A key asset neglected?
Thursday's editorials.
A corner of the city so desolate it once resembled a war zone has been swept into a pile of brick and metal.
South Elm/Lee Street is targeted for long-overdue redevelopment but first the old buildings that stood there had to be cleared. Now the site has to be scraped clean of chemical contamination, with the help of a federal grant.
Good riddance. It was a lousy gateway to an up-and-coming downtown, like holding an open house with a rusty pickup truck in your front yard.
If city planners get what they’re hoping for, the craggy eyesore will be transformed into shops and residences. As for the rest of Lee Street and High Point Road, a corridor study is in the works. But some area merchants question whether the city is moving urgently enough. They’ve presented a petition to the City Council expressing concern “about the slow pace of progress.”
They asked that the city “promptly take steps to improve the safety, appearance and functionality of this important commercial corridor.” And they specifically requested increased police presence, streetscaping, a public/private initiative to revitalize the area and an action plan that would address the old Canada Dry property, which is, in part, owned by the wife of News & Record Editor John Robinson.
High Point Road never has been a garden spot, but it has become especially, well, seedy in recent years. Trudy Wade, one of three council members whose district the corridor spans, says the prostitutes there are so commonplace merchants “know some of them by name now.”
Meanwhile, the new Doubletree Hotel and Four Seasons Station, a 21-acre shopping center in progress, are hopeful signs. Even a competitor, Steve Showfety of the Koury Corp., which owns the Sheraton Four Seasons, sees the Doubletree as good news. “We are so anxious for it to be successful,” Showfety said Wednesday.
There also is some talk of the city buying the infamous Coliseum Motel and reselling it for development.
In addition, the City Council has discussed buying the old Canada Dry property beside the Greensboro Coliseum and remaking it into an ACC Hall of Champions. Given its overall price tag, that site seems better left to private developers. The council ultimately will make the call, but clearly something has to happen on the lot. For now, Showfety said, “it is a terrible representation of High Point Road.”
One viable solution that has worked downtown is turning the corridor into a special tax district whose revenues would be reinvested into that area.
Meanwhile, the Lee Street portion of the corridor could benefit especially from UNCG, which has little room to stretch in any other direction. It makes perfect sense for the university to expand onto Lee Street, where private developers already have built apartments aimed at student tenants. And it is encouraging that UNCG staff members already have met several times with city officials about the corridor’s redevelopment. UNCG needs the space. The Lee Street/High Point Road area needs the growth.
In a challenging economy, of course, city leaders shouldn’t spend willy-nilly. But High Point Road and Lee Street cast less-than-flattering reflections on the rest of Greensboro. Further, they are assets worth protecting and enhancing, boasting a total tax value in 2007 of $882 million. And significantly, Koury Corp., which owns much of the area’s real estate, is a formidable and apparently willing corporate partner.
Ideally, the city will till the ground there sooner rather than later and private interests will plant the seeds.
... and while they're at it ....
Some other unfinished business on the city’s to-do list are three promising but stalled projects, these in east Greensboro:
Murrow Station. The planned mixed-use project along Murrow Boulevard would break new ground and shatter old stereotypes. Development-starved east Greensboro would benefit, as would downtown, whose footprint would creep, finally, beyond the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks that have symbolized the dividing line between white and black. But it may take city and county incentives to happen.
The Aycock Historic District. One of the city’s most cohesive and unique neighborhoods brims with the kind of community spirit and social capital the rest of the city craves. The area’s bottom-up plan for revitalization would fit nicely with Murrow Station, which would become a neighbor.
The old Postal Center on East Market Street. The House of Prayer for All People has bought the property and the East Market Street Development Corp. commissioned a study on how best to refocus the site. But little has happened since. The national church, in whose hands the site’s fate lies, has new leadership and is taking a new look at what to do there. “It’s our understanding that the church has employed an architect out of Portsmouth, Va., to develop a master plan for the site,” East Market Street Development Corp. President Mac Sims said. This has been a privately driven initiative, but it may need a gentle nudge from the city, Action Greensboro or east Greensboro leaders. Or all of the above.