So I went downtown to take in Greensboro’s First Friday and enjoyed myself very much. It was almost a dream-like experience — lots of people out on a beautiful spring evening enjoying everything our downtown area has to offer —- bars, restaurants, art galleries. Making the experience even better was the sound of the Grasshoppers game just a few blocks only away. I almost started to feel guilty about the way I harp on the governmental movement to herd us all into a mixed-use urban utopia. Next morning I told a buddy about my experience and he accused me of being a closet elitist.
But that old curmudgeon John Hammer brought me back to reality:
The myth of flexibility is about to destroy property rights in downtown Greensboro. Downtown Greensboro, which has existed and become what it is with limited government regulation, is about to get 103 pages of regulations under the guise of flexibility.
…..The city government has decided that it needs to mess with this success and control the aesthetics of the downtown. The downtown review team will be dealing almost entirely with aesthetics. One of the supporters, Betty Cone suggested that it would be a horror if someone wanted to put a 100 story building on South Elm Street. What kind of absurd regulations are we considering that would not encourage a 100-story building wherever some investor wanted to put it?
According to Cone, that is the kind of thing that this design manual is supposed to prevent. One would think that the Design Manual would be written to encourage development, but it is only to encourage the development that meets the aesthetic tastes of Cone and the city staff, which evidently at this time are aligned.
Leave it to government to mess with a good thing, eh?
Bonus observation: I peaked into the old Woolworth’s building to check on the progress of the International Civil Rights Museum. Doesn’t look like there’s a lot going on. It’s supposed to open in 2010, right?
