“Hitting it out of the Park” was the theme of the annual State of the Downtown event held by Downtown Greensboro Inc. (DGI) at Elm + Bain on Thursday, April 7.
Downtown Greensboro appeared to be on the verge of booming when everyone in the world was sent home for two years to wait out the pandemic, and now, according to DGI President Zack Matheny, the downtown is hitting it out of the park.
Matheny talked about major projects that were already under construction, like the Westin Hotel and February 1 Place Parking Garage, which is scheduled to open in 2023 with 180 hotel rooms and 850 parking spaces.
Those that were nearing construction, like Carroll South of the Ball Park, which will feature a 150 room AC Hotel with a rooftop bar and pool, 280 apartments and 30,000 square feet of restaurant, retail and conference space. The demolition of the old Guilford County Mental Health building to clear the site for construction is currently underway.
And projects that are still in the development stage like the Lofts@110 MLK, a five story 140-unit apartment building with commercial retail space and rooftop dining being built by Adrian Smith with construction possibly beginning next year.
Matheny also talked about two apartment complexes in the early stages of development – Cedar Street and Greenway North.
Matheny said that at least 10 new restaurants would be opening in downtown Greensboro in 2022, which should make it a little easier to get a reservation on nights when there is a Broadway Show at the Tanger Center.
Matheny also noted that The Boro, a social district where people can walk around outside with an alcoholic beverage in a special to-go container, which was launched on March 1, has already proven to be very popular.
A project DGI is promoting is a downtown container village, The Hub, next to the J. Douglas Galyon Depot. These container villages have been extremely successful in other downtown areas and provide relatively inexpensive spaces for new businesses and for business owners to try out new products or concepts. Ideally businesses would outgrow the confines of The Hub and move to larger facilities in the downtown area.
“The Hub” sounds like an incubator space for tiny businesses. Good. It’s evocative of all the one man outfits that were to be found in Britain, “under the arches”. These fellows simply set up shop under the arches of the train viaducts that had been built everywhere in the 19th Century. Our family’s car mechanic had his business in one such arch near Leeds central railway station.
Cheap premises help small businesses.