Squirrel Dreams

My aged cat Bito was napping

while this squirrel was literally eating his lunch.

I hope he was dreaming of his glory days. Lucky squirrel.

Pick Up Your Trash

Last Saturday some people got together to clean up a sliver of city property bordering Fisher Avenue that is off the city's radar screen for maintenance. It's kind of hidden away and it gets used a lot by transients.

16 bags of trash were collected, and the city promptly answered a request to pick them up from the curb.

Neighbors also put a trash can at the spot in hopes that the people using the area would be willing to clean up after themselves.

Fond hope!

I don't care how down on your luck you are -- you can still pick up your trash.

Carolina Bank Update -- A Message From The Architect

I received a very nice e-mail from Kenneth Mayer, the architect of the proposed new Carolina Bank building, which I criticized strenuously in a previous post. Mr. Mayer forwarded me an updated site plan,

and these words, which I quote in full with his permission:

David—I have read with interest the blog postings on the Carolina Bank site plan. As the architect for this project, I would like to add to the discussion with the following comments and background. Because of the length, I was not able to post these, but perhaps you could do so.

First, the site plan shown is not the most current. I have attached the plan that has been tentatively approved by the Planning Department and the Transportation Department (GDOT). As you review the comments below, refer to this plan.

Downtown Design Guidelines: as you know these guidelines are still under development and are not yet in a form to be adopted or properly used in site planning. However, at the request of the Planning staff, we reviewed our site plan against the principles they were seeking to incorporate into the guidelines.

We developed an alternative plan that pushed the building to the street facing Spring, removed on-site parking on the Spring side of the building, and showed how on-street parking similar to that in front of the Carolina Theatre could be incorporated. This made the building’s siting more urban and pedestrian-friendly.

This positioning, however, required a direct exit onto Spring Street for customers exiting the drive-up lanes. GDOT would not allow this exit due to traffic volume on Spring. We therefore, had to move the building back to the center of the site to allow customers to leave the drive up lanes, circulate in front of the building and exit onto either Market or Friendly.

Building size: the building is 44,000 SF and four floors high—plus a gabled roof that adds to its height. We used a small floor plate to increase the building height on the site.

Parking: A building this size would normally have around 145 parking spaces—we are only providing 119. Bear in mind that there are no public decks near this site and on-street parking is limited on the three one way streets Spring, Market and Friendly. Developing underground parking is prohibitively expensive for a project this size.

Drive up lanes: Like it or not, customers prefer to have drive up lanes at full service branches such as will be included in this building.

Fencing: there is no fence around this site. The perimeter will be appropriately landscaped per our discussions with the Planning Department.

Traffic: keep in mind that this site is surrounded on three sides by multi-lane one-way thoroughfares which by themselves promote fast vehicular movement through downtown and are a detriment to pedestrian-friendly planning. [emphasis mine -- ed.] This site has to react to this situation to provide proper means of access and egress for Bank customers.

In closing, while I certainly respect everyone’s right to their opinion about the design of this project, it is always helpful to have background and facts to relate to. The project was not designed in a vacuum, it was designed with the consultation of the Planning staff and the fledgling guidelines it is developing. It also had to react to the conditions required by GDOT and the traffic patterns in this part of downtown.

Thanks,
Ken Mayer, AIA, LEED AP

Mr. Mayer's response points to what many people have noticed is a huge problem for good downtown design, namely, our current downtown transportation plan.

It may be these kind of streets that finally jinxed the Bellemeade Village plan -- who can conceive living in an "urban village" that's surrounded by what one of the property owners once described to me as a "Daytona 500"?

When the Project for Public Spaces came to town several years ago for a consult on the Center City Park, their people said of Friendly Avenue, "you've got to find a way to make Friendly more friendly to pedestrians."

I've no doubt that GDOT would be perfectly happy to completely redo downtown's major thoroughfares if, as their head of engineering once said to me, "someone's got bags of money to shower on us."

Unfortunately, nobody does. And that means inferior designs downtown for the foreseeable future, I think.

99 Blocks Hurts My Feelings

A new local magazine appeared in my mailbox today -- 99 Blocks. According to Bill Hancock, the publisher, "That's the number of square city blocks in the area we've defined as downtown Greensboro, which includes Elm Street, Southside, and Fisher Park."

Hmmmm.

Fisher Park sits just outside Greensboro's Central Business District, and there are a number of other neighborhoods that also sit on its edge -- Westerwood, East Market, Cedar Street / Bellemeade and (ahem) at least one other -- that don't seem to be included in the 99.

Isn't sending the mag to me, without including my neighborhood in your area of hipness, kind of like telling me you're having a party, but I'm not invited?

Gee, thanks!

Breakfast

Fage 2% Greek yogurt and fresh blueberries. Mmmmmm.

Bus Stopped

Raleigh N&O:

RALEIGH - Shopping centers in Raleigh increasingly advertise themselves as "upscale" or "affluent." In other words, don't come by bus.

Four plazas in Raleigh now forbid city buses from entering the property, even the parking lots. At Brier Creek Commons in northwest Raleigh, that can mean that workers must trek up to a quarter-mile across hot asphalt .... A good walk never killed anyone, but bus riders call the shopping centers' rules another indignity that poor shoppers and workers must endure.

(Via HypePipe.)

Sheesh.

Here in GSO, the new Wal-Mart at Cone and US 29 not only allows buses, it has a covered bus stop right in front of it. The site appears to have been designed specifically to accommodate public transportation.

I love Wal-Mart!

City Slickers and Nature Lovers

The authors of one of my favorite local blogs, Greensboro Birds, are thinking of buying some acreage in the country:

We know we want plenty of space between us and our neighbors, more space than just walls, ceiling, and floor. We also know we want a little acreage ...

[We're considering buying ] over six acres, half of which is covered by this fantastic meadow surrounded by tall old hardwoods, that could be ours—and not in the mitts of a lot-scraping developer.

I know the urge. When L & I were first married, we lived for 4 years on 1100 acres of wooded land on the Haw River in Chatham county, and the experience was idyllic for us and our kids. Wild turkey, deer, foxes, bobcats, owls, hawks -- all were our regular visitors. And a few years ago, back when we thought L's stock options in the dot-com boom were going to make us millionaires (hah!), we started looking at acreage to put a log house on. (Didn't happen.)

But I don't think I'd do that today.

People living far from their places of work on large lots -- that's the essence of low density exurban growth. If we moved there, yes, we'd be protecting some habitat. But when more and more people move there who want the same thing (and they are coming), they'll pressure the county to zone for 5 acre lots, because they love privacy and nature, too.

And they'll bring their cars, so they'll need better roads, and they'll want some lawn, so trees will come down, and they'll use herbicides and pesticides which will get into the watershed, and they'll probably be wanting water and sewer and electricity. All that stuff will degrade habitat.

It might even be the case that a lot-scraping developer, who would certainly develop more densely in order to make a profit, would end up leaving more natural habitat untouched.

My point is that if you're a nature lover, you ought seriously to consider being a city slicker if you don't want to become part of the problem you're trying to solve.

Former Greensboro Mayor Carolyn Allen suggests in today's paper that we engage in statewide planning to set aside natural areas, and that seems like a good idea to me. She provides a hyperlink to Land for Tomorrow.

Hard Questions

Ben Holder asks hard questions about poverty, race, geography, and violence in Greensboro.

A Paradox of Local Preservation

NYT:

What the travel industry calls heritage, or diversity, tourism is one of the most rapidly expanding and maturing segments of the domestic vacation ... "It's a huge, huge growth area in tourism," said Keith Bellows, editor in chief of National Geographic Traveler magazine.

The state of North Carolina has established a program to promote heritage tourism:

"The goal of the Heritage Tourism Program is to work in cooperation with strategic partners to develop and support sustainable efforts that strive to protect, preserve and promote the state’s natural, historic and cultural resources ... "

Guilford County responds by eliminating its only preservation planner position.

Thank you, Julie Curry, for all your excellent work.

Update: Hoggard thinks there may be some pushback coming to get Julie's job reinstated. I'm willing to push, too.

Murrow Opportunity

I was a little surprised to read this yesterday:

If the developers' math ultimately does pass muster with city officials, Murrow Station deserves a fair and even sympathetic hearing.

Allen Johnson & Co. are often wary of endorsing public expenditures for private development.

(But note that the N&R did not actually endorse the idea of spending $2.8 million on Murrow Station -- it endorsed listening to the idea sympathetically.)

I agree with the N&R that Murrow Station presents a good opportunity to promote both downtown development and residential development on the east side of Summit Avenue. Good for Brown Investment Properties and Kavanagh Homes for trying something that's pretty unconventional here in Greensboro.

The public funding aspect of the deal also presents the city with an opportunity to turn what city planning staff have called a "pretty good" plan into a very good plan.

"I think maybe it had something to do with all that sky."

Elizabeth Gilbert on Mildred Kalish's memoir Little Heathens:

I think maybe it had something to do with all that sky. Having lived a disproportionate sum of her childhood outdoors, Kalish was greatly overexposed to “the high blue sky” of Iowa and all that blue oxygen and soaring heavenly vaulting seems to have made her a little intoxicated. But she was also dosed by more than her share of barefoot expeditions over “the astonishingly thick green grass that carpets the woods in Iowa.” She gets almost woozy remembering the sight and scent of the “giant pink bouquet” that arrived every spring when the farm’s one crab apple tree climaxed into bloom. And Kalish swears that the privilege of inhaling “the sweet fragrance emanating from the clean body of a colt, calf, lamb, puppy or kitten that had been sleeping on the grass and warmed by the sun” is one of life’s great “pagan pleasures.”

Shhh. Don't tell anybody, but Iowa is still a beautiful and wonderful place, and I find its high blue sky landscapes intoxicating to this day. (That's why they're the dominant feature of my recent home movie.)

I've got to read Kalish's book.

Renovation And Ed McMahon's Teeth

The last time I saw Ed McMahon on TV, I couldn't stop looking at his teeth. Like a lot of older TV stars, he seems to have had a lot of dental work done to keep them smooth and white, and they have now become the most prominent feature of his face.

Even though they're smooth and white, they didn't look right to me -- they just didn't fit with the rest of his face.

That's the way I feel about a lot of window replacements on building renovations. UNCG is re-doing the Brown music building and Aycock auditorium (both of them very attractive buildings), and has chosen to replace the original wood windows with new metal or vinyl clad ones (I can't tell which from the street).

I managed to get a comparison photo of the Brown building's last remaining wood window, which has since been removed. Can you tell which one it is?

At first glance, the old window (on the right) looks bad, doesn't it? At Historic Preservation Commission meetings, people who want to replace their windows often describe windows in this condition as "rotted,"

but if you click and enlarge the picture below, you'll be able to see that the only real problems are peeling paint and old glazing compound. The wood is in very good condition. Most of these old windows were made with old-growth yellow pine, which is very decay resistant. With scraping, sanding, repainting, and reglazing, these windows would be good for another 80 years at least.

Another irreplaceable feature of the old windows is the "wavy" glass, which gives them a distinct appearance that's visible even from a distance. It's a small detail, but one that lends a lot of character to old buildings.

Here's a view of the Aycock auditorium, with new windows fully installed. They look like very good-quality replacement windows, but something about them reminds me of Ed McMahon's teeth.

I'm disappointed that the university decided to go this route, not only because of the aesthetics but also because of the sustainability issue, which is becoming increasingly prominent in the school's public discourse.

Those old windows contain a lot of "embodied energy" which is simply being thrown away, and more energy is being used in manufacturing new windows. Although the new windows are probably somewhat more energy-efficient than the old ones, studies I've seen show that efficiency gains from new windows are generally much smaller than most people think.

And the new windows probably won't last nearly as long as the original ones would have, necessitating more expense and energy outlay for their replacement in a generation or so. Manufacturers call these windows "maintenance free," but that really means that you can't maintain them. When they start to fail, you just have to get rid of them. They can't be repaired.

Case in point: the "new" replacement windows in UNCG's Curry building were just replaced again last year. I doubt that the replacement windows that were replaced were even 30 years old.