news-record.com

Here today. Gone today.

The developers of a proposed new downtown hotel have turned away from the corner of South Elm and Lee Streets as the potential site.

Now they’re shopping their plan for a location closer to the heart of the center city, at Davie Street and February One Place.

In this case, being snubbed actually may be a good thing.

The South Elm site needs help, but a 200-bucks-a-night hotel seemed an odd prescription for what ails that area. Further, in all the planning and meetings that produced a vision for what ought to happen on those 11 acres — a mixed-use development where people shop, work and live — not once did anyone suggest a luxury hotel.

“I don’t think the site was as outlandish as some people thought,” Andy Scott, interim assistant city manager for economic development, says of the hotel plans. “But do I think the site they’re looking at now is better? Yes.”

Nettie Coad, chairwoman of the Redevelopment Commission and a leader of the Ole Asheboro Neighborhood Association, had pushed hard for the hotel at South Elm. But she also sees the bigger picture. “It doesn’t matter to me as  long as we’re able to present a good project,” she says.

Meanwhile, South Elm/Eugene shouldn’t be forgotten. Stark and neglected, its steadiest activity over the past few years has consisted of small glimmers of hope (a fish market, car repair shops, “A Sister Selling Socks” from a roadside table) and stubborn vestiges of hopelessness (vagrancy, prostitution, drug dealing).

Until the city cleared the site and used federal grants to scrub it clean of contaminants, its signature landmark was the burned-out shell of the old Holsum Bakery, which resembled a backdrop from “Saving Private Ryan.”

South Elm at Lee is, in fact, one of the few parts of town where nothing may be an improvement over the something that once stood there. And, while it may not be as unattractive as it once was, it’s still an embarrassment — and an opportunity.

It has flirted with revitalization before.

In 2002, the city’s minor-league baseball team, then called the Greensboro Bats, initially chose it as the site for the new downtown ballpark. But when then-City Manager Ed Kitchen proposed spending $2 million of federal Community Development money, to help prepare land for the stadium, all hell broke lose. The NAACP, some City Council members and community leaders protested — even as people who lived nearby were saying they would welcome the new park in an area overrun by drug activity and prostitution.

Baseball wouldn’t have solved all those ills, but it would have helped make the area more inviting to people from all over the city — and a lot less inviting to crime.

Didn’t happen. Stadium proponent Jim Melvin ultimately pulled the plug and looked, as have the hotel folks, to a location closer to the center of downtown.

“We had been absolutely committed to putting the stadium there,” Melvin says of South Elm. “The council pulled out on us.”

Ironically, the council finally saw the light and used federal money to prepare the land for development. Now there’s nothing to put there (yet).

For a while, there was talk of a new $80 million federal courthouse on part of the site. But a new courthouse never materialized there or anywhere else. Federal funding cuts banished the idea to limbo, where it still resides.

Then came the idea for a consolidated school headquarters, in a land swap proposed by Walker Sanders, president of the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro.

Sanders says that notion is still alive. “There are still conversations going on around it.”

But it’s a politically sensitive issue. And the school board has a lot of other pressing matters on its plate.

Whatever happens, Sanders says, the best overall formula for success at South Elm and Lee remains the mixed-use model that encourages affordable housing and creates jobs. “South Elm needs jobs that pay a living wage,” he says. “We need to change the market dynamic there.”

Sanders is right. A gaping hole in downtown’s revival is its glaring lack of affordable housing. With all due respect to the Center Pointe tower, you won’t find it there. Nor will you find it at Governor’s Court and most of the other residences springing up in the center city.

South Elm and Lee is important not only because it provides the most prominent gateway to downtown. It’s important because of the potential it still holds for some of the most meaningful development in the center city.

When some people pass the site all they probably see is empty lots.

What they ought to be seeing is the last, best chance for Greensboro to get downtown revitalization right.