For some of us, the I-77 overpass at West Trade Street is more than a dividing line between Gateway Village and Beatties Ford Road.

It also has come to symbolize a stubborn divide between black and white, rich and poor, opportunity and despair.

At a Charlotte Chamber event today at Johnson C. Smith University, some of the city’s top political, business and civic leaders met to talk about ways such barriers might be erased, both figuratively and literally.

It’s no secret that JCSU President Ronald Carter has been pushing Qcity leaders to think of the area surrounding his campus more as a vital part of center city.

In his opening remarks, Carter recalled the first time he drove along West Trade, admiring all the business growth and new constructions. It all ended when he reached the I-77 overpass.

And if that weren’t enough, he said, the city’s 2008 Visitors Guide, in a section labeled “Beyond Center City,” made note of Dilworth, Elizabeth, SouthPark, Ballantyne and other affluent neighborhoods… but nothing was said of JSCU or the Beatties Ford Road corridor.

Carter called the I-77 bridge an “intellectual roadblock” that must be overcome if Charlotte is to live up to its aspirations of being a truly diverse place where all can prosper.

“We still persist in socioeconomic silos,” he told the group.

Mayor Pat McCrory was there. He reminded the audience that the I-77 bridge has not always been the symbolic line it is today. It used to be a few blocks east, he said, along Church Street.

More than a decade ago, he said, the area that’s now called Gateway Village was better known for drugs, prostitution and murder. That all started to change when Bank of America began investing heavily in the area. Then later came the Johnson & Wales University campus.

McCrory said he’d like to see the city’s arts and business communities come together to make the I-77 underpass more inviting – maybe install better lighting and artwork to create a passageway like some he’s seen in Europe.

City Council member John Lassiter, a Republican running to replace McCrory, did him one better. Lassiter suggested a complete makeover of the Trade Street/I-77 exchange, something similar to the work being done along I-277 near the NASCAR Hall of Fame museum.

City Council member and Democratic mayoral candidate Anthony Foxx was there, too. While focusing on infrastructure is important, Foxx said, more attention also must be given to poverty and crime.

Foxx showed a series of slides noting that the areas of Charlotte with the highest crime rates also have the heaviest concentrations of subsidized housing. Foxx said city officials are guilty of “benign neglect” of such areas.

“This is personal to me because the future of our city is at stake, he said.

Can something as simple as changing a bridge begin to break down the barriers that divide us by race and class?

Maybe not entirely, but some in the audience suggested that it might be a fine place to start.