The Greensboro City Council was an annexing and zoning machine at the Tuesday, Jan. 18 virtual meeting.

Councilmember Sharon Hightower slowed things down as much as she could by asking questions that had usually already been answered either in the presentation or in the agenda attachments, but in the end all 12 votes on annexation, zoning and rezoning at the Jan. 18 meeting passed unanimously.

Councilmember Justin Outling was recused from three of those votes because of a conflict of interest.

It appears that the Greensboro City Council may have gotten the message that for Greensboro to grow, property has to be zoned for higher residential density and more intensive land use.

The 12 unanimous votes resulted in five different development projects receiving approval to move forward.  Of those five projects, four were on McConnell Road and involved land in unincorporated Guilford County that was annexed and then zoned by the City Council.

One of the two annexation and zoning requests that had someone speak in opposition was for 169 acres at 4417 and a portion of 4453 McConnell Road.

The request, which the City Council passed unanimously, was for Planned Unit Development zoning with a limit of 630 single-family homes and townhomes.

The main objection voiced was that the development was too dense and that the number of homes should be cut in half.

Amanda Hodierne, an attorney with Isaacson Sheridan representing the owner and the developer, noted that according to the site plan about 60 acres of the 169 acre site would remain open space and that the density would be 3.7 units per acre, which fit in well with the city’s residential zoning districts.

At the end of the meeting City Councilmember Nancy Hoffmann summed up the evening’s work saying, “If I aggregate everything we have been able to do this evening, fortunately Mrs. Hightower made some reference to that, we annexed into the City of Greensboro 366 acres of land and the infrastructure investment that is going to be made in those areas is another $20 million and I didn’t aggregate the exact number but I think we are talking about the projects that we approved tonight as 1,200 to 1,300 housing units.  That’s absolutely amazing, when you aggregate what this really means, and it is just an indication of the direction this city is moving in and the excitement of growth and the opportunity that we have.”