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Another GFR article from The East Carolinian... These numbers are BAD. I expect the city will step in shortly, seems like they should have a long time ago.
GREENVILLE, NC (WITN) - Thousands of drivers have received unwelcomed letters during the first month of Greenville's red light camera program.
Greenville police say 3,391 red light camera violations were reviewed by officers, who then signed off on 3.336 tickets being issued. That was between November 15th and December 15th.
American Traffic Solutions, the private company that operates the five red light cameras in the city, has two different employees review the violations before they are sent to police for review.
The 55 violations rejected by GPD represent less than 2% of the total tickets received.
Violators are charged $100 for the infractions, which do not count as insurance points.
The five intersections with the cameras are:
*Charles Boulevard and 14th Street
*Charles Boulevard and Fire Tower Road
*Arlington Boulevard and Fire Tower Road
*Arlington Boulevard and Greenville Boulevard
*Arlington Boulevard and South Memorial Drive
Seems like a high number. I'd be interested to see how many this holiday season will bring in.
The Greenville City Council voted 4-2 on Monday against a motion seeking staff direction to address what a consultant’s report showed was a saturation of student housing.
The vote came after a presentation by Jessica Rossi, a planner with Kimley-Horn, a firm hired by the city in September to conduct an occupancy study of student and professional housing. The study showed the vacancy rates for student housing are above national averages and would increase as developments underway are completed. The study also showed a lack of market-rate housing for non-students.
“Ultimately what the analysis came down to was that we found there to be excess supply of student housing, but a potential for market rate housing,” she said.
The study was completed in December and cost the city $20,000. The presentation to the council on Monday night was the same presentation Rossi gave to the Planning and Zoning Board on Dec. 19.
Questions from council members focused on the impact of two large apartment complexes on the outskirts of town. The Bellamy and Paramount 3800, formerly North Campus Crossing, had the greatest number of vacancies in the study.
The vacancy rate likely would be just above the national average but still within the healthy range if the two complexes were excluded from the study, she said.
Discussion also covered existing zoning regulation developers must navigate in order to build student housing and the four-bedroom, suite-style apartments that have become prevalent — such units are difficult to convert to other uses when vacancies increase dramatically, as they have at The Bellamy and Paramount.
District 1 Councilwoman Kandie Smith — Paramount is in her district — motioned for staff to come back to council in May with recommendations on how the imbalances might be addressed. Smith’s motion was seconded by District 4 Councilman Rick Smiley then voted down 4-2, with Council members William Bell, Rose Glover, Brian Meyerhoeffer and Will Litchfield voting against it.
Following the vote, Smith asked the council why they were voting against the motion.
“So we are opposing allowing our staff an opportunity to take a look at what we asked for from a study to see if there is anything we can do to make sure our city is growing appropriately,” she said. “Because that’s what I took it to say; I just want to be clear. Because we waited a long time for this study, so we’re saying now that we’ve got it, we’re not putting it to use, we’re not looking at it and we don’t care we got it and just … oh well?”
Mayor P.J. Connelly said that he was personally concerned about government overreach.
“I think that, in my opinion, I don’t know how much more we want to continue to go into this,” he said. “We’ve talked about this several times and we’ve talked about some of the checks and balances that are in place right now and we talked about four-bedroom units that can be problematic. You still have to go before the Planning and Zoning Commission, or the Board of Adjustment. I think at some point at some point we do want to be mindful that we don’t want to have too much product out there, but at what point do you say the government should be involved in it? We’ve seen this happen in the past and it’s been problematic for the city in the past and sometimes we step too far.”
District 5 Councilman Litchfield — the Bellamy is in his district — said he believed the city did not need to get involved to fix the problems addressed by the study, but believed developers of the housing market would see the same problem.
“Probably developers and investors are also looking at this exact type of information, that No. 1 they don’t want to build outside that three mile, or even one mile radius (from the campus of East Carolina University), and if they’re going to be putting their dollars to work and the bank is going to be loaning them money, they are going to identifying those same issues,” he said. “We have regulations in place, we have planning and zoning in place, we have steps and regulations to protect against this continue overbuilding.”
During her presentation, Rossi said she believed that the information found during their study would be similar to information developers would find before making a decision on whether to build. Based on the findings, she said she believed at least a small respite from more building would occur based on developers and investors recognizing the same trends.
Smiley countered positions against the motion during the post-vote discussion.
“I think that it’s an excellent point that we have boards and commissions that review these proposals, they review these proposals using guidance that this council has given them, and in the process of using that guidance, they have created the scenario you see in front of you,” he said.
”It’s reasonable to look at this and say ‘I don’t think there’s a problem,’ and if that is indeed what you believe then OK, that’s fine. But I don’t think if you think that there is some imbalance here, I think it’s dangerous to say that we are not creating that imbalance already.
He said that having staff study the issue and act on recommendations might involve government in the housing market in a way it’s not already involved, but the process might reveal current city policies and land-use practices are creating some of the imbalances in student housing and discouraging more market-rate housing.
“I appreciate the desire to not act in the market, but I think you are underestimating the extent to which we already are, and the value of trying to figure if that’s the case and can we in fact stop it.”
Before the council proceeded to the next item on the night’s agenda, Smith spoke again about her confusion on why the council was against the motion.
“I guess I’m confused that we would spend all this money and time on a report, to allow us to make an intelligent decision, and we’re now saying ‘we don’t want that,’” she said.
“We should have not even had the report and wasted the staff time, because now we have the report given and not giving staff time to go back and look and say, ‘What we’re doing now is working currently, we can do more of this, or what we’re doing, we need to make changes.’ We’re just going to automatically vote down the information we’ve been given.”
Contact Seth Gulledge at Sgulledge@reflector.com and 329-9579. Follow him on Twitter @GulledgeSeth
This is what happens when the city pays for too many studies to be done. I'm in complete agreement with Kandie, but also in agreement with PJ. I really hope this will cut down on the requests for meaningless studies this year.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that there are a lot of student complexes in Greenville. It's understandable that complexes that have been built closer to campus are affecting the occupancy rates in complexes that are farther away. It's about supply & demand. Should the city really be in the business of trying to "fix" that issue? Or should developers understand the current market and future trends when it comes to their industry?
Why doesn't the city simply partner with these outlying complexes to provide subsidized, affordable housing to regular citizens if there's such a problem? I think it's up to developers to understand what's going on in their market and change their business to remain competitive. Cheaper rent, better perks, faster response times. All of these things are important to students & non students when it comes to an apartment complex.
This is an excerpt from a monthly letter that is sent out on campus, I thought I was a fun read as it concerns campus development and buildings...
Quote:
There are a large number of construction cranes in the university area these days. It's an exciting time to be in Greenville. Some of those cranes are associated with ECU projects, but many are not. They are a collective and visible sign of the progress being made in ECU facilities and also proximate, high-density residential and commercial development in and around the "uptown" district. As a result, I believe that the central city area will continue its impressive momentum as an exciting place to live, work, and play. An important ingredient in ECU's future is clearly tied to uptown's continued growth, walkability, and vibrancy. I am convinced that the next 5 years will witness a remarkable transformation of the uptown area, and ECU must continue to be an important part of that emergence. An exciting uptown district is essential to ECU's recruitment of talented students, staff, and faculty.
Recently, a study (conducted by Professor Darin White, Chair of the Department of Entrepreneurship and Management in the Brock School of Business at Samford University) came to my attention. While I take certain aspects of the work with a grain of salt, I think the central message is clear and emphasizes the importance of new (and improved) spaces in and around campus. In contrast to many studies that summarize students' self-reported preferences for factors involved in selecting schools, Dr. White examined the actual choices of students. What he found is that factors frequently self-reported as important by students, like available majors, cost of attending, campus safety, and value, are conflated with the quality of the physical environment presented, including facilities. Nicer facilities are equated with higher quality educational programs, better value, higher quality faculty, and improved campus safety.
So, I believe (with or without a study) that the current cranes and those that you'll be seeing and coping with over the next few years are crucial to our ability to attract talent to Greenville. I hope that you can join me in feeling excited about these new facilities and the people that they will help to attract. I've included images of three projects, below, but there are several others that also have attractive quality: south side renovation of the football stadium; adaptive re-use of 209 East Fifth Street (a new home for divisional offices of REDE within the uptown district); adaptive re-use of the old Export Leaf (Haynie) Building, which will serve as a new home for innovation and economic development programs on 10th Street; and, adaptive reuse of "Building 43" across the street from Bate (a new home for the Miller School of Entrepreneurship and interactive spaces for students and faculty from across campus to "collide" and innovate).
Of the three projects imaged below, the new student union (Image 1) will come on line first and will include over 200,000 square feet with a 700 space parking garage. This project is scheduled for completion early in October 2018. It provides a beautiful facility as ECU's "living room" for students. Many of the offices within Student Affairs will be relocated to this exciting new space. It will provide much-needed gathering spaces for the entire ECU community. When students and their families visit ECU, they will witness a clear commitment to student quality of life.
The second project that I'd like to highlight (Image 2) is a new student services building, branded as the One-Stop Building. This has been an exciting collaboration between Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, and ECU Facilities. The building will occupy almost 70,000 square feet and be located at the campus edge of the uptown district (Fourth and Reade). It will house key student services. This Building will provide a fantastic first impression for visitors but will also provide an efficiency that students will immediately benefit from, with colocation of admissions, registrar, financial aid, one-card, first year transition, centralized advising, and career services. Much of the design work is now completed, and construction could begin as early as July 2018. The building includes a 560 space parking garage.
The final project highlighted here is, for me, the most exciting. The image below (Image 3) portrays the current design of our (NC) bond-funded Life Sciences and Biotechnology Building. Designers have worked closely with the Harriot College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Engineering and Technology to arrive at a 140,000 square foot, research-oriented building that encourages and facilitates team science to solve real-world problems. Faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students will find a state-of-the-art building that invites their scientific activity and puts it on display for the outside world to see. We have purposely situated it on millennial space at the edge of campus (10th and Evans) so that it serves as a gateway into ECU. As with the other three projects, this building comes equipped with a new parking garage. We should occupy the building some time in 2021.
Facilities are an important attractive element when students, staff, and faculty make their choice of destination. I am excited with the progress we are making in this regard and our new facilities will provide an important marketing advantage as we bring talent to Greenville and the region.
Last edited by jpirate; 01-09-2018 at 07:30 AM..
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