The Greensboro City Council voted 7-2 on Tuesday to annex and rezone property to allow developer Roy Carroll to build a 300-unit gated apartment complex inside the new Urban Loop on the eastern outskirts of the city. [See previous story.]
Carroll referred to the project formerly identified in city zoning documents as “Immington Village” as “Innisbrook Village” in remarks before the council.
“Market research indicates a definite need for affordable housing to help support the jobs that we hope will be coming here, the developer said.”
Marshall Hurley, a lawyer at Crumley & Associates law firm in Greensboro who represented the opponents, noted that city staff determined the development would require an additional two police officers.
“If you had two extra police officer, where would you put them?” he asked. “Would you put them in New Irving Park? Would you put them in a neighborhood plagued by crime? Or would you put them in a field in the middle of Guilford County?”
Barbara Starr, a Greensboro resident who lives in the area said: “I think by approving this that you’re compromising the needed services for your citizens. You’re making the developers richer and you’re ruining the quality of life for all the people who supported you all these years.”
At-large Councilman Robbie Perkins, himself a developer, expressed approval of the project. “I think it’s a little ahead of its time,” he said, “but I think that’s just the way these guys think.”
Mayor Yvonne Johnson expressed ambivalence about the project, but indicated she saw resolving the conflict between developers and farmers more as a task for planning staff than a political decision for elected officials.
“I am one who believes that good growth does provide housing where jobs are,” she said before voting to approve the project. “I’m going to tell you: I really, really want – if we decide to do this – that we do everything we can to preserve the farmland. We’re losing farmland, and I think it would be wonderful for it to coexist in the best way it can possibly coexist. I just left a smart-growth conference in Washington where we were looking at people living where they work – less travel, less gas and that kind of thing. This area is a very important area and I certainly want to see businesses and corporate park develop in this area. I do think people need a place to live and I also think farmers need a place to farm, so I am real hopeful that if it does pass that as a city, as a planning department we can look at how we can design or bring designs to the table that better help people coexist in these communities.”
A request to annex 37.81 acres between McConnell Road and Interstate 40 passed 7 to 2, with Mayor Pro Tem Councilwoman Sandra Anderson Groat and at-large Councilwoman Mary Rakestraw casting the dissenting votes. A second request to amend the comprehensive plan from mixed-use corporate park to high residential classification for 29.72 from acres in the same area, not counting a strip along the interstate, also passed 7 to 2, but with dissent from Rakestraw and Councilwoman Dianne Bellamy-Small.
“We have been warned by our economic development person, [former Assistant City Manager] Ben Brown, that we should be very careful about chopping up our corporate park,” Bellamy-Small later said. “If you recall, when Dan Lynch and the [Greensboro] Partnership come to us, they’re saying that a lot of companies they’re trying to attract to Greensboro want large tracts of land. Supposedly why we were not in competition for Dell [in 2004] is because we did not have a large tract of land.”
She also expressed anger that developers propose mixed-use projects for northwest Greensboro — an irony is that those residents often vehemently oppose them — while slating housing without retail for east Greensboro.
“I’m very upset with these developers coming to us with package products for northwest Greensboro of live and work with easy walkability, what they call ‘smart growth,’” Bellamy-Small said. “They already knew where the bank was going to be, where the drugstore was going to be. When they bring products to east Greensboro, they bring pieces. This project’s going to bring three hundred apartments, but there’s nowhere for them to go for retail. The closest place they’re going to find that is Elm-Eugene Street or Randleman Road. It’s eight-nine miles away.”
She added: “The answer I’ve been given is, ‘We’ve got to wait ’til we get more households.’ District One is the most densely populated district in the city. Don’t tell me we don’t have the households.”
Rakestraw mentioned three succinct reasons for her opposition to the project. Like Bellamy-Small, she believes the land should be reserved for corporate office parks. Additionally, she said she worries about the disappearance of farmland, and she thought the apartments would be priced out of the range of most renters who would be employed by nearby businesses.
2 comments:
another reason why greensboro needs a protest petition
I'm the little girl who grew up on this land. My uncle built that lake. It was for many years the most beautiful place in the county. The photos they showed at meetings were unrecognizeable. If I weren't fighting metastatic cancer now, I'd have been there. But if I may? We're gonna miss places like this...may I show you what is being destroyed?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sykALa82a4I
At the very least a nod to what it was is owed. We only let it go, because one little family couldn't do that forever. But it doesn't have to be chopped up and sold for something that may or may not be needed. Make it duplexes...a small park...build around the lake. But before anyone could think about the ecosystem destroyed here? Someone drained it. Forgive me. The land was only my mother.
Lauren Lambert
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