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Greensboro City Council to Consider New Land Development Ordinance February 9^th – Seven years after adopting the Connections 2025 Comprehensive Plan in May of 2003, the city is now poised to adopt a revamped Land Development Ordinance (LDO) designed to implement the policies in the Plan. For instance, one of the main goals of the revised standards is to better accommodate infill development while addressing issues with integrating it into existing neighborhoods. The revamp will also greatly improve the LDO’s user-friendliness. The new code will be searchable and have hyperlinks, illustrations and more definitions, while the old LDO didn’t even have an index (strange but true.)

At TREBIC’s insistence, a balanced Citizen Advisory Team was appointed in 2005 to work with the staff and consultants on the revamp. Several of our most experienced members were on it, and their opinion of the final product is that, while there are a few things in it that we don’t love, all in all it’s a much better ordinance and we look forward to seeing it adopted. Last fall we had all of our civil engineers review it as well and they came up with only about 25 problems – a very short list for a 540-page set of rules. City staff has agreed with us on all but a couple of those problems and changes are being made.

At press-time, the main issue we are still debating is a proposal to promote street “connectivity.” The policy calls for a ratio of street “links” to “nodes (intersections).” The purpose is to ensure more connections between residential neighborhoods in order to give traffic more options for flow. Adams Farm is the “bad” example they want to avoid, with all the neighborhoods forced to use Adams Farm Parkway to get in and out of the area. However, connections to existing neighborhoods are one of the top 5 controversies during rezonings, and frequently those connections are prohibited by zoning conditions. Other barriers like topography, streams, lakes and adjacent development also frequently prohibit connections. In these cases the only way to meet the required ratio would be to eliminate cul-de-sacs in the new developments, thereby creating grid streets with lots of corner lots, few if any cul-de-sac lots and higher costs due to the increase in pavement required, all while not accomplishing the original goal of better traffic flow. Realtors know better than anyone how much buyers like cul-de-sacs and hate corner lots, so need I say more?

Another item that is controversial in the community is the requirement for landscaping on individual single-family lots. The current proposal is that one tree must either be saved or planted on each lot, and that it must live for one year. Since all builders plant at least 1, usually 2 trees per lot voluntarily (with the exception of a very few affordable housing projects), this does seem to be a solution in search of a problem. But the “one-year” requirement sets the city up to be “tree police” when there might be higher priorities for scarce tax dollars.

Much has been said about this revamp effectively rezoning the whole city. When the ordinance was last revamped in 1992 there were indeed wholesale changes to the zoning on some parcels. This time, however, that shouldn’t be the case. Zoning classifications have been modernized and renamed, and some minor changes to things like setbacks are proposed, but there is no intent to change the zoning of individual parcels, for instance, from office to commercial. The city sent letters to 110,000 properties that are affected, but if you got one you probably have no idea what it’s trying to tell you. Don’t feel bad, they weren’t very clear. Call the city at 373-CITY or go on line at http://www.greensboro-nc.gov/ to check your zoning just to make sure you’re not adversely affected. Staff is proposing a 6-month grace period during which property owners can get a free rezoning if a mapping mistake was made during this revamp. Council may decide to give an even longer grace period.

Guilford/Greensboro/High Point Planning & Inspections Department Merger – A task force of 17 citizens appointed in April of 2009 has studied merger of Building and Planning Departments and water and sewer functions and issued their recommendations in January.

First, the big question: Would a merger of departments result in Cost Savings? Not necessarily, after all, there will still be just as many rezonings and plans to review as there are now. If there is fat in any budget it can be cut with or without merger. There would likely be some savings, just probably not enough to be a deciding factor. But there is an opportunity to improve customer service, and that would result in cost savings in the private sector.

Regardless of whether the departments are merged, several things are key to getting our cities and county ready to be competitive in a global economy:

1. Leadership (elected officials, managers and department directors) has to insist on a mission of “How can we make this happen and happen quickly?” customer service.

2. All joint review processes must be streamlined so that they do not take any longer than they would if only one jurisdiction was involved.

3. Create a Physical One-Stop-Shop by putting all County and Greensboro plan review personnel in one building.

4. Create a “virtual” one-stop-shop by migrating everyone to the same Software/GIS/review and approval and technology.

5. Reconcile City and County Future Land Use Plans in the cities’ future growth areas so everyone is singing from the same sheet of music.

6. The Greensboro/Guilford County joint review process for projects in the county that are getting city water and sewer is an utter failure and must be revised. It now takes a minimum of 2-3 months before a rezoning application can even be filed, and plans have to go through dual review by both the city and county.

7. Establish Municipal Sphere of Influence (MSI) Areas for Greensboro and High Point’s near-future growth areas. In the MSI the County staff would enforce the city’s urban land development ordinances. This would eliminate dual review and also resolve issues of development character without the “regulation without representation” issues of official extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ).

The task force does recommend merger of Greensboro and Guilford County Planning and Inspections departments, and High Point too if they will, by the end of 2010. Given the right leadership, the improvements in the customer experience that come from having one phone number to call, one website to log on, one Director to appeal to could be significant. Such user-friendliness could especially be helpful to economic development clients - companies coming in from the outside who are not familiar with our systems. But there are several other departments that are involved in development review too, so ideally we’d merge all those plans into a single Development Services department. The current “consulting contract” relationship with small towns should continue unchanged because it is working well.

Other key details: We shouldn’t merge the Planning Boards, Fee schedules or Ordinances – at least not in the beginning. Let both the County and City Managers hire and fire the department director, but for simplicity’s sake call it a “Guilford County” Department.

If the elected officials decide to move forward, there are lots of details to be worked through, so there will be an implementation task force set up to handle the devilish details. But for now the decision to move forward or not is in the hands of the High Point and Greensboro City Councils and the Guilford County Commissioners.

Marlene Sanford, President, msanford@trebic.org, 336-855-1453 GSO, 336-882-2049 HP

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Heart of Triad plan gets consensus
The rancor that once permeated the debate over the fate of the Heart of the Triad has quieted into a consensus about the future for one of the last large undeveloped areas in the region.

Greensboro economy still dragging, survey finds
Greensboro’s economy is still “less than robust” because of deteriorating wages and slow job growth, according to a new survey being released today by the Greensboro Partnership.

$400M still available for private projects
Developers have until Feb. 15 to take advantage of nearly $400 million in low-interest financing still available from the federal stimulus act to help get private projects off the ground.

Bankruptcy filings up more than 15.2% in Middle District
High unemployment and a weak economy sent bankruptcy filings up more than 15.2 percent during 2009 in North Carolina’s Middle District.

Study shows progress in GSO's economic transition
New data show that Greensboro’s gradual transition from a manufacturing to knowledge-based economy is making progress, with improvements in areas such as wages in key sectors and a more diverse work force.

Economist: Up to half of construction firms won't survive
While some segments of the economy are starting to improve, the worst is yet to come for commercial construction, industry experts say.

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