news-record.com

GREENSBORO — City, county and community leaders have begun working on a plan for the future of downtown that they hope will provide a framework for economic development in the center city.

The effort, which could take as long as a year, will examine past planning efforts, identify unfinished projects, set new priorities and establish timelines and cost estimates.

“We want to clearly define one vision and one action plan for downtown,” said April Harris, executive director for Action Greensboro, which will fund the planning process. “I think there is a lack of one now .... That is where we need to start.”

Earlier this year, the Greensboro City Council and the Guilford County Board of Commissioners adopted resolutions supporting the effort, which is currently called the Downtown Consolidated Plan.

Organizers say that over the past decade there have been at least 11 studies and plans for the downtown area, ranging from one about parking in 2005 to one called the Center City Master Plan in 2001.

“We have had a flurry of planning efforts downtown, but none of them has been comprehensive,” said Dick Hails, the city’s planning director. “They were limited in geography, or in scope, or in looking at something specific like a parking study.”

Yet, those efforts produced dozens of recommendations. And many were carried out, including a minor league baseball stadium and Center City Park, which emerged from the master plan.

But other studies have languished.

A year ago, for example, a consultant’s report recommended that the city spend $14 million during the next decade to create an expanded cultural district downtown that focused primarily on Church Street.

To date, little progress has been reported, in large part because of the recent transition in the city manager’s office.

The area includes some of the center city’s prime development areas.

“We already know the work that we need to do,” Harris said. “We just need to figure out the way to execute it. That is what is different (with this effort) in some ways.”

Organizers say the main focus of the plan will be to identify areas where public outlays can be used to inspire private investment. But they aren’t ready to talk about specific projects.

“I wouldn’t take anything off the table,” Hails said when asked what priorities the plan might include. “We really think during the slow economy that it is a great opportunity for downtown to kind of get organized and get a better blueprint to guide development.”

Organizers say the plan will definitely encourage stronger links between the center city and UNCG, N.C. A&T and Moses Cone Hospital. They hope those institutions will look downtown should they need to expand.

Already, UNCG officials have said they are considering the Weaver Foundation property at the northeast corner of Church Street and Friendly Avenue as a possible site for the university’s proposed pharmacy school.

However, planners say they want to produce practical recommendations and not just a wish list that says what should go where.

“We are going to avoid specific uses for specific parcels,” said Ed Wolverton, president and chief executive officer of Downtown Greensboro Inc. “It’s not going to be a new hotel ought to go there or a pharmacy school ought to go here.

“(The plan) will get into specific priorities, whether it is public or private, but it won’t focus on specific locations.”

The group is working through a 15-member team that includes Mayor Yvonne Johnson and Melvin “Skip” Alston, chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners.

It plans to hold an initial public meeting in late October, but a specific date has not been set.

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