Downtown Greensboro Inc. president Zack Matheny pleased a lot of attendees at the annual Downtown Greensboro Inc. Annual Celebration at the Cadillac Service Garage at 304 E. Market St Thursday night, with his speech.
Matheny has a reputation, well deserved or not, of occasionally telling people more than they need to know.
This is not a verbatim transcript of his speech, but it’s close, Matheny said, “Thank you all for coming tonight. There are a lot of great things happening downtown. Have a good time and enjoy yourselves.”
Matheny said he had learned that the spring meeting was time for a serious report on the activities of DGI and fall was time for a celebration and the 300 or so people who gathered for the event, didn’t seem to be having any problem following Matheny’s instructions.
There was a lot that Matheny could have talked about, the long awaited two new downtown parking decks the February One Place-Westin Hotel complex and the North Eugene Street parking deck are both under construction. The Hyatt Place Hotel part of the Carroll Bellemeade project which includes 300 apartments, opened this year and the final apartment buildings should be completed this fall. The $65 million project is owned by Roy Carroll who also owns this publication.
In the spring Carroll also announced his plans for a mixed use development Carroll South of the Ballpark to be built along North Eugene Street between Bellemeade Street and Friendly Avenue which will include a 20 story office tower at a total estimated cost of $140 million.
The number of downtown residents has increased by 102 percent since 2000 and now stands at 2,700 and the number of people who work downtown is 22,000. Both of those numbers pale in comparison to the number of visitors who grace the downtown each year which is estimated to be 1.4 million.
Along with the parking decks, Slugger a nine story office building next to the First National Bank Stadium broke ground in May.
And another hotel the Hampton Inn and Suites on South Greene Street is nearing completion.
Centric Brands announced it was bringing 213 jobs to the Gateway Building at the corner of South Elm and Gate City Boulevard, owned by Andy Zimmerman.
The Tanger Center for the Performing Arts construction is on schedule to open in March 2020.
But Matheny made a wise choice and saved that speech for another time.
