I noticed something else interesting while watching last night’s Greensboro City Council protest petitions debate. While speaking in favor of protest petitions, a speaker noted that the taxpayer-funded Gateway Research Center (which the N&R, by the way, thinks is great) was impacting her neighborhood, while a speaker on the other side said protest petitions would limit infill development and contribute to —gasp —– urban sprawl.
OK, so if the taxpayer-funded Gateway Center, out in an open field by Interstate 40/85 is causing problems, what’s going to happen when people want to develop in the city’s core? If a city makes it more difficult to develop inside the city, and discourages —at the urging of green lobbying groups—development on the fringes because of —gasp—-urban sprawl —— then where is anyone supposed to develop?
I’m not unsympathetic to protest petitions. I understand that they haven’t stifled development in Raleigh or Charlotte, nor has the lack thereof exactly driven development through the roof in Greensboro.
I just hope that everyone realizes that issues and causes entangle themselves more than we think sometimes, so we need to be careful what we wish for. Hasty government decisions in the name of one “cause” often has a negative impact on another “cause.” A perfect example is the mother of a carbon footprint in exchange for the sense of hope and rebirth many felt during the inauguration.
I also hope citizens and TREBIC can come up with an agreement that pleases everyone. I’m skeptical, and so is Guarino, who says “we do not know how the compromise will work out.”
