East Market Street Development Corporation: Mac Sims

There are only 2 reasons to keep off-limits personal files in your office at work: One might be that you're trying to hide credit card receipts and bank statements from your wife. The other might be that you're trying to hide credit card receipts and bank statements from the taxpayers. Which is it, Mac?

For those who might not have heard of the East Market Street Development Corporation, it is East Greensboro's version of Downtown Greensboro Incorporated without the BID tax and they've been coming up on my radar a lot lately. They'd like to tell you about all they've accomplished to help the economic development of East Greensboro and the East Market Street Corridor but it appears they spend most of their time and money involved in local politics padding the pockets of the local "community organizers" with their biggest claims to economic development being replacing an old shopping center with a new shopping center and an empty lot where a post office used to stand. Key word: "downtown gentry."

13 acres, most of it under sound roof and behind solid brick walls with loading docks that handled dozens of tractor-trailers a day for many years. I know, I bumped those docks many times when I hauled mail. We had jobs in East Greensboro then, now they tear down the jobs to make room for the downtown gentry. Downtown gentry who never came and probably never will. Had they not been such dumbasses cared about the working class instead of the downtown gentry they could have partnered with NC A&T across the street and converted the old post office to do this:



I'm already building such an operation in my East Greensboro back yard, albeit only 3 such tanks... But instead we got this:


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Already East Greensboro could be exporting food and providing much needed jobs right here in East Greensboro. Instead, we've has an empty lot for 5 years with no potential buyers and no money to build anything. Sure, we could build a new building there to do the same. At a cost of about $60 Million when the old building was just fine. Thank you very much, Mac Sims. Thank you very much, Goldie Wells. Thank you very much, Milton Kern.

You see, like the rest of Greensboro's "leaders" Mac Sims and the rest of the East Market Street Development Corporation really don't give a damn about economic development unless there's something in it for them.

Funny, Greensboro's developers want to develop but they're so behind the times. While in Greensboro, developers talk of building performing arts centers, in Singapore, developers build downtown vertical farms that grow year 'round fresh produce at 1/4 the cost of conventionally grown produce. Imagine building a building that could make you money hand over fist for the rest of your life selling something everyone has to have to live at a cost so low no one else can compete with you while never dealing with problem tenants, RUCO inspections, negotiating payoffs commissions to Mayors who are also your commercial realtor...

Who am I kidding, there's no developers in Greensboro smart enough to figure that out. But don't worry folks, as someone said to me last night, they are all about to have their minsky moment.

As an aside, no fault of DH Griffin as he submitted the low bid for the demolition of the post office and won the contract fair and square. But Mr Griffin himself happened to come by my office back in 2010 and we discussed the post office and other buildings he was tearing town. He informed me that had he known it was for sale, he could have bought the building, torn it down, sold the steel, hauled everything away and turned a profit while being left with an empty lot to sell at some point in the future. As a matter of fact: he does that on a regular basis. The fact that the steel in such an old building is so valuable reinforces the idea that no new building is greener than a sound old building. And it reinforces the fact that Greensboro's developers have long been leading us down the road to ruin.