Good Question Podcast: Who controls the colors of Charlotte’s skyline?

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) - When the sun goes down over the Queen City, the skyline shines bright in different colors.

It makes Charlotte stand out.

So, who controls the skyline lights?

They change colors pretty regularly.

They’ve been pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, rainbow for Pride Month, blue for the Panthers, and the list goes on.

It is always beautiful to see.

But it got us wondering - who controls the color of the skyline?

The short answer is Moira Quinn, who works with Charlotte Center City Partners.

In a nutshell, she’s the liaison for all of the buildings in uptown.

She takes requests and then she brings them to the building owners.

WBTV talked to her about that all falling in her lap on our Good Question Podcast.

She says it started when the Panthers went to the Super Bowl in 2004.

“And we said, ‘Wow, wouldn’t it be great,” Quinn said. “We have a lot of buildings that have these lights on the top. Wouldn’t be awesome if they were all blue like Panthers, blue for when they have the big shots, you know, the nighttime shots on national television because they were doing nighttime games and nighttime shots.

“And we said, ‘That would be so cool,’ and so will they’ll look turn and look to me. They said, ‘Maura, you’ve got the names and lists and the emails for, or at least the phone numbers, all the people who run these buildings, can you call and ask them?’

So if you think back, it was a big, fat hairy deal for these buildings to do this back in the day. It was hard for some of them. They had to for most of them, They were going to change colors. They had to get these big color gels. They had to climb up into the bowels of the tops of their buildings like into the attics of their buildings where the lights were. And they had to put these color gels in front of the windows where the lights were to turn it blue. That’s how they had to do it is a big, fat hairy deal. However, they all said yes.”

So, how do the buildings make the decision to change the colors?

Quinn says there’s a list of Do’s and Don’ts for requesting colors.

And there’s one request she’s been getting a lot lately that she will not do.

We asked her about that in this week’s episode of WBTV’s Good Question podcast.

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