The Greensboro City Council has a lengthy agenda for its one business meeting of the month, which will be held virtually on Tuesday, Nov. 17 beginning at 5:30 p.m.

The meetings are broadcast live on Greensboro Television Network (GTN), and don’t worry if you can’t tune in at 5:30 p.m. – unless the City Council decides to continue most of the items, the meeting will go on for hours.

Agenda item 35, which has received the most publicity, is a rezoning request for 23.3 acres on Cone Boulevard between Lafayette Avenue and Cleburne Street. Koury Corporation is requesting that the property be rezoned from Single-Family Residential to Conditional District Residential Multifamly-26 (CD-RM-26) with a maximum of 480 dwelling units. At the Zoning Commission meeting, representatives of Koury said the plan was to build a very high end, gated apartment community that would only have access to Cone.

The city staff has recommended in favor of the rezoning and the Zoning Commission voted 6-3 to approve the rezoning request.

Residents of the adjacent neighborhoods are opposing the rezoning request and have said they plan to ask for a continuance. The rezoning hearing, at the request of both Koury and the opposition, was continued from the September Zoning Commission meeting to October, which may effect how the City Council handles the expected request for the continuance.

Another controversial rezoning request on South Holden Road and Glendale Road from World Victory International Christian Center to rezone 39.4 acres from Conditional District Public and Institutional (CD-PI) to Office (O), which was continued from the October meeting, has been withdrawn by the applicant.

The agenda also includes a resolution to extend the agreement between the City of Greensboro and One Step Further to continue to fund the Cure Violence program for the 2021 calendar year in the amount of $399,000.

There is no report or presentation on the Cure Violence program on the agenda. City Councilmember Yvonne Johnson is the executive director of One Step Further, which made the original agreement somewhat controversial. The Cure Violence program is designed to reduce violent crime and murders in specific designated areas of the city. Since the program was initiated in November 2019, the rate of violent crime and homicides in the city has increased dramatically, with the city currently on track to set a new record for the number of murders in a calendar year.