news-record.com

GREENSBORO — Home buyers no longer need to guess exactly how close the Urban Loop is to that house or condominium they’re considering for purchase.

Thanks to the city of Greensboro’s new search tool, the answer is as close as your computer keyboard and the city’s Web site.

City administrators unveiled the service Wednesday on the city’s home page. All you need is access to a computer and the street address of the property.

“It is live and living on our Web site now,” transportation planner Craig McKinney said.

Type the address into the rectangular box on the screen, then click “search.” The locator tool returns that address and several others that are similar, just in case of typos or your memory for addresses isn’t quite all it should be.

Click on the address you want and, voila, you get an overview showing the neighborhood, with address tags for each house or unit, and an image of the loop as it exists or a diagram of its future route.

City officials began working on the application this spring, about the time some residents along yet-to-be-built parts of the loop complained they bought homes without knowing how close the new road would be.

The new locator tool makes use of the city’s geographic information system. In many cases, it uses aerial photography so users see the future loop superimposed on a picture of the neighborhood taken in recent years.

Users can get a closer look at their particular property with a “zoom” function, located on the navigator icon in the upper left of the screen. They also can use the navigator to “travel” across the map to track, for example, the loop’s future path across the rest of the city.

A scale is located on the lower left so would-be buyers can get an accurate impression of the distance between the loop and the property they are considering.

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com