"In the 1960s Greensboro’s transportation network was greatly improved by the Wendover Avenue project that cost $12.5 million and was the most expensive road project in NC’s history. Downtown declined, however, with the sit-ins of 1960 and civil rights protests in 1963 and 1968-9. Urban redevelopment included new buildings in the ‘60s and ‘70s, including the parking decks, but shopping centers like Four Seasons and Carolina Circle led to downtown’s decline as a retail center. Redevelopment also erased the neighborhood fabric in east Greensboro along Market Street and triggered preservationists who had been slow to organize in Greensboro. Preservation successes include Blandwood and the 1918 county courthouse. "
No go back and read that again. Here we have the City of Greensboro blaming downtown Greensboro's decline on sit-ins, civil rights protests and shopping centers like Four Seasons and Carolina Circle but in that very same paragraph we read:
"In the 1960s Greensboro’s transportation network was greatly improved by the Wendover Avenue project that cost $12.5 million and was the most expensive road project in NC’s history."
There it is, plain as day. Downtown Greensboro died for the very same reason thousands of downtowns and often times, entire towns across the entire nation have been dying for half a century: Some moron built a bypass and diverted all the traffic and shoppers away from downtown.
When I was a kid we had to travel through Downtown to get from our home in Bessemer to anywhere west of Elm Street. Our choices were Sykes Ave to Market St or Bessemer Ave to Summit or Elm and then to Market St. Or a dozen side streets that all led to Market Street. The farthest west we could get was Eugene St before having to turn on Market. After Wendover was finished it became easier and faster to travel all the way to Friendly Shopping Center in west Greensboro than it was to go downtown.
So just like everyone else in Bessemer, we skipped downtown altogether. And why would anyone in Bessemer feel any loyality to downtown when over 80 businesses and thousands of residents in our part of town had been previously forced out to boost business downtown?
Wendover Avenue killed downtown Greensboro and no amount of money or downtown redevelopment will ever be a permanent solution to the problem. That's why each and every round of downtown rejuvenation results in the end need to do it all over again.
Do you ever get the notion that Greensboro has been run by stupid people for a very long time?
