The City Planning Board voted on Wednesday to recommend to Greensboro City Council to close a portion of West Lindsay Street to make way for Roy Carroll's Belmeade Village mixed use development project.
The Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro is also hoping to close another portion of West Lindsay Street to accommodate their proposed Lebauer Park. The two closings together will effectively end all access to West Lindsay Street and much of downtown from Northeast Greensboro.
I was thinking about that yesterday as I drove from Northeast Greensboro to Downtown Greensboro. You see, for those of us living in Northeast Greensboro there is no faster or easier way to the Guilford County Courthouse, Sheriff's Department, Greensboro City Hall, Greensboro Police Department, Elon Law, Greensboro Municipal Credit Union, Downtown parking garages, Carolina Theater, Guilford County Register of Deeds or Federal Court House than Lindsay Street. Be it from Bessemer Avenue, Summit Avenue, Murrow Blvd. East Wendover or US 29 (O'Henry Blvd.) it's a hop, skip and a jump to follow Lindsay Street to Greene, Elm or Eugene Street, hook a left and go to any of those places just as the original traffic designers planned for it to be.
But who really gives a damn when we're talking about Roy Carroll, the richest man in town and the Community Foundation against the needs of over 25% of the citizens of Greensboro. And the poorest citizens at that.
Of course there are other ways we can go. We can take the narrow portion of West Bessemer to the even narrower and mostly residential northernmost end of Eugene St. I'm sure the folks living there will be happy to have more traffic speeding past their homes.
We can also come into downtown via Friendly Avenue/Market Street adding even more congestion to some of downtown's busiest streets. Won't residents of Roy Carroll's Centerpointe just love it when 25% of the visitors to the above mentioned locations start driving past their front door daily. I'm sure that will make Centerpointe property values increase, right? Right Roy?
Of course, the thing I can't figure out is why Roy Carroll would be stupid enough to allow anyone, even Walker Sanders and the Community Foundation, to close off direct Interstate access to his new Hyatt Hotel. The Downtown Wyndham isn't going to have direct access to the Interstate and there is no way they can get it but Lindsay Street takes you all the way to US29 which is slated to become Greensboro's next Interstate thoroughfare. Now how is it that someone so damned rich could be so damned dumb as to cut off his own hotel from the Interstate?
Methings the Greensboro City Council should make every effort to ensure the success of Belmeade Village and save Roy Carroll from his temporary insanity by keeping all of Lindsay Street open even though we all know you don't give a damn about Northeast Greensboro.
Besides, in the future you'll not be able to get those streets back from men like Roy Carroll. You only pull that crap on poor people. If Roy wants to close a street, let him close Belmeade, it's only 2 short blocks long. Or let him bridge his building over Lindsay Street like is done in High Point, Minneapolis, New York, Toronto, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles and world class cities everywhere.
