That total comes to $4,925,000.oo if I'm doing my math correctly. The total budget for the South Elm Street Redevelopment Project came to $8,171,830.oo.
Now keep in mind that the City of Greensboro had already been awarded a $200,000 Environmental Protection Agency Assessment Grant and was promising to move ahead quickly. That was in 2003, it is now 2016 and not one piece of the project has been finished:
If 13 years is quickly I'd damned sure hate to wait for slow. And what happened to the other $3,246,830.oo? As best as I can tell it was used as a slush fund for other projects the City of Greensboro didn't want you to know you were paying to fund. You know, things like multiple payments to the Guilford County Health Department, thousands of dollars in payments to Guilford County (boosting the County slush fund as well?) many payments to the City of Greensboro, or the $21,600.oo payment to the Nexsen Pruet Law Firm where Christie Myatt, girlfriend to former Mayor Robbie Perkins happens to practice law.
The City also claimed that total private investment in the project would be over $86 Million and that the City of Greensboro would see a million dollar return on investment from the sale of the property but if you read far enough down the City of Greensboro BEDI Grant Proposal you'll come to understand that it was funding for Downtown Greensboro Inc. projects that never got built and not the South Elm Street Redevelopment Project that got most of the money.
Now I wonder whose idea that was?
Stay tuned for Who Got The South Elm Street Redevelopment Money: Part 7
