A couple of Greensboro players tell the City Council to back off airport-area land in an (unposted) N&R op-ed. Interesting.
Weaver Investment CEO Lee McAllister and Greensboro Partnership President Patrick Danahy strongly advise the council not to rezone land around Piedmont Triad International Airport from commercial to residential at its July 17 meeting. The agenda’s not up on the city’s Web site, but the developer’s got to be Roy Carroll, who really wants to build out by the airport.
McAllister and Danahy argue that land around the airport needs to be preserved for commercial and industrial development surrounding the future FedEx hub:
Some might argue that apartments in the airport submarket are a sign of progress, but they would not offer anywhere near the opportunities for job creation and economic growth that a new industial site would provide.
Again, this isn’t first time PTIA has told someone to back off airport-area land. Airport authority board member Walt Cockerham told the HOT guys back in January to make sure they didn’t mess with deals they’ve got going on related to FedEx.
Then there’s High Point City Councilman Latimer Alexander, who more or less said the same thing a couple of weeks ago regarding land around Interstate 40.
But there’s one big difference: High Point’s got a finite deal going on in the area, in the form of 16,000 feet of sewer line running into the proposed HOT area. It’s a deal, it’s going to happen. And money talks, bullshit walks.
It’s not exactly the same thing, but here’s what I’m getting at: For PTIA to tell people to back off airport-area land must mean they’re pretty confident big things are going to go down around the FedEx hub. Let’s hope they’re just not blowing smoke.
