It was never my intention to hinder the building of a Greensboro performing arts center but I feel it only appropriate to tell the story of how one city (Greensboro, North Carolina) has long used downtown development as a means to enrich the lives of a few downtown businesses and developers at the expense of an entire city.
I suspect the same in other cities across America and around the world.
I won't argue against the idea that cities like Greensboro, known for its urban sprawl in the midst of a 400 mile long corridor of sprawl that runs from Raleigh, North Carolina to Atlanta, Georgia, needs to increase its density before expanding its footprint-- it does need to do so-- but I think it also needs to be remembered that while downtown developers are using increased density and urbanization as their reasoning behind promoting downtown, these same developers, lead by a mayor who is a partner in one of the largest commercial real estate firms in the Southland, are working to expand water and sewer to areas that are 10 miles beyond the Greensboro City Limits and continuing the expand the sprawl while the City of Greensboro continues to hold almost 2000 acres of unused and underutilized properties in the northeast corner of the city. There are also over 2000 acres of undeveloped East Greensboro commercial and industrial properties that are privately owned.
If I were the owners of these properties on Ward Road and East Wendover I would be rethinking my contracts with NAI Piedmont as they are currently promoting 10,000 acres of development outside the city that competes with the very properties I own and doing so at mine and other taxpayers' expense. The same is true for any Greensboro property owner who lists their properties with Mayor Perkins' NAI Piedmont commercial real estate firm. Competing with your customers is always shady business. But then, I don't own said properties so I'll not make that decision.
Promoters of a downtown performing arts center will tell you that a city must grow, starting from its center and working its way out. But if that is true then why has the City of Greensboro repeatedly annexed and expanded its borders without addressing its empty spaces within, as Greensboro has done for the last 100 years? There is a level of responsibility that goes along with annexation and to date, under the leadership of Mayor Perkins and the development czars before him, that responsibility has never been met.
People like to insist that cities grow from the inside out but that simply isn't true of most of the world's greatest cities. Most great cities began at or near a river, ocean, lake or mountainside and work their way away from the thing that holds back their expansion. And yet, Greensboro, which has no river, has spent the last 55 plus years growing away from an obstacle of their own making then asking, no, demanding, that taxpayers bail out the downtown their taxpayer funded expansions have destroyed.
It's time this ended once and for all. Using public monies to ramp up downtown businesses while at the same time, using public monies to expand the foot print of Greensboro and increasing its urban sprawl, must stop. It's simply not sustainable by liberal, conservative, environmental or economic standards.
If a performing arts center must be built then the only right thing to do is to build it in the little green circle in Northeast Greensboro and forever end this unsustainable expansion.
Continue reading article #76. Greensboro Downtown Performing Arts Center Community Forums.
