Greensboro development shows the value of persistence

If success has many fathers, then Southside in Greensboro, North Carolina, is well cared for. Locally, the 10-acre urban redevelopment is considered to be something of a marvel. Nationally, it won an American Planning Association Outstanding Planning Implementation award for 2003. But this wasn’t always so. The project initially met with a great deal of skepticism on the part of public officials and real estate professionals. As Thomas Low of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ), the project designer, reports, Southside faced daunting challenges in the implementation of specific details that had great bearing on its success. Southside is the redevelopment of seven blocks of a run-down area near Greensboro’s downtown. It once featured large, fashionable Victorian houses but time and transportation engineering took their toll. One adjacent street was once a federal highway, two others were placed partly below grade due to the installation of viaducts, and a rail yard bordered the other side. The cut-off neighborhood degenerated into a slum with drug and prostitution problems, according to Andy Scott, Greensboro’s director of housing and development. The city began purchasing parcels and clearing the worst buildings in the mid- to late 1990s, but the block and street pattern was left intact. No local developers were interested in taking on the challenge of redevelopment. Nate Bowman, a new urbanist who is developing a project called Vermillion in Huntersville, North Carolina, was the only bidder. “We had a good plan, and he came back and enhanced and elevated the plan five or six levels,” says Scott. The Southside plan includes 30 detached houses, 10 duplexes, 50 townhouses, 20 shopfront live-work units, and 10 restored historic houses. It also called for studio apartments above some of the detached garages. At first slow in terms of sales, Southside gained momentum in 2003 and sold out in 2004, surprising many in the local real estate business. About half of the units are complete. For the last two or three years, Southside has been one of the fastest- selling projects in the county, Scott says. Moreover, many of the more expensive units were sold first. Southside benefited from a general downtown renaissance, Scott says, but also helped to give momentum to that turnaround. “Here you have the worst part of downtown and look what has been done with it,” he says. “It made other redevelopment efforts look easy, by comparison.” “I think everybody is pretty amazed,” he concludes. As the first TND to be approved by the city, “extraordinary effort was necessary to build consensus on a broad range of issues,” says Low, explaining that there were many areas of contention. Lessons Learned When Bowman and DPZ took on Southside, they recognized that the city plan would have to be revised to make the project succeed. For example, the city plan called for houses on the main arterial running through the property, Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, to be pulled back in suburban fashion, Low says. “At that time the general feeling was Martin Luther King Drive would be too difficult to transform from its suburban character,“ notes Low. Two additional problems, Low says, consisted of a central green that was too internalized within the project, and a cul-de-sac that resulted from a street closure. Five key goals were identified to make Southside a success: 1. Make Martin Luther King Jr. Drive a community seam rather than a separator. 2. Design gathering spaces so they become highly visible to the greater community, and therefore a catalyst for additional redevelopment. 3. Create a walkable pedestrian-friendly 24-hour community to appeal to buyers. 4. Make sure that outdoor spaces are clearly public or private to deter crime that might breed in semipublic spaces. 5. Make sure that the overall neighborhood is perceived to be safe. Low and Bowman proposed design improvements, both major and minor, that were accepted “in concept.” There was no charrette. “Hindsight tells us we should have had a public planning charrette to flush out many unresolved issues regarding our master plan design,” Low says. “This could have saved considerable time during implementation as key issues continually required renegotiation.” Revisions to the plan 1. Buildings were pulled up close to the sidewalk so they front directly onto Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. “The narrowing effect of these buildings, along with adding continuous on-street parking and crosswalk striping, has effectively calmed cut-through traffic,” Low says. Street trees were relocated out of front yards into the planting strip between the sidewalks and curb. The consistently close building frontages provide “eyes on the street,” Low says. 2. A highly visible community square opening up to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive was surrounded by public streets with on-street parking — both parallel and diagonal — and with shopfronts, townhouses, single-family homes, and an existing church that needed additional parking. This broad range of uses and building types around the public space create an “outdoor room” for the greater community. The success of that space was reinforced by a Savannah-style fountain donated through public and private funds. 3. A large cul-de-sac was replaced with a rectangular close (a small public green that preserved a tree as the centerpiece of a shady tot lot). 4. A large grove of mature trees was found in the center of one of the blocks, and this was preserved as a private neighborhood park. This space is not visible from the public streets and is intended for the use of residents of the surrounding block. 5. Revisions were made to street-scape elements, including some “gateway” entry features. “They were similar in scale and placement to conventional suburban subdivision entry features and not appropriate for the urban direction we had taken the design,” Low says. These features also took up a space that was needed for building sites “and created perceived hiding places for criminal elements,” Low adds. Shrubs that blocked entry to newly created parallel parking spaces were taken out. One of the most contentious issues arose when the city Department of Transportation told Low and Bowman that all but 7 of 40 proposed on-street parking spaces on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive would have to be removed. The parked cars violated “site triangle” standards set up to ensure visibility of drivers pulling out of alleys. “This would have effectively killed any traffic calming effects of on-street parking and drastically reduced the desirability of living” on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Low says, noting that many municipalities do not consider alleys prime circulation routes and exempt them from such requirements. Making the alleys one-way saved the on-street parking and “the project’s pedestrian-friendly design character,” he adds. Fighting to maintain the design elements, although difficult at times, has been worth it, Low believes. The visible evidence is in his favor. u