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GREENSBORO — Think you’ve got a long to-do list? Consider the one unveiled Thursday by Downtown Greensboro Inc.

It includes more than 40 items.

Projects include finding ways to attract more visitors and recruit more businesses, evaluating a redesign of Festival Park, promoting a mounted police patrol and determining the need for a trolley system.

The work will keep DGI and its 30-member board busy for the next three to five years.

“We have crafted a road map to accelerate the growth of downtown,” Ed Wolverton, DGI’s president and CEO, told a gathering in a presentation at the Empire Room on South Elm Street. “ This plan connects all the dots.”

Wolverton laid out the board’s strategic plan in a 24-page report that reminded his audience that downtown — in spite of all its progress — has further to go.

“Downtown has come a long way in a short time — but there is still a long way to go ... before success is assured,” the report said. “In 2008, downtown is at a new crossroads.”

The report ticked off some issues the center city faces: unused office and commercial space, undeveloped property, growing residential inventory, limited first-class office space, substandard pedestrian environments, missed opportunities for commercial development and limited retail offerings

The report also cited the need to complete the long-delayed International Civil Rights Center and Museum on South Elm. “We have got to get this done,” Wolverton said. “ It has been sitting too long.”

DGI’s to-do list includes:

• finding ways to equalize development costs between downtown and the suburbs.

One way to do that, the report says, would be to advocate the use of what is called tax increment financing, or TIFs, for potential projects.

TIFs are a public financing method that use future gains in taxes to finance projects that would create those gains.

The report says DGI should hold workshops to educate residents, developers and business owners on TIFs, historic tax credits and other financing tools.

• supporting construction of the Downtown Greenway, a 4.8-mile recreational loop around the center city. The project would cost an estimated $26 million.
• supporting creation of minimum building code standards for downtown. The reports says such a code would ensure that structures are ready to occupy when tenants want them.
• placing public art throughout the center city, including the intersection of South Elm and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
• starting a program to improve the appearance of empty storefronts.
• advocating that the city acquire and maintain alleyways, some of which have become eyesores.

“There is no single project that can be implemented to 'fix’ downtown,” the report says. “Improvements must occur over time and often consist of a series of sustainable, small steps. When added together, however, these small steps can add up to big changes.”

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com