Guilford County government has a lot of capital projects on the stove right now and Guilford County Manager Mike Halford told the Rhino Times this week that there’s another one on the way: a massive, multi-million dollar overhaul and repair of the large governmental plaza that sits in downtown Greensboro, between the Old Guilford County Court House, the Melvin Municipal Office Building and the Guilford County Courthouse.
The repair work will also include the county-owned underground parking lot that’s used by many county employees who are able to land one of those prime parking places.
Halford said that he didn’t know the price tag for the project at this time but that it would be expensive. He said he believes he may have heard a very preliminary ballpark figure of around $8 million; but, he cautioned, until further analysis could be done, it wasn’t known what the actual cost would end up being.
Guilford County Facilities, Parks and Property Management Director Dan Durham said he wouldn’t hazard a guess about cost at this point, but he said that many of the problems had resulted from water damage over the years.
The parking lot under the plaza – the deck where the nine county commissioners have the best permanent parking spots in the lot – is owned by the county and the need for repairs falls on the county’s taxpayers. Some of the wear and tear is an aesthetic issue, while some of the issues of crumbling walls are more concerning from the perspective of safety.
It’s possible that some money for the renovation and repair project will be put in the Guilford County fiscal 2021-2022 budget set to be adopted in June.
The Phil G. McDonald Plaza, as it is officially known, is a place where political rallies are held, and, when the weather is nice, community festivals and celebrations are held there as well.
Over the past four years, Guilford County has conducted a massive repair, renovation and restoration of the Old Guilford County Court House that overlooks the plaza.
Maybe official could walk a block or two. Plenty of parking decks are available nearby. But then our elected official might actually see and interact with their common folks. Shutter the deck. Do minor improvement on broken items and spare the tax payers the expense of rebuilding private VIP parking for public servants.
In this instance, it just isn’t possible. The deck is what supports the entire plaza downtown which is the public entrance to both courthouses as well as the Melvin municipal building. It’s a real engineering marvel (nightmare.) The solution for the past many decades has been to just hide the damage with more caulk or cement patches. The structure has huge gaps in it that continue to trap water, freeze, heave, & erode. Some portions have dropped and/or shifted tge better part of a foot due to deferred maintenance. The term “watch your step” becomes vital here. Granny is going to visit the Register of Deeds one day and fall through the thing if something doesn’t get done about it soon.
Sounds like Halford is trying to do the right thing. This has been a problem for a long time. Meanwhile you have at least 7 commissioners worried about more damn bonds for other pet projects when they haven’t figured out how to pay for the last round of bonds. Let’s just print more money like Uncle Joe does. That works, right? Hold on to your britches & your wallets boys, there’s no way in hell Skip can fund all of that with no tax increases over the next two years.
Unca Joe is the only place where our fiat currency can be printed. Apparently, once is not enough.
The County, however, is beholding to the taxpayer, the bond holders, and the State or Fed Govt for handouts (the very same money extorted from the taxpayer).