Catching up after a restful Christmas holiday. I actually like the period between Christmas and and New Year’s because he stress of holiday preparation is over, yet everyone’s still in the spirit. It’s also pretty much expected that work will be at half-speed through New Year’s Day.
….Greensboro City Council member Robbie Perkins weighs in on the city’s comprehensive plan after developers of the controversial Walgreen’s-at-Lawndale-and-Cornwallis plan withdraw their rezoning request.
Perkins, whose NAI Piedmont Triad is representing Charlotte-based Tribek Properties, said this about the comp plan:
“That developer in Charlotte was relying on our own comprehensive plan in selecting the site,” Perkins said. “The neighborhood is upset about it, and then they say that they’re upset about the plan. You might have to look to change the plan.”
……Perkins says this case points to a problem that could crop up in many areas of the city.
“That’s not something that’s unique to this corner, in this neighborhood,” Perkins said.
“Are you preserving the spaces that need to be changed for the overall good of the city?” Perkins said of the issue of rezoning property across the city.
Between new rezoning requests across Greensboro and residents’ wishes for their own neighborhoods, a five-year-old comprehensive plan could be outdated, he said.
“And while this is the hot issue of the month, what are we going to do with the rest of the city?” Perkins added. “I think the conversation needs to be held.”
I realize this story broke right before the holidays, so I can understand the article’s failure to elaborate on exactly what Perkins meant when he said the city might have to look at changing the plan. But here’s my interpretation: The comp plan is too restrictive on development along Greensboro’s outer edges as part of the city’s ongoing efforts to thwart —-gasp—- urban sprawl. Yet, while everyone thinks infill development’s a great thing, they suddenly have problems when it’s in their neighborhood.
That said, I realize traffic at the corner of Lawndale on Cornwallis was also a major issue in this case. Last week, in the peak of the holiday shopping season, I sat through three cycles of the light right down the road at the corner of Green Valley and Westover. Again, the rail line running down Battleground hems everyone in, so I don’t see how the city can reconfigure the streets to break up the bottleneck.
……Greensboro Coliseum director and highest-paid city employee Matt Brown is nothing if not colorful. Color Brown ‘green’ today, as the N&R reports on the colisuem’s energy-saving efforts.
Brown says of his role in those efforts:
“Now I’m ‘Mister-we-saved-this-many-trees.'”
You don’t have to be a genius to note the sarcasm behind that comment. Hell, I guess we have to give Brown credit for being less concerned about saving the environment than saving the city a few bucks, right?
…..Last but not least, the Sunday’s NYT pens an eloquent Remembrance of Things Unread:
But sometimes a title becomes an It book or a best seller even though most people never make it past Page 9……booksellers and others in the industry agree that there are always books that are more honored in the buying than in the reading. “We call them G.U.B.’s,” said Elaine Petrocelli, co-owner of Book Passage in Corte Madera, Calif., for “Great Unread Books.” Ms. Petrocelli said she heard a publishing sales representative coin the phrase nearly 20 years ago when she was trying to get extra copies of Salman Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses.” A good dinner-party book, but she doubted people actually read it.
So what did I pull out of the gift bag yesterday? Ken Follett’s 973-page The Pillars of the Earth. The more-than-generous gift-giver, who shall remain anonymous, is dear to my heart, so I’m definitely going for the long haul. Look for a review when I’m done with it, which should be about this time next year.
