The South Elm dispute
The City Council will hold a special meeting Tuesday to revisit the question of a proposed new five-story mixed-use building on South Elm Street.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I think it’ll work just fine in that spot.
The council should say yes to incentives for the project and resolve a dispute with neighbors over parking spaces.
And it should to stop trying to conduct such sensitive business after midnight, when most normal human beings are punchy, weary and anything but clear-headed.
Comments (7)
To report abuse of the comment feature on this site, please use the feedback form at the bottom of any page.
Hopefully there will be some zoning issues involved so that some miniscule proportion of the aggrieved neighbors can alter the fundamental rules of democracy, thereby generating cognitive dissonance at N&R world headquarters.
Posted on January 23, 2009 10:00 PM
Hey Allen,
I agree that conducting city business after midnight is a bad idea.
Your suggestions that "The council should say yes to incentives for the project and resolve a dispute with neighbors over parking spaces." is also a bad idea.
When and how would you suggest that the city resolve these real problems?
Do you have any suggestions that would actually help the small property owners with the parking situation downtown? Just saying "resolve the dispute" is not enough.
Downtown Greensboro is not competing with Charlotte, Raleigh or any other city in NC. We are competing with shopping and business centers that have 24-hour free parking.
Think about it.
My suggestion would be to let the merchants join together to either buy or rent the Downtowner's Parking lot from the city and provide parking for our customers. We could withdraw from the current business incentive district which has not been friendly to small (especially daytime) business. This would give us the opportunity to self-rule and self-taxation which we have not had. The details could be worked out without interference from city council members and quasi-judicial non-profit entities who have interests in other areas of the city.
See ya downtown,
diane
Posted on January 24, 2009 3:23 PM
Hey Diane,
I'm assuming you own a business downtown. Why don't you tell your customers that the extra block or two from the parking deck won't kill them. Offer to validate their parking stubs or something.
The end.
Posted on January 24, 2009 6:38 PM
Diane:
You raise some good points. But so does WalkAfewFeet. There is a city deck very near that area.
Elon Law School and Lincoln Financial employees
routinely walk a couple blocks to get to work.
Most of us could use the exercise.
The fact is, downtown will never compete with suburban shopping centers as far as parking is concerned.
Posted on January 24, 2009 11:59 PM
Allen and Walker
There is a difference in employee parking that is all-day parking and customer parking which is usually only a few minutes or a few hours at a time.
There is no good reason to favor one big building over several small ones.
The businesses who took a chance on downtown before it was so popular deserve a break, too.
Nobody gave them a free lot to expand their business.
No other business in the area is allowed to rent space in the parking lot on S. Elm and together they have more employees and customers and residents than this one new guy thinks he will have.
Posted on January 25, 2009 8:40 PM
BTW: Allen,
How close do you park to your office?
Posted on January 25, 2009 8:42 PM
Fair question. About the equivalent of half a block on days when I expect to have outside interviews or meetings. About a block when I don't.
Posted on January 26, 2009 8:57 AM