Wesley’s Week – July 2-8, 2007

by Wesley

I spent my Independence Day going to visit a friend in Greensboro, and oh my gosh, has that city changed so much since I was last there! Now, I should admit it has been at least four years since I really have been within the downtown itself, while I have seen major changes over the years going past it along Interstate 40, nothing prepared me for the radical redo I witnessed there.

Simply put, Greensboro has had a downtown renaissance. What had been one of those zones where much activity seemed to disappear by 6 p.m. weeknights and on the weekends during the 1980s and 1990s when I lived there going to school at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro or visited there is now bustling with new restaurants, clubs, stores and a beautiful renovated park complete with a waterfall and burbling stream.

Now, of course I know you are thinking to yourself that I saw this when they had a 4th of July festival, and that it cannot be as bustling apart from special events like that. You may be right to a certain extent, but I must tell you, I cannot recall seeing Greensboro’s downtown as pretty or pleasant as I did during my most recent visit, and I do not think all the improvements will be going to waste anytime soon. The layout is too inviting (they got rid of that obnoxious street design with barely any places off the side to park, thankfully), the attractions are too distinctive and inviting (they have one specialty restaurant devoted solely to cheesecake in exotic varieties, for example), and most importantly there are now more people living downtown, with several new condos planned in what had been basically an office and small business zone previously.

This effort to enliven downtown areas has happened in Durham and Raleigh too, of course, so I guess I should not be surprised that Greensboro is doing the same. It is just that Greensboro’s downtown always struck me as being even more lifeless than Durham or Raleigh’s a few years ago, if you can believe that, and that there never seemed to be the same impetus among city leaders to address the situation, only to make sure that Greensboro kept growing bigger towards High Point, which it indeed has, as the two cities now border each other.

So I offer a hearty congratulations to Greensboro for its unexpected (at least in my mind) and finely executed beautiful new downtown. It shows the city is serious about its future and attracting quality people to live and work there, which is what you need to compete in today’s economy. It now ranks as one of my favorite downtowns in North Carolina – maybe I will tell you what the other ones are in a later blog. (Here is a hint for those who really want to guess, though – most are around the Triangle.)

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