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April 10, 2006

Heart of the Triad: End of the Charette

So the long week is long over. Here's the story that ran in Saturday's paper. And unfortunately due to a delay, which could not be helped, in getting the info from the planners and some technical issues on the newspaper's part, the maps did not make the print edition. But they're available here and I'll get to a short explanation in a minute. It's a .pdf file and I'd recommend opening it in a new window so you can see the explanation, since there is little in the file.

There's so much info that didn't make the paper last week, for lack of space, that I'll try to put a lot of it in here without repeating too much from the earlier stories. This is the one from early in the week, by the way. And both the Biz Journal and Winston-Salem Journal were out there much of the week, you can find links to their reports, as well as the N&R's, here. I can't link to the one story the High Point Enterprise ran, which was from the first day press conference.

My notes on the four plans, a key to the maps and some other tidbits below the jump.

The key to the maps:
Purple: Employment Districts
Brown: Employment Centers
Dark Red: Town Center
Light Red: Village Center
Dark Blue: Sports stadium
Light Blue: Institutional
Pink: Retail/entertainment District
Dark Green: Wetlands/natural areas
Light Green: Parks and open space
Yellow: Traditional residential neighborhoods and agriculture
Orange: Urban neighborhoods

Black lines are roads. The two lines that converge are Interstate 40 Business (on top) and Interstate 40 (on bottom). The other is U.S. 311 South. N.C. 66 runs north-south through each map near the center. The road on the south side is Sandy Ridge/Squire Davis Road. West Market/Mountain Street runs across the top of the development north of the interstates. Union Cross Road runs north-south on the west side of the maps and the Dell plant is just to its west.

The maps don't distinguish between proposed and existing roads.

The Guilford-Forsyth county line is not shown, but runs on a north-south parallel just east of N.C. 66.

Concept A: This one has the least overall density of development and is the one that Brent McKinney said an early model predicted would bring 85,000 jobs to the Triad once it was built out. During the run through Friday David Taylor, of the consulting firm HDR Engineering, cited this one as having potential for a "Transit Village" in that northeast corner. On this map, the green line is a proposed rail service between Greensboro, Kernersville and Winston-Salem that PART is already working on.

This one also has a town center right in the middle along N.C. 66 -- you'll see that in several of them and its in part because Kernersville, the town that has planning responsibility for that chunk of land, is already planning some retail and business development out that way. Taylor described that area as being a potential "international intellectual assets zone" with a combined campus for area colleges and universities to use.

And like a couple of the plans, this pushes the second employment district (the big purple blobs) outside the Heart of the Triad bounds and partially overtop the Dell plant.

The planning folks seemed to like this one and a few of the residents did too. Several of the residents also didn't like it. I found many of the residents' preferences were understandably based on where they live and having less intense development around their homes, farms, whatever.

This one would make Colfax, at the intersection of Bunker Hill Road and Mountain Street East, the core of a new urban area.

Concept B: This one is more intense and uses a "grid" road network. UNCG's Keith Debbage, who is helping the consultants, said the grid network would be beneficial in moving people north and south while keeping the developments close to major roads, i.e. the employment districts near Dell and between the interstates.

hat second large north-south road is one that is being planned to connect I-40 to U.S. 311 and then hook-up with a road the High Point Metropolitan Planning Organization has long-planned called the "Westside Thoroughfare" that would run down through the the city's future growth area in northeast Davidson County. That could end up being a major source of workers for Heart of the Triad businesses, Debbage said.

I also ran into a few folks who favored this plan because it looks to keep a fair amount of open space.

Colfax would have a village center and employment district right near that main intersection, with this one

Concept C: This one pushes a lot more of the intense development to the center and the south edge, which would be north High Point. Sandy Ridge Road and Squire Davis Road would get a couple of village centers and urban neighborhoods. This one has a meandering "Parkway"-type road running north and south -- the one that looks like a sideways "S". That same road will show up on D. Taylor described that center development area as potentially being the heart of a recreational and amateur/professional sports district, with a stadium. He said that employment district between the interstates could be a "specialized manufacturing" area.

Nobody, I talked to particularly preferred this one over the others, but by no means were my conversations a scientific sampling.

The main crossroads of Colfax would get the least amount of development with this one. And a lot of development would be concentrated on Union Cross.

Concept D: This one shares the "parkway" with concept C. Several people I talked with didn't like the way the "urban" neighborhoods (the orange splotches) followed it in the southwest corner. This one has the retail district (the pink spot) right-off I-40 before the split and makes Colfax a "town center."

This one is similar to C in many respects. There's a high concentration of development near Dell and Union Cross and there is a fair amount along Sandy Ridge Road and Squire Davis Road.

On to other things: The week wasn't without it's difficulties. During the Wednesday public meeting, Jimmy Clinard took the chance to chastise members of the steering committee and the consultants because he did not know, was not informed, about a meeting especially for property owners the night before (Tuesday).

Earlier that same day, Taylor had expressed concern that of 45 attendees at that property owners meeting, 45 were from Colfax. That means none from Union Cross or other parts of eastern Forsyth. For that reason, he said they intend to schedule another property owners meeting in the future to gain input from those folks.

Also as the topic of sports came up as a possible industry to locate in Heart of the Triad it became a prime example of how difficult this thing will be to get all six local governments on board.

There was some brief discussion of trying to lure the ACC headquarters out there, of possibly building a coliseum that could compete for ACC basketball tourneys and other events, and of maybe building a PGA-level golf course to move the Greater Greensboro Open (or whatever they call it these days) out there. Greensboro Councilwoman Sandy Carmany immediately pointed out that the city is proud to have the ACC, the coliseum and its tournaments and that she didn't think that was going to fly.

The end result: the stadium talked about Friday night was Major League Soccer, and not a coliseum. That's a whole other discussion that could be interesting -- could MLS make it in the Triad?

And during the elected officials session on Monday, Winston-Salem councilman put it pretty succintly when he asked "What's in it for Winston-Salem?" He went on to ask, how does he explain to his constituents how this benefits them. It might be a tough sell and that question remains to be answered.

And for some opinions on Heart of the Triad you can check here, here and here.

Well, that's probably enough to spark some discussion. Even after that long post, I still feel like there's a lot left out there I could write about.

Posted by Jonathan Jones at April 10, 2006 4:34 PM