* Restaurants, retail and residential projects on West Trade Street

* Additional...