Rhino education reporter Paul Clark, filling for John Hammer during the rare Wednesday Greensboro City Council meeting — the inauguration, you know—- calls the protest petition debate “a a low-stakes, high-emotion debate over participatory government and urban sprawl,” arguing that very few rezoning cases trigger protest petitions.
Mayor Yvonne Johnson “said she considers the 5 percent threshold ridiculous and that it needs to be raised.” Again, council members are saying that the protest petition will proceed to the General Assembly, but you still have to wonder what will happen if the two sides can’t reach a compromise.
Regarding the Lindbrook’s Elm Street development — the other high-emotion issue before the City Council, Hammer says:
Anyone who plans to build anything in Greensboro should give Assistant City Manager Jim Westmoreland a call and tell him that you want an economic incentive also. If they are now giving economic incentives for restaurants, offices and residential property in addition to manufacturing, it seems that most buildings would qualify. But you won’t get any money unless you ask.
Business owners in the area said that a reasonable price for the land the city is selling for $80,000 plus a forgivable loan of $100,000 would be about $340,000. Land downtown is not cheap. The developer reportedly paid $600,000 for the old Mantleworks lot. To get an additional 16 feet in a public parking lot for a net payment of $80,000 is as close to a giveaway as you can get.
Free money, there for the taking. All you have to do is ask.
