Fast-talking Manhattan-transplant Rob Walsh hustles through uptown Charlotte on a spring-like winter day, taking a break to pop into a real-estate office. The agent he wants to see is out, so Walsh leaves his own brand of calling card. He dumps dozens of Hershey’s kisses out of the agent’s crystal candy dish and hides them in a plastic grocery bag, leaving just a torn wrapper and a Post-It note. "I came, I saw, I conquered — ALL the candy."

These days, Walsh, who runs Charlotte Center City Partners, is conquering his fair share of development deals, too. Not that uptown Charlotte has been a hard sell for Walsh’s economic-development group. In the last 10 years, businesses have injected $5 billion into less than two square miles of asphalt bordered by loop road I-277. Many of the skyscrapers that pierce the city’s glimmering skyline have gone up since 1990. And the latest high-rise under construction, the 46-story Hearst Tower, is already leased up, partly because the office-vacancy rate uptown is one of the lowest in the country, at just 1.7 percent. "The amount of growth here is incredible," Walsh says.

Blessed in the 1990s with liberal statewide banking laws, Charlotte blossomed into the country’s number-two banking mecca, behind New York City. In the process, its top players, Bank of America and First Union, gobbled up smaller banks across the country, including two of Richmond’s key institutions, Signet and Sovran. Signet fell to First Union, and Norfolk-based Sovran, which maintained a high-level presence in Richmond, was bought by NationsBank before it merged with San Francisco’s Bank of America to create the nation’s second-largest bank. Meanwhile, North Carolina’s loose annexation laws have allowed the city to expand easily — taking in the crucial tax base that cities like Richmond don’t have the legal means to capture. Top all this off with the progressive politics and the can-do optimism of a few key corporate leaders, and you have one of the biggest urban success stories in the South.

Banking is at the heart of its boom. Fittingly, Bank of America’s 60-story tower dominates the city’s skyline with shining spires that Richmond novelist Patricia Cornwell once called "organ pipes playing a hymn to the god of money." People here worship that god. Ask them where they work and they say simply, "The Bank." Together, it and First Union, the nation’s sixth-largest bank, are the engines that drive this city. "Our banks were aggressive; they learned how to make acquisitions," says Tony Plath, a banking professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. "Anybody big in Virginia, we bought." That growth also drew software companies, law firms and a plethora of financial services.

Meanwhile, North Carolina’s urban-friendly annexation laws kept nearly all the sprawl within city limits. While suburban flight has left many Virginia cities bleeding, there’s little escaping the city of Charlotte. "You may flee, but the city will just come out and get you again," says Bill McCoy, who runs the Urban-Studies Institute at UNC-Charlotte. In 10 years, the city has grown from 174 to 234 square miles, leaving plenty of breathing room for business. North on I-85, you’ll find University Research Park, a sprawling green field that employs at least 20,000 workers, mainly in software companies and call centers from Microsoft to IBM. Just south of the city, there’s Southpark — a trendy spot teeming with new office buildings, upscale apartments and chic shopping. Phillips Place is a wealthy shopper’s dream in pale yellow and peach stucco, featuring a Dean and Deluca grocery and the boutique Via Veneto, where you can buy $195 Italian leather sandals to match a $1,300 suede dress.

The heart of Charlotte is downtown, or uptown as the locals call it. Nearly 70,000 work here, and 7,000 live here. This post-World War II city has bulldozed and paved over whatever history it had. There’s no Monument Avenue, no Shockoe Slip, no profusion of history museums and cultural institutions that make Richmond distinctive. "We’re kind of a soulless place," McCoy admits." We’re a business place — that’s what the soul is." But that’s changing. City power brokers recruited Walsh here four years ago after he helped redevelop Union Square in New York City. Already, he’s thinking parks, sidewalk cafes, a trolley, public artwork and street vendors. "I think we’re going from a cycle of viable to livable and now to memorable," Walsh says. If charm can be bought, Charlotte will find a way.

The men who brought Walsh here have brought just about everything else. Hugh McColl at Bank of America, Ed Crutchfield at First Union, and the late Bill Lee of Duke Energy were so powerful that locals knew them as "The Group." They championed the city’s NFL franchise, the Carolina Panthers, and the development of the uptown business district. "It went beyond the letterhead," Walsh says. "This was a roll-up-the-sleeves, get-it-done town." Their spark attracted young professionals, who now pack the streets and crowd the bars. "Charlotte has juice, it’s got an edge," says Curt Johnson, a journalist who writes about the livability of cities. "There’s something there that draws people. Maybe it’s just this high-flying attitude about being able to build bigger business than anybody thought was possible." Sure, Charlotte’s a brash upstart, but its progressive politics — dating back to civil rights in the 1960s — helped forge it into a premier city of the New South. Racial unrest was simply bad for business, white professionals reasoned, so they started taking black people to lunch counters. "It’s a welcoming place," McCoy says.

Still, it’s not going to be easy for the next generation. With McColl stepping down and Crutchfield already retired, The Group’s a thing of the past. In its place are more people from more backgrounds creating more controversy — disagreement over where to build a new arena for the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets is the latest bee in some bonnets. "You just don’t get that consensus anymore," Plath says. In any case, there are no easy solutions for the problems created by sprawling, boom-town growth. Housing is among the least affordable in the Southeast, while traffic congestion is getting worse. Meanwhile, the banks that built the city are laying off workers as the economy slows. The economy remains vulnerable to manufacturing slow-downs.

But McCoy and Plath are hopeful that high-tech software spin-offs will give Charlotte a new niche. "What we don’t know yet is what is the industry that’s going to provide the next jump," McCoy muses. "Banking did the 1990s. What about this decade? Have we got something else that’s going to fill that gap?" Folks here are banking on it.