In the comments over at Ed Cone's blog, UNCG Professor David Wharton comes to the rescue of Downtown Greensboro Incorporated with some very excellent points with which I cannot disagree:
"I think Mr. Braswell has a point. Did the city council give DGI "vision building" as part of its charge? In a fractious place like downtown Greensboro, that's a tall order, and one that requires commitment of serious resources.
In the last decade and a half, council has farmed out the vision thing to other groups (like Action Greensboro) and then sometimes supported them by encouraging them to spend their own money, or putting something on a bond (hope it passes -- fingers crossed!). I don't recall hearing a clearly articulated vision of downtown coming from any council member, apart from Mr. Perkins' recent support of a downtown PAC. But wanting a PAC is not a vision of downtown ... I'm hoping there's something more there than just Triangle me-too-ism.
I spent some time working with the first group that tried to develop downtown design guidelines -- there was some vision there, at least. Council's input on that project was to allow the process (and the vision) to be hijacked by a suburban real estate developer whose big downtown project all these years later is still half-empty (or half-full, if you're an optimist). Also, council has so far declined to appoint any members to the downtown design advisory committee, making the whole thing worse than useless. (A recent review by consultants recommended repealing the mess, and council didn't bother to do that, either.)
Other cities have handled things differently. Greenville's mayor, Knox White, has been driving a vision of downtown since 1995. A conservative Republican, he has not only succeeded in making Greenville the standard for mid-sized city turnarounds in the Southeast, he has kept taxes low. He has found creative ways to fund projects, and he is famously knowledgeable about the details of city planning, even down to nit-picking the width of "curb lawns" between the sidewalk and street. When Action Greensboro visited there some years ago, he gave city leaders a lot of very specific advice about what kinds of projects to pursue and how to site them, the importance of leveraging historic preservation, etc. Can't think of any of it that has been implemented here.
Chattanooga, another famously successful southeastern downtown, had a long-serving, visionary city planner in charge of downtown development, and he not only brought in a lot of great projects, political leaders let him exercise veto power over inappropriate development.
But there is no Knox White on our council, and council is not willing to empower some other authority to execute a coherent vision in the teeth of pressure from entrenched real estate interests.
Instead, they beat up on Ed Wolverton. It could be that there has been a lot of back-channel communications between the council and DGI that I don't know about, but to me it looks like grandstanding."
But the professor is missing a few things. For starters, it was the City Council that created DGI and Action Greensboro with lots of prodding from Jim "Bobblehead" Melvin and the Bryan Foundation because City Council had and continues to have no vision and no leadership ability of its own. And instead of eliminating funding to DGI and Action Greensboro and the other "non profits" that have been leaching us dry, Council after Council refuses to do their job and eliminate a problem created by a previous Council. Why? Because Council members like Robbie Perkins sit on these boards and are part of the problem.
Now, after all these years of being Ed Wolverton's boss, Robbie Perkins suddenly has a problem with Ed Wolverton. Why? Because for all these years Ed Wolverton has done exactly what Robbie Perkins wanted Ed Wolverton to do and now that it's all blowing up in Robbie's face, Robbie needs a scapegoat. You see, the point Professor Wharton missed altogether is that DGI has been caught stealing from the taxpayers. It was I who sat down with Councilwoman Nancy Barakat Vaughan at Bernie's BBQ on East Bessemer Ave a few months ago and explained to her over coffee how the shadow companies work and how the pass through billing was allowing DGI and the other "non profits" to bleed the city dry. Nancy was astonished to learn that one of the "non profits" on which she has a board seat was one of the guilty. Nancy then started digging and now has the dirt on the downtown "non profits" and Mayor Robbie Perkins is trying to put all the blame on Ed Wolverton.
Well make no doubt, Ed Wolverton and the rest of the crew at DGI are dirty, but Mayor Perkins and several more on the DGI board have known it all along. But then, David Wharton had no way of knowing the back story until now.
So who will Robbie scapegoat next? I'm betting Greensboro City Manager, Denise Turner Roth will be the next one Robbie hangs out to dry as he's so far been unable to burn Walker Sanders.
"I think Mr. Braswell has a point. Did the city council give DGI "vision building" as part of its charge? In a fractious place like downtown Greensboro, that's a tall order, and one that requires commitment of serious resources.
In the last decade and a half, council has farmed out the vision thing to other groups (like Action Greensboro) and then sometimes supported them by encouraging them to spend their own money, or putting something on a bond (hope it passes -- fingers crossed!). I don't recall hearing a clearly articulated vision of downtown coming from any council member, apart from Mr. Perkins' recent support of a downtown PAC. But wanting a PAC is not a vision of downtown ... I'm hoping there's something more there than just Triangle me-too-ism.
I spent some time working with the first group that tried to develop downtown design guidelines -- there was some vision there, at least. Council's input on that project was to allow the process (and the vision) to be hijacked by a suburban real estate developer whose big downtown project all these years later is still half-empty (or half-full, if you're an optimist). Also, council has so far declined to appoint any members to the downtown design advisory committee, making the whole thing worse than useless. (A recent review by consultants recommended repealing the mess, and council didn't bother to do that, either.)
Other cities have handled things differently. Greenville's mayor, Knox White, has been driving a vision of downtown since 1995. A conservative Republican, he has not only succeeded in making Greenville the standard for mid-sized city turnarounds in the Southeast, he has kept taxes low. He has found creative ways to fund projects, and he is famously knowledgeable about the details of city planning, even down to nit-picking the width of "curb lawns" between the sidewalk and street. When Action Greensboro visited there some years ago, he gave city leaders a lot of very specific advice about what kinds of projects to pursue and how to site them, the importance of leveraging historic preservation, etc. Can't think of any of it that has been implemented here.
Chattanooga, another famously successful southeastern downtown, had a long-serving, visionary city planner in charge of downtown development, and he not only brought in a lot of great projects, political leaders let him exercise veto power over inappropriate development.
But there is no Knox White on our council, and council is not willing to empower some other authority to execute a coherent vision in the teeth of pressure from entrenched real estate interests.
Instead, they beat up on Ed Wolverton. It could be that there has been a lot of back-channel communications between the council and DGI that I don't know about, but to me it looks like grandstanding."
But the professor is missing a few things. For starters, it was the City Council that created DGI and Action Greensboro with lots of prodding from Jim "Bobblehead" Melvin and the Bryan Foundation because City Council had and continues to have no vision and no leadership ability of its own. And instead of eliminating funding to DGI and Action Greensboro and the other "non profits" that have been leaching us dry, Council after Council refuses to do their job and eliminate a problem created by a previous Council. Why? Because Council members like Robbie Perkins sit on these boards and are part of the problem.
Now, after all these years of being Ed Wolverton's boss, Robbie Perkins suddenly has a problem with Ed Wolverton. Why? Because for all these years Ed Wolverton has done exactly what Robbie Perkins wanted Ed Wolverton to do and now that it's all blowing up in Robbie's face, Robbie needs a scapegoat. You see, the point Professor Wharton missed altogether is that DGI has been caught stealing from the taxpayers. It was I who sat down with Councilwoman Nancy Barakat Vaughan at Bernie's BBQ on East Bessemer Ave a few months ago and explained to her over coffee how the shadow companies work and how the pass through billing was allowing DGI and the other "non profits" to bleed the city dry. Nancy was astonished to learn that one of the "non profits" on which she has a board seat was one of the guilty. Nancy then started digging and now has the dirt on the downtown "non profits" and Mayor Robbie Perkins is trying to put all the blame on Ed Wolverton.
Well make no doubt, Ed Wolverton and the rest of the crew at DGI are dirty, but Mayor Perkins and several more on the DGI board have known it all along. But then, David Wharton had no way of knowing the back story until now.
So who will Robbie scapegoat next? I'm betting Greensboro City Manager, Denise Turner Roth will be the next one Robbie hangs out to dry as he's so far been unable to burn Walker Sanders.
