Downtown Greensboro Inc. (DGI) held two Community Workshops this week to solicit input on developing a new strategic action plan for downtown Greensboro.
The event on Tuesday, Nov. 19 at South End Brewing Co. was attended by close to 100 folks who had a lot of ideas on what the downtown should look and feel like in 2030. The fact that it was held in a venue that sells beer may have helped up the attendance.
One popular idea was turning the block of Battleground Avenue between Smith Street and Lindsay Street into an entertainment district called LoFi, which stands for lower Fisher Park. Of course, some might see it as upper Fisher Park, but UpFi, wouldn’t market as well. This section of Battleground ends at Smith Street and going south hooks around to intersect with Greene Street.
The idea of turning it into an entertainment district was popular, but for that to happen someone has to buy and develop the property, similar to what Andy Zimmerman has done to transform the area around South Elm and Lewis streets.
At the workshop on Wednesday, Nov. 20 at Triad Stage, people attending appeared to take the task seriously, spending time reading the posters and writing comments or placing dots beside what they found important.
On the “Vision” poster where you were supposed to express your vision of the downtown in 2030. People wrote, “Fun, lots to do. Stores, walk, eat, have a drink.”
“Intellectual” was circled, meaning it was important to someone, but then so was “Gritty.”
On the Goals poster, jobs and employment were popular. One note read, “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.” Others read, “Celebrate our diversity,” “No Crime” and “Bike friendly, also Scooters.”
Someone wrote, “No Tent Cities” on a bunch of notes and placed one on each of the posters.
An idea that ranked high in dots indicating popularity was “Leverage Municipally Owned Land For Catalytic Development.”
And what at least appeared to be the least popular was “Construct A New Multi Use Arena.” Under that heading people wrote, “Not so much,” “Bad Idea,” “No,” Who’s paying for it?” and “Would this compete with the GSO Coliseum?”
In two days DGI collected a lot of thoughts and ideas to get started on a new strategic action plan.
Well, the merchants can make all the improvements they want (if the Zoning Czars will allow it). But not at my (taxpayer) expense, or even more to the point, not at the expense of all the merchants in the City who are not so as favored.