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.”
This story is from the November 2020 edition of Charlotte Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the November 2020 edition of Charlotte Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
‘This Is How We're Going to Make Your Child Better'
Pediatric neurosurgery is technically and emotionally complex—and traditionally dominated by men. As Novant’s first female pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr. Erin Kiehna Richardson has had to learn the intricacies of a demanding field and battle sexism along the way
The Dumbledore of CMC
A surgery resident wrote a series of children’s books and created a special kind of medical magic
LGBTQ HB2+5
Five years after the furor of House Bill 2, the LGBTQ community—in Charlotte, in North Carolina, and across much of the nation—fights attacks on new fronts
Oh, Snap!
New ‘selfie museum’ in Concord celebrates the 1990s
ALLISON LATOS
The WSOC anchor on her hard trek from one episode of loss and grief to another—and the meaning of resilience
GOOD HEALTH
For years, Charlotte has been one of the largest American cities that lacked a four-year medical school. The health care professionals who finally made it happen overcame a series of setbacks, false starts, and failures, and they plan to use their clean slate to create a new kind of community asset
Summer Partee
From woodwork to retail, the kindergarten teacher-turned-designer has learned how to do it herself
Uptown or Downtown?
Archives illuminate how long we’ve argued over the perennial question
NOW OPEN NOVEL ITALIAN
Paul Verica brings a simpler version of the city’s hottest food trend to NoDa
TOP DOCTORS 2021
The annual list you can't without