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3-26-04
By Jim Schlosser Staff Writer
News & Record
GREENSBORO -- The Weaver Foundation has reached a verbal agreement to buy one of the largest center city properties, 5 acres at East Friendly Avenue and North Church Street.
Weaver Foundation President Skip Moore, who confirmed the deal Thursday, said he had no idea how the property will be developed. He said the purpose in buying is to remove the land from the market to prevent it from being bought and developed in a way that wouldn't benefit downtown.
"It needs to be something to enhance the area,'' said Moore. "What that is, we don't know, but the land is too important to let it get away.''
The foundation is buying most of the tract, about 4.33 acres, from Duke Power Co., which has owned it for more than 100 years. The remainder is a small tract with an 18,000 -square-foot former trolley and streetcar barn that houses Carey Sound Commplex. The business will remain there until the foundation decides what to do with the property.
The Weaver Foundation -- founded in 1967 by builders Michael Weaver and his father, the late W.H. Weaver, and with assets of $21.8 million in 2002 -- is buying the land as part of its support of Action Greensboro.
Action Greensboro is a non-profit organization that promotes economic development, primarily downtown. It is supported by Weaver and six other local foundations.
Action Greensboro's projects include the minor-league stadium under construction on North Eugene Street and Center City Park, which is being developed in a block bounded by East Friendly Avenue and Davie and North Elm streets.
Susan Schwartz, Action Greensboro's executive director, said "land banking'' is one of Action Greensboro's strategies.
The Weaver Foundation is taking the lead in this area, she said, just as the Bryan Foundation led the ballpark effort and the Cemela Foundation helped pay for a consultant's study of downtown.
Jim Melvin, president of the Bryan Foundation, said, "Before you need it is the time to buy something.''
He said that once owners know their property is sought, prices rise.
Action Greensboro has been looking at the Duke Power-Carey site for years. It was once considered a possible site for the new baseball stadium.
Utility companies that preceded Duke Power bought the Friendly-Church land around the turn of the 20th century. Duke Power still has a substation on the eastern edge of the property bordering the railroad tracks. Moore said that substation will remain.
Duke put the property on the market in August 2000, with an asking price of $2 million. Before that, the company spent $3 million digging up contaminated soil and shipping it to a plant in Virginia, where it was cleaned and returned to the site.
The contamination resulted from the time utility companies used part of the site to manufacture gas from coal. Seepage contaminated the soil.
Duke Power has declared the site free of contamination. Nevertheless, the site is off-limits for residential use. Moore said that's about the only restriction on the property.
Moore declined to reveal how much the foundation was paying for the land.
Schwartz said she didn't know what the foundation was paying. She said it might be much lower than the asking price. She said Action Greensboro met with Duke Power people last year and urged them to either donate the land or sell it a reduced price.
Dave Maynard, Duke Power's district manager, said the company isn't donating the land "but it is being sold at a very favorable price.'' He said the company would have more to say once the sale is completed.
Moore said the foundation might eventually sell the property to a buyer with a development plan beneficial to downtown.
Or, he said, the foundation might donate it to a nonprofit or to the city.
The property borders the Greensboro Children's Museum and could conceivably be used for expansion.
Action Greensboro's long-range wish list includes a concert hall. The Duke property would seem logical for the hall. The land is in an area that Action Greensboro calls the downtown cultural district. The children's museum, the main public library, the Imani Charter School, the Greensboro Cultural Center, the Greensboro Historical Museum and the YWCA are part of the district, which is bordered by Davie, Friendly, Church and Lindsay. But Schwartz said a concert hall would be expensive, requiring added sound proofing to block train noise. Norfolk Southern Railroad freights rubble by the site each day.
She said the downtown's consultants suggested as one possibility for the property an I-Max theater. A proposed Atlantic Coast Conference museum also has been mentioned. "There are lots of opportunities,'' Schwartz says.
The Duke tract is one of several that Action Greensboro and other downtown boosters believe lend themselves to projects.
Among the others is the North State Chevrolet property, 6.5 acres split by Smith Street, in the northwest corner of downtown. The dealership was recently sold to Black Cadillac, which is moving it to East Bessemer Avenue.
Building on the past (Redevlopment plan for bordering downtown neighborhood)
3-26-04
By Jim Schlosser Staff Writer
News & Record
Restoring a neighborhood's past isn't easy, but the city and Ole Asheboro residents believe they can do it with a blueprint prepared by a Pittsburgh design firm.
Next month, the Greensboro City Council is expected to approve the plan that aims over the next decade to restore Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and bordering streets to their early 20th-century quaintness and vibrance.
"Ole Asheboro has the components to re-establish itself as a desirable in-town neighborhood,'' says the thick report by Urban Design Associates.
The plan would re-create a multi-block commercial and residential district on city-owned land bordering both sides of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, from the bridge over Lee Street to Douglas Street.
The mixed-use district -- with retail shops on ground floors and residences above them -- would revolve around a firehouse built in 1904 that was part of a commercial block that thrived in the neighborhood. Now surrounded by vacant land, the firehouse and the former David Caldwell School nearby stand as the only reminders of the old business district.
The report recommends that the former school, now known as the Nettie Coad Apartments, become a neighborhood strong point. It would be part of a residential cluster that would include new housing built on the school's former playgrounds.
The plan would require all new residences in Ole Asheboro to be of the three architectural styles that define the late 19th- and early 20th-century houses that survive in the neighborhood. The report describes the styles as Ole Asheboro Victorian, Ole Asheboro Craftsman and Ole Asheboro Colonial Revival.
The report urges Ole Asheboro to become a neighborhood of inviting front yards and wide front porches.
"Front yards should be a hallmark of the Ole Asheboro houses,'' the report says, adding that where possible, parking and garages should be in the rear along service roads and alleys. The report calls for sprucing up the neighborhood's edges -- Bennett Street on the east, Arlington Street on the west, Florida Street on the south and Lee on the north.
Also, major improvements should be made to city-owned Douglas Park and to Dorothy Brown Park, a mini-neighborhood off Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, with a stark landscape that needs redesigning.
According to the plan, improvements and new construction would be through private-public partnerships involving large and small developers and City Hall. Private investment to build the houses and retail buildings would amount to many millions. The city's share would be about $2.8 million for neighborhood infrastructure improvements, including old-fashioned street lighting and trees. The reports suggests beautifying creek beds and turning low-lying land unsuitable for building into urban gardens.
The city figures to recoup about $600,000 of its cost from selling more than 70 vacant lots it has acquired in Ole Asheboro during 20 years.
The City Council has scheduled a public hearing on the plan at its April 6 meeting, with a vote expected immediately afterward on whether to implement the plan.
At a recent City Council briefing, council members seemed supportive of the plan. A leader in Ole Asheboro says neighborhood residents like it, too.
"Everybody is excited about this plan because everyone had input,'' said Carl Brower, who lives on Douglas Street and heads the 11-member Ole Asheboro Planning Advisory Committee.
Dan Curry, a planner with the city's Housing and Community Development Department, said developers and home buyers will be drawn to Ole Asheboro because "the market is there for this type of development.''
His optimism is based on the success of South Side, a project of residential and retail townhouses emerging along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive between Elm Street and the bridge over Lee Street, where Ole Asheboro begins.
The report urges that Ole Asheboro take advantage of South Side and the renewal taking place downtown to market its own redevelopment.
Hired by the city in the fall of 2000, Urban Design Associates architects and planners met with residents, conducted focus groups, held a public meeting and did historical research to prepare the plan.
The firm, founded in 1964, has done work in the First Ward area in downtown Charlotte, developed for Wilmington-New Hanover County a plan for property going from rural to urban, and designed Baxter Village, a 6,200-acre development in Fort Mill, S.C.
Ole Asheboro draws its name from Asheboro Street, which was renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in the 1980s. From the 1890s through the 1920s, many of the city's wealthiest residents lived in grand houses along Asheboro Street. Some of the city's most prominent churches, including Westminster Presbyterian, Centenary Methodist, First Friends and Asheboro Street Baptist (now Friendly Avenue Baptist) started in Ole Asheboro.
Ole Asheboro's decline began in the 1950s after the widening of Lee Street wiped out homes and businesses that bordered it. As more people in the neighborhood acquired cars, they moved to the suburbs.
Until the 1960s, Ole Asheboro was occupied by white residents, with black neighbors confined to a few blocks on the east and west fringes. Then, the neighborhood flipped from white to black. The white churches moved to western Greensboro.
Eventually, absentee landlords started dividing old dwellings into rooming houses. Others were torn down along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and replaced by apartments.
Transients moved in, and drug dealers and prostitutes followed.
The report blames the city for some of the decline. The neighborhood's commercial district vanished after the city bought land and demolished structures for an inner loop expressway through Ole Asheboro that was never built. The city has held on to the land.
The city acquired other property when it bought and demolished houses that had deteriorated beyond saving.
"By 1970,'' the report says, "Ole Asheboro was a shadow of its former self ...''
But the report concludes enough old houses remain to form a core that can be expanded with new structures built to resemble the old.
"With ample vacant land, an active community organization and high quality but under appreciated housing stock,'' the report says, "Ole Asheboro is finally well positioned to attract a range of development opportunities.''
