The demolition of the old Guilford County Department of Mental Health building on the corner of North Eugene Street and West Friendly Avenue in downtown Greensboro is set to begin this week.
The Greensboro City Council approved a contract with D.H. Griffin to demolish the building in October 2021.
While it may seem odd for the City of Greensboro to be demolishing a Guilford County building that until recently housed the Sandhills Center mental health facility for Guilford County, in 2019, as part of a complicated land transaction that involved Guilford County, the City of Greensboro and The Carroll Companies (which owns the Rhino Times), Greensboro bought the building with the intention of tearing it down.
The real estate transaction included The Carroll Companies providing some of the land that Greensboro needed to build the North Eugene Street parking deck and Greensboro, after purchasing the old mental health building from the county, agreed to lease it back to the county for $1 a year and not to demolish it for two years.
The agreement between The Carroll Companies and Greensboro called for the city to demolish the building before turning the land over to The Carroll Companies.
Some longtime Greensboro residents still refer to the building as the Sears and Roebuck building, since it began its life as a Sears store after, what was at the time, a controversial land sale.
The demolition of the old mental health/Sears building is expected to be completed by June, which will clear the site for a mixed-use development, Carroll Ballpark South, planned by Roy Carroll, the president and owner of The Carroll Companies.
When Carroll Ballpark South was announced in 2019, the estimated cost of the project, which would include a hotel, meeting and office space, apartments and ground floor retail, was estimated at $140 million.
The plans for Carroll Ballpark South call for it to wrap around the city parking garage with frontage on Bellemeade Street, North Eugene Street and West Friendly Avenue.
My uncle worked for Allstate, and had a booth there. My parents bought their first TV there in 1949. It was a 12″ octagonal screen. You needed to sit nearby to constantly adjust the horizontal & vertical, that was my job. We got 1 or 2 stations.
What a waste! That was Sears & Roebuck when I was a child. Before that, it was owned by the VanNoppen family, whose kin was Judge Leonard VanNoppen ( who never said “not guilty”) Hate to see it go, but what the heck, nothing stays the same but hate, prejudice, racism and idiots.
When they are finished there then they can go on down to the Woolworth building really be a cost savings to the taxpayers
Remember your words when a mentally challenged person invades your home and attacks you with a box cutter because there is no place for them to get emergency psychological services.
For the low information person, https://www.guilfordcountync.gov/services/guilford-county-behavioral-health-centers. I think Guilford County has that covered. Of course if someone breaks into my house with a box cutter I think I have the proper response and there will be no need for county behavioral health services.
Just send them to my house with a box cutter there will be no need for psychological services.
Satisfaction guaranteed Tag along
Fishbreath we will call it a two for one deal
well said