The City of Greensboro is calling for suggestions on ways to spruce up south Greensboro, make it more accommodating, visually appealing and an all-around better place to live and do business.
The city is especially interested in hearing what the residents, business owners and frequent visitors of south Greensboro have to say regarding that area and, in order to gather input for future improvements, the city is inviting those interested to attend an upcoming “Culture and Authenticity Workshop for the South Greensboro Plan.”
The event will be held from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 22, at the Brown Community Recreation Center at 302 E. Vandalia Road in Greensboro.
According to city officials, “This workshop provides an opportunity for attendees to review preliminary recommendations for improvements in south Greensboro and provide feedback on the plan. Residents may contribute to discussions and participate in a community art project aimed at improving the area while maintaining the diversity and character of south Greensboro.”
Also, “Culturally diverse snacks and refreshments will be available for participants.”
This discussion on the southern section of the city is part of the Greensboro Planning Department’s effort to develop a “more prosperous, safer, and closer-knit community” in south Greensboro.
The city began putting the plan together last fall.
Planning Department leaders expect to complete a draft of a plan for south Greensboro by late summer of this year and then put it out for review. Input from this May 22 workshop, along with other information gathered in the process, may be incorporated into the plan or help guide it.
Here are some of the key themes that are being considered as part of the plan:
- Impact on neighborhoods of industrial uses located near highways, in particular commercial and truck traffic.
- Abrupt transitions between land uses in south Greensboro.
- Annexations and rezoning on the southern boundary of Greensboro.
- Providing adequate park facilities, green space, and increased trail connectivity.
- Stormwater management in green space-oriented areas around creeks.
- Property upkeep in commercial areas.
- Multifamily, highway-oriented commercial uses, and industrial uses associated with existing freeways.
- The desire for adequate retail, banking, and other services in many parts of the community.
The city has held several previous workshops in order to help create the plan. In mid-January, the city held an “Environment and Economy Workshop” regarding south Greensboro. At that meeting the focus was on local environmental and economic issues.
In October of last year, the city held a “Mobility and Great Places Workshop.”
Those two events followed a “Vision Workshop,” last September that was the beginning of the Planning Department’s effort to work with area residents to explore critical issues and solutions meant to improve the quality of life of south Greensboro and guide its future growth.
In addition to attending the upcoming workshop, suggestions and other public input can also be provided online via the South Greensboro Area Plan Vision Survey.
You can learn more about the South Greensboro planning process at www.greensboro-nc.gov/SGPlan.
Easy…. treat the South & East side of Greensboro with the same enegy and enthusiams and pour in finances/resources as you do the west side (New Garden Rd – Battleground). Get ride of the slumlords and invest in property enhancement like west side. The medians & shrubery are always cut and beautified on the west side. East side has none of that. Atleast not consistently. You dont our input just follow the Westside format. Period
You’re confusing public money with private money. The people and businesses in the Northwest make an effort to maintain and improve their city by spending their money to do so, whether it’s upkeep of their homes or presenting a clean and well kept business.
The Southeast get Government money spent on it all the time, from resurfacing Florida Street unnecessarily, to beautification of A&T, to the “improvement” of MLK Drive which just made it harder to drive along.
You get plenty of taxpayer money. But I drive past trailers at Northwest High School every day that were “temporary classrooms”…. twenty five years ago. Our problem is that, as Skip Alston once said, “the Northwest is lily white”.
There you have it.
Thanks Austin. Everything you said is right on the money. If it’s not your personal money then you have no buy in.
Notice he said get rid of slum lords (ie people who don’t continually reinvest in their property), and no, public funds ARE used to city scape landscaping across the city, but not all parts of the city.
Weird you talk about ‘temporary classrooms’ yet yell about how funding for public schools should be cut. Get your story straight.
There you have it.
Guilford County Schools are failing not from “temporary classrooms” and not from a lack of money. Schools are failing from a school board that has no leadership, and failure from within. This cannot be legitimately denied. Deena Hayes-Greene is the Chair of the Guilford County School Board, co-founder of the Gorrell Street Association, and co-chair of the International Civil Rights Museum. Call Ms. Hayes-Greene to complain about landscaping and the failing Guilford County schools.
Weird you claim leadership is the failure but aren’t specific about the root of the problem of the failure. Typical armchair critic.
I said nothing about “slumlords”.
And the misallocation of taxpayer money is wrong, regardless of your hysteria. But then, your wife works in the Government Schools system, doesn’t she?
No, you didn’t.
Living2LivAGAIN did. Hense, I referenced him saying slumlords…..
You really are weird.
* At least I can write English above the level of a rather slow seven year old.
Chris I’m confused where does the word slumlords appear
Take some of the money spent on building parks and entertainment centers and invest in housing for the homeless. People laying around on the sidewalks with blankets and shopping carts is a shame. Instead of cutting resources and housing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters, use some of the money that you don’t know what to do with and HELP them. The streets of downtown would look much nicer.
The east / southeast area needs to start selling its pros and itself. There are some pros, but even Council focuses on the cons. Heck, if your representative on City Council is going to do nothing but talk about the negatives, who wants to build or locate there. Shooting yourselves in the foot.
Maintain diversity and character..more woke stuff. The city already has their plans and your tax dollars so no need to waste your time. The city will whiz your tax dollars into the wind. Your best bet is to stay the hell away from this area.
I know how to improve it.start using stop and frisk
Well, let’s see…is it going to be like taking away two lanes of Holden Road for stupid bike lanes to nowhere that no one uses?! Magic white lane revenue generating lines?! The expensive unnecessary railings on Walker over Wendover? The stop signs on Walker that cause accidents? Hundreds of thousands of dollars ‘improving’ the creek in the Arboretum while the bathrooms , that were well built, rot, leak and collapse?! Oh, government please steal my money to protect me from myself?! STAY AWAY!
First clean up the neighborhood. Some of these homes are not kept up and look like a city dump. Make these people clean up their yard. Ride down West Vandalia Road between Randleman Road and Four Seasons Blvd. Look at some of the homes there. The wrecked cars sitting in the yard. The cars parked on the grass. The trash sitting in the driveways. Trash bins sitting out in their front yards and left on the street for days after being emptied. And who wants to live in a neighborhood that cars are speeding up and down with their revved up motors all hours of the day and half the night. Police are seldom seen in my neighborhood, yet crime is bad here. Get rid of the crime and clean up the mess. Like someone else said, get rid of the slumlords. Make these people who live like pigs responsible for cleaning up their homes that are not with in code compliance. Make that department do their job. Maybe Hightower needs to ride around her district and take notes. I live here and wish I could sell my house and move in one of four directions that would not be in Guilford County.
The people are the problem.
You can improve EVERYONE with less taxation & regulation.
Unless you are the federal conservative and reduce taxes for the wealthy at the expense of increasing an already unmanageable deficit even higher.
Chris Trump got his budget bill passed, so go ahead and get your crying towel out
Need more civics classes Rebel? It passed the House. It still has to pass the Senate.
Chris, most people know the cause of our failing schools. One thing is certain; money will not fix the problem because the problem is not about money. The answer for many parents is to remove their children from public schools. It will take leadership and courage to fix the public school problem(s.) The first step is to admit the problem. Denna Hayes-Greene, Chair of Guilford County School Board, lives in Southeast Greensboro and complains about the lack of attention paid to the area, including schools. Yet, she and Skip Alston (and others to be fair) want to spend upwards of $100 million dollars for an unnecessary, unneeded, and unwanted, and certainly not a community school, at Boylston Rd and N. Bunker Hill Rd. Take that money, Ms. Hayes-Greene and Mr. Alston, and spend the money on Southeast Greensboro school(s,) including beautifying the area to make the surroundings conducive to learning. Otherwise, stop complaining about the lack of money and resources going to Southeast Greensboro. I am a Guilford County property taxpayer who witnesses bad decisions and sleight of hand tactics that result in wasteful spending and higher taxes. Get over yourselves.
I don’t disagree that money isn’t the root problem. Teacher pay remains an issue for NC given VA pays better so we lose a good number of talent to the north of us but that is a separate issue.
I think the problem is complex and multifaceted. I personally suspect (I am no expert) that a big part of the problem is having a one size fits all approach to education for kids versus programs better tailored to differing needs of kids with differing levels of family support and desire to learn. There are many programs that try to address this issue but lack any real strategy other than acting as a Band-Aid to the problem.
But be sure that the lack of funding has left many of the schools with poor and failing infrastructure that does in fact need the bond funds to correct. One of my wife’s jobs when she worked at our local elementary school was to go over to the school if it started raining at night and put trash cans under the spots where the roof leaked. (we lived only a mile or so from the school at the time).
I left my kids in the public schools but gave them heavy support, so they were prepped and ready for college if that was where they chose to go. They have all done very well as a result. But it took a lot of support. And not all kids have that kind of support. So, I don’t agree that taking kids out of school helps anyone other than those kids that would be just fine staying in the public school as you can be successful if you choose to be and have the right level of support at home.
I will not debate your comments because they make sense. However, no one in a decision-making position and in a leadership position in the Guilford County school system makes any forward-thinking decisions, some of which would be easy decisions to make. They are always looking for easy but costly fixes as they make excuses for failures.
The challenge in changing the standard for how we approach education is that it is heavily controlled by both State and Federal leadership by how they provide or restrict access to funding by using compliance to standards as a means to quality for funding.
I would like to see more freedom by local school districts or schools themselves to adjust / adapt to their unique base of students versus some State or Federal standards that don’t account for the unique nature of each school’s set of students.
That is where I would start.
The Federal level wouldn’t be a problem now if the liberal judges would leave
President Trump alone