While Mayor Perkins and the Piedmont Triad Partnership are talking about extending Greensboro's water and sewer lines to the Alamance County line to help sell commercial properties owned by Mayor Perkins' buddies, the folks in Montgomery and Moore Counties are already 5 years ahead in building a 3400 acre Mega Park-- said to be the largest industrial park in the history of North Carolina.
Does that sound smart to you?
Meanwhile, the 2500 acre North Carolina Global Transpark established by the State of North Carolina over 20 years ago, still has 5,775 empty acres. And the GTP has railroad access, 2 Interstate highways it's own airport capable of handling the largest airplanes in the world, State funded incentives and 900 acres ready to move to today.
And to add insult to injury, in East Greensboro alone, over 2000 acres of undeveloped commercial and industrial properties lie unused with water and sewer already in place. If you'd like a tour shoot me an e-mail to GreensboroPerformingArtsCenter@gmail.com and I'll arrange it. In my younger days I used to hunt and fish those very properties.
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I bring this up because Mayor Perkins and his developer buddies are the current "leadership" of Greensboro and Guilford County and have repeatedly tried to develop outlying areas of the county while ignoring infill development as was made the City's development policy several years ago. Previously, Mayor Perkins was pitching Greensboro taxpayers' dollars be spent to develop the Heart of the Triad-- a 7.500 acre site on the western edge of the county.
Meanwhile, the industrial park at I-85 and Mcconnell Road, built by Mayor Perkins and paid for by Pete Goria, has 2 buildings and 1 tenant. The Eagle Equipment building across Mcconnell Rd. was built by my uncle in 1970. I used to hunt and fish there as well.
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Greensboro-- especially East Greensboro-- is filled with empty commercial and industrial properties that already have access to city water and sewer and yet all the Mayor and his cronies are interested in are developing downtown and the farthermost reaches of the county. Why? Because they own the land and they want to develop it with taxpayer's dollars. Have we forgotten that Mayor Perkins was a partner in the Shoppes at Gunter’s Crossing? Private developers no longer want to deal with Robbie Perkins because he has a history of loosing clients' monies so Mayor Perkins plans to waste your money instead.
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And these are the people you want in charge of building a performing arts center in Greensboro?
Continue to article #64 A Letter To The Business Journal.
