recommendations for downtown Greensboro (Jefferson: real estate, 2013, apartments)

[gsoboi78]

This blog entry is from 2007 when Blair Kamin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune came to Greensboro. He made some architectural and urban development suggestions for our downtown. I think we need to challenge our city leaders and local developers to take Greensboro to the next level architecturally and start focusing on more vertical downtown high-rise projects.


"But if your building is third rate, then your company’s image will be third-rate. And if your city’s buildings are third-rate, then the image of your city will be third-rate. And if the image of your city is third rate, then how on Earth are you going to attract the most desirable people—“the creative class,” as Richard Florida calls them? You won’t. You’ll be a provincial backwater. You won’t be fully equipped to move into the 21st Century. It’ll be as though as you were living without cell phones and Blackberries and computers. They’re all essential right? Well, good design is too.

I love the old Jefferson Pilot Building, with its twin towers, its terra cotta façade and its bust of Thomas Jefferson overlooking Elm Street. I don’t think it was at all a coincidence that somebody put this building on a postcard. This skyscraper was a civic symbol as well as a piece of real estate. It spoke of craftsmanship and attention to detail and a prosperous Greensboro that had fully embraced the 20th Century. But would anybody put [contemporary] Greensboro skyscrapers on a postcard? They are utterly undistinguished, wasted opportunities to enliven the civic realm. They flunk what I call “the postcard test”: If a skyscraper is beloved enough, it will enter the realm of popular culture and you’ll see it on T-shirts, key chains and dinner plates. But the broader point all these buildings raise for Greensboro is this: The next tall building on your skyline may be residential, not office; that building may be tall and thin, not short and squat; and this building could be boldly expressive, a skyline icon, not just another box like the one now being built across from Center City Park (Center Pointe).

My challenge to you--to the business leaders of Greensboro, to the political leaders and to the citizens--is to recognize that architecture matters and to act on that understand in fresh and creative ways. You’ve made a good start in reviving your downtown, but now it’s time to raise your game to the next level. You can:

• Expand the downtown revival beyond Elm Street to create lively districts; right now, you have one lively street and everything else is pretty much a desert;
• Extend the vitality of downtown into the skyline, which desperately needs a powerful vertical presence, a new campanile, to symbolize downtown’s rebirth;
• Encourage the creation of contemporary architecture that will signal that the downtown is not standing still and that it has moved decisively into the 21st Century
• Ensure that density is accompanied by urbanity in new downtown residential developments—indeed, in all projects
• Keep on preserving the past—the whole past, not mere slivers of it
• And green the downtown, its buildings and public spaces, in a way that gives new meaning to the name Greensboro.

There’s an old saying: You get what you deserve. Well, we get the built environment we deserve, especially in a small city. Chicago, a big city, can take the occasional bad building; it fades into the woodwork. But here, every building counts; it has a disproportionate impact on the urban fabric. There is not a lot of room for error. So my advice to you is this: Seize every chance you get. Be bold. And absolutely, positively, do not accept mediocrity."

Greensboro's Treasured Places: My Two Cents: Perspectives of Greensboro from Chicago

[gsoboi78]

I love photoshop

[Mutiny77]

The skyline will start sprouting new additions when the demand is there. As it stands, a lot of the industries/companies landing and expanding in Greensboro don't really generate the demand for new highrises. But you know what? That's OK. Now I agree that when that time comes that the best route to take would be to focus on a building that helps give a little pizzazz to the skyline; however, what's even more important is what it does at the street level, and that's where I think the emphasis already correctly lies in Greensboro.

[gsoboi78]

I agree. I think it will be a while before we see a class A office tower rise in downtown Greensboro unless a large company locates its headquarters downtown. It could be an existing company in Greensboro like VF Corp or a company relocating to the area. There are opportunities for high-rises in the near future in the form of apartments or a hotel. Even then I wouldn't expect anything taller than 15-stories. Design will be important as well as what it does at the street level. The Marriott hotel gets a failing grade when it comes to street level design. The main entrance of the hotel faces the parking deck not the street. That is an example of how not to build a high-rise. I do think people are ready to see a new high-rise. Not counting Center Pointe, a high-rise hasn't been constructed downtown since 1989. We are long overdue for one. Shortly after the ballpark was built, a company was interested in building a 15-story office tower overlooking NewBridge Bank Park's left field. The plan was scrapped when the city dragged its feet on the potential project. The plan didn't even make the local press at that stage. In 2006 a high-rise federal courthouse (15-20 stories) was suppose to rise in downtown Greensboro but President Bush cut funding for federal projects to help fund the war in Iraq. Since then there has been no time table to start construction and with the current congress, I don't see it happening. House republicans don't have an appetite for federal spending.

I did create renderings sometime ago of a new VF Corp headquarters attached to the Wrangler headquarters downtown. If a major local company moves downtown, it would most likely be VF Corp since the company already has a downtown presence with Wrangler and enough land for a tower and parking. It would just make sense to combine the Wrangler and VF Corp headquarters in one complex. Based on the square footage of the low-rise VF Corp headquarters in north Greensboro, a 12-story corporate tower would be feasible for a downtown headquarters. VF Corp is Greensboro's only fortune 500 company and it belongs downtown. Some have suggested that Greensboro based NewBridge Bank should relocate its headquarters downtown but doubt it would the bank would need enough office space to warrant a skyscraper. I wouldn't expect anything taller than 5-stories.

Here is an old article from 2002 about the 274,000 square foot high-rise courthouse that was suppose to be built downtown.

Greensboro: Private sector should own courthouse - Greensboro - The Business Journal

Action Greensboro even had renderings made showing what the courthouse would look like attached to a new performing arts center at North Elm and Summit Ave. The idea was to have the feds pay for part of the performing arts center. However another proposed location for the tower was near the Guilford County Jail. That would have been a better site because it would be near the county courthouse and other government buildings. Also a 20-story tower there would have expanded Greensboro's skyline a way from Elm Street.

concert hall/federal courthouse



I would like to see a plaza with a fountain in front of the VF Corp tower.