CLOUD(CA) NINE

A tour of Meggie Williams’ South End palace for good boys

- ANDY SMITH

About 5,000 apartments—and about 2,500 dogs—reside within a 15-minute walk of 222 Rampart St. in South End, says Meggie Williams. This is partly why she chose this former industrial site—with a climate-controlled 24,000-square-foot indoor space and a 15,000-square-foot outdoor area—for the first Skiptown, an enormous dog park, kennel, and bar that Williams calls “the Whitewater Center for dogs.”

Apartment dogs represent a big chunk of the clientele at Skiptown, which opened in August. Williams knew many of them from another business of hers: a dog-walking service and app called Skipper, now absorbed into the Skiptown brand. Meggie, 32, and her husband, co-founder Sebastian, started their business as The Waggle Company in 2016. She began walking dogs when the pair lived in New York City, before they moved to Charlotte in 2014. The “oasis” they’ve created in South End is meant to meet the needs of busy Charlotteans, “to just tie into people’s routines or lifestyles in a way that gives them this peace of mind, where they can have fun and relax together with their dog or leave town for a few days,” Williams tells me in August, when I visit just hours before a VIP opening. “That’s the vision. That’s what we want to achieve here.”