A lot of people have long hoped we'd see a grocery store move into the abandoned Bessemer Shopping Center. The City of Greensboro bought the shopping center with "intentions" of doing just that but long before the City spent our tax dollars to buy the shopping center, Greensboro City Councilwoman, Goldie Wells, who represented the district at the time, said in a 2004 News & Record article.
"Goldie Wells, a neighborhood activist who has worked to recruit another store for the shopping center , said locating stores in west Greensboro is a form of invisible racism that makes just about everything a struggle. Residents without a car can either pay much more for food at a convenience store or spend money and time to take a bus or taxi to another part of town to shop ."
This was before the City of Greensboro bought the Bessemer Shopping Center in what was supposed to be a bailout that would bring a grocery store back to the shopping center. She knew then it wasn't going to happen but voted to allow the City of Greensboro to buy the empty shopping center.
The grocery stores aren't coming because they believe crime in the area is too high. Let downtown Greensboro get their Trader Joe's and give the Randall Jarrell Performing Arts Center to East Greensboro as an anchor that shows potential merchants and restauranteurs that Greensboro is committed to making East Greensboro a safe neighborhood where businesses want to build their shops.
That's how you get a grocery store to come.
I finished the count today. There are 40 empty, condemned and abandoned homes within 0.3 of a mile of the Bessemer Shopping Center site with the vast majority lying in the southern half of the circle. Nothing north of the shopping center would need to be touched to build any size performing arts center and commercial district that would follow. Most of these homes are "either abandoned or are substandard rental properties and several have been condemned by the City of Greensboro." Who in the neighborhood would want to stand in the way?
Nobody, that's who. The people living here want change and it can't come too soon.
There is no portion of downtown Greensboro that displays more urban blight or has more problems than the little green circle in Northeast Greensboro. It's time Greensboro's leadership made and kept their commitment to rid our neighborhood of this blight and that will never happen as long as downtown comes first.
After all, it was the Greensboro City Council that caused the problem in the first place, it's the Greensboro City Council's job to fix it.
Continue to article #29 Greensboro Performing Arts: The People Who Call The Shots
