They'll Never Admit The Truth

Greensboro, North Carolina government and civic leaders are busy telling everyone what a great success recent downtown revitalization efforts have been, touting the elimination of many one way streets and parking improvements but Billy Jones shoots holes through their flimsy stories.

Downtown Revitalization:
A Few Things We’re still Missing

Greensboro City Government has spent the better part of the last forty years dealing with issues of downtown revitalization, and while recent years have seen great strides in the effort to save our downtown, city leaders as well as downtown business owners lament that it isn’t what they’d hoped it would be. A growing number of new businesses have opened in downtown Greensboro, several new apartment communities have been or are being built, and numerous old buildings have been restored, some to even better than their original incarnations, and yet downtown still suffers.

City and civic leaders point to a misguided public perception of inadequate parking, all the while noting that they’ve plenty of parking with city owned parking lots, parking garages and street side parking being free nights and weekends, but they’ve failed to realize that the average upper middle class, SUV driving, stay-at-home, soccer mom is most likely to do her shopping during the middle of the weekday. That is: persons who are most able to afford to shop prefer to shop during the middle of the day as evenings and weekends are spent with their husbands and children. Secondly, many of the parking garages cannot accommodate some of today’s taller SUVs and conversion vans.

More importantly: downtown Greensboro is not yet shopper friendly.

Shopper friendly is not a reference to downtown merchants. Our downtown merchants are probably just as friendly, if not more so, than merchants everywhere and are no doubt friendlier than the big chain outlets who fill our suburban shopping centers. What is meant by shopper friendly is the fact that downtown Greensboro is not conducive to people who love to shop.

For starters, even if we get past the perceived and/or real parking problems, where do shoppers sit? While Greensboro has a much smaller downtown than does most cities and towns-- even many smaller towns-- it’s still a long distance to walk while carrying arm loads of merchandise. While some might say, “Well they can put it in their cars and come back for more,” make no doubt that once shoppers get to their cars, they will quickly be driving to the Mall. Fact is: other than a few restaurants, there are few places in downtown Greensboro where a well-dressed woman might wish to rest her weary feet, back, legs, and arms. A small, fuel efficient downtown shuttle-- something much more attractive than your average city bus-- might help package laden shoppers as well.

Another problem for downtown merchants, as well as small businesses everywhere, is the fact that they are unable to compete price-wise with the big box stores. Perhaps the nonprofit foundations driving downtown and regional revitalization should look into founding a merchant’s cooperative that would allow merchants to pool their limited resources to enable them to buy in larger quantities thus forcing wholesalers to offer deeper discounts. After all, many local merchants are buying inventory from Sam’s Club and Costco who retail at lower prices than wholesalers and manufacturers are willing to offer to small businesses, thus forcing small businesses to supplement the growth of their competitors and push themselves out of business. And when these smaller retailers buy from the big box stores they pay the same prices as you and I.

Getting to downtown Greensboro is a problem as well. Oh sure, there’s streets on which to drive cars and a bus station in the Depot, but what if a shopper wishes to walk or ride a bicycle? Sure, we’ve lots of sidewalks downtown, but riding bicycles on the sidewalk is illegal in North Carolina. Besides, for most of Greensboro, while downtown is the closest place to shop, pedestrians and bicyclists have to travel several miles on busy city streets without sidewalks or bicycle lanes just to get to a street with a sidewalk. Efforts to revitalize downtown will be forever hampered as long as every means to bring shoppers downtown isn’t fully explored.

As long as we’re on sidewalks, it needs to be noted that, as a whole, Greensboro needs more middle of the block crosswalks and better education and enforcement of pedestrian crosswalks. For example: in California cities, pedestrians jaywalk less and use crosswalks at a much higher rate than we do in Greensboro, and traffic is far more likely to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks due to stronger enforcement of crosswalk regulations. As a matter of fact: middle of the block crosswalks are safer than corner crosswalks in areas where crosswalk regulations are more strongly enforced. “Right on Red” at traffic lights has made corner crosswalks much more dangerous than they once were. Add to that the fact that motorists often drive at speeds of fifty miles per hour or faster on the downtown portions of Greene, Market, and Friendly, and you’ll see why being a downtown shopper is a hardship many Greensboro citizens simply choose not to face. When our city leaders choose to educate, adequately finance, enable, and enforce the law, downtown Greensboro will become more pedestrian and shopper friendly.

As a side: A recent FHWTSA (Federal Highway Traffic Safety Administration) study rated the Triad area-- of which Greensboro is the largest city-- as the seventh worst area in the nation for pedestrian safety, noting a lack of sidewalks and high numbers of automobile/pedestrian accidents as the reason.

A recent trip along Elm Street at night revealed many restaurants and bars this writer was previously unaware of. While this might be seen to as an achievement by our city and civic leaders, the fact is: at 7:30 PM. they were all empty with several having no one inside other than employees. Sadly, downtown merchants find it undesirable to remain open at night, and without open retailers to bring shoppers downtown, bars and restaurants fare little hope of remaining in business.

Another option that has been completely ignored is bringing to our downtown, the people with the most money to spend. On average, elderly people have far more expendable income than young people, but business, advertisers, and government leaders ignore their needs altogether. Many of these people, while still able to drive in the suburbs, find driving in cramped downtown streets to be extremely difficult. Why not organize events and shopping trips for seniors, shuttling them downtown and helping them with their shopping instead of leaving them to rot all alone in their suburban homes? Many would happily come along just to get to spend a little time away from home with others of like mind. Think of the beauty of giving to these people-- people whose tax-dollars have long supported this city-- the joy of new friends and new experiences.

Besides, do we really want an economy that runs on 80 proof?