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Ordinance To Ban Downtown Bars
January 31, 2013
Tuesday, Feb. 5 the Greensboro City Council is scheduled to vote on a proposed ordinance that will affect all of the property in the Central Business District. But on Tuesday, Jan. 29, if downtown property owners wanted to take a look at the ordinance to see how it would affect their property, it was not available on the city website. In two calls to the Department of Housing and Community Development, no one available in that department could find a copy. I was told that I had to wait for Zoning Administrator Mike Kirkman to get back because he knew where the ordinance was.
The city manager's office kindly directed me to the city clerk's office where I was told the city was depending on Downtown Greensboro Inc. (DGI) to publicize the proposed ordinance. It may be on the DGI website somewhere, but I couldn't find it and neither could City Councilmember Nancy Vaughan.
Thanks to Vaughan it is now available on the city website.
Downtown property owners I have talked to have not been informed of this ordinance. If they had, it seems councilmembers would be hearing from them. It's all about aesthetics, and it is the aesthetics of Mayor Robbie Perkins and the city Planning and Community Development Department that count. The proposed ordinance states repeatedly that the planning and community development director makes the determination on whether a building is in compliance with the ordinance or not.
Some people like quirky old buildings that are not perfect. Perkins – who recently moved his own company out of the downtown because of the expense and inconvenience mainly caused by difficulties parking – doesn't appear to have much use for old buildings. What Perkins promotes are new buildings and strip shopping centers. It is his often-stated goal to have the downtown run like a shopping center. The planning department has in the past tried to do the same thing.
As always with ordinances, the devil is in the details, and this one has a whole bunch of details. Peeling paint, cracked windows and loose bricks not repaired by the property owner can be fixed by the city and the bill sent to the property owner.
Vaughan questioned whether the city would repair buildings up to historic standards. She noted that if an original window is removed and replaced it can destroy the historic significance of a structure and make the building ineligible for historic tax credits.
Another note, the city charges homeowners $500 and more to cut their yards if the grass is overgrown. How much would the city charge property owners to fix a cracked window or to repaint a building?
A great number of buildings in the downtown are out of compliance because this ordinance makes having boarded up or barred windows illegal. One building the city might want to take a look at is the new police headquarters. It appears to be out of compliance with this ordinance because of the bars on the basement windows. However, Assistant City Attorney Tom Carruthers, who wrote the ordinance, said that in his opinion the new police headquarters would not be out of compliance because the barred windows face the police parking lot. But he agreed that the city attorney's office is not going out in the field to make the determination of whether buildings are in compliance or not. You can bet that whoever makes that decision for the city will find that the new police headquarters are in compliance. Some of the more notable buildings downtown are clearly out of compliance, but it doesn't matter because the law
doesn't apply to them. They include the L. Richardson Preyer Federal Courthouse, the Old Guilford County Court House, and the new Guilford County jail. The AT&T building on Eugene Street appears to be out of compliance and the ordinance could be interpreted so that even West Market Street United Methodist Church, which has bars across its entrance, is out of compliance. But, of course, the city is not going to find West Market Street United Methodist Church out of compliance. However, walking around the downtown there are countless small businesses and office buildings that are out of compliance.
On Commerce Street between West Market Street and West Friendly Avenue there are two office buildings – one with boarded up windows and one with barred windows – that are out of compliance, and that is one small block. Until I walked around looking for them I had no idea how many boarded up and barred windows there were in the downtown. It is so common to with basement windows have some kind of covering or bars that I hadn't noticed. The Greensboro Police Department, as well as dealing with their own building, might want to weigh in on taking all the bars off windows in the downtown.
DGI is supporting this ordinance because DGI's vision of the downtown appears to fall right in line with Perkins' vision of a strip shopping center. Will DGI start reimbursing downtown property owners when the bars and boards are removed and their buildings are repeatedly broken into?
It might shock the Planning and Community Development Department and DGI to learn that the bars are there for a reason. A bunch of downtown property owners didn't wake up one morning and say, "Wow, wouldn't bars look great on basement windows?" Bars to keep people from breaking in are not only common in downtown Greensboro, but are common throughout the world. In Norway and Sweden, where basement windows are covered up with snow nine months out of the year, bars might not be so common. But in some countries they can be found on virtually every window.
Many windows are boarded up for the same reason. It makes it more difficult to break into the building. The regulation – which is totally about how things look not about functionality – is based on the opinion that bricked up windows are beautiful and boarded up windows are ugly. There are actually some attractive boarded up windows in the downtown and some ugly bricked up windows, but bricks are good and boards are bad according to this proposed ordinance. If a property owner decided to fill the window space in a brick building with a solid slab of marble, or lapis lazuli, or with hand painted ceramic tile – despite the fact that some people consider these materials to be beautiful – it would be illegal in downtown Greensboro if the proposed ordinance passes. Diamond-studded gold and silver bars on a basement window would also be illegal, regardless of the cost.
What everybody knows but is not saying publicly is this is all got started because of two buildings that drive Perkins and his buddies crazy. One is the building that houses Glitters at the corner of West Washington and South Elm streets that has boarded up windows on the second floor. The building is owned by Sidney Gray, and he has been a thorn in the side of people who seem to think it is their place in life to tell downtown property owners what to do with their property. Gray doesn't like being told what to do and is one of the many downtown property owners trying to figure out how to get out of DGI, or at least how to quite paying for it.
The other building is the old Cascade Saloon building between the railroad tracks on South Elm Street. This building is owned by the family of Ross Strange, who is an attorney, and so far through legal maneuvering and good fortune he has managed to keep this building from being torn down. The city is determined to tear down the building and this ordinance will give them even more clout. The problem is that it is a historic building and nothing can be rebuilt on that site if it is torn down because it is between the railroad tracks and reportedly doesn't meet the setbacks on either side. The city has been threatening to tear it down for years, but this is a case where if the city wanted to spend a little economic development money it could buy the building and sell it to someone who will renovate it. The city would not make money on the building, but when has the city ever made money on property? The city bought the Coliseum Inn and has done nothing with the property. The city bought the Canada Dry building for far more than its appraised value, but the wife of the News & Record editor owned a big portion of it, so the city councilmembers didn't consider it a total loss. They thought they were buying good will, or better said good press, with taxpayer dollars.
The city bought the old YWCA at above asking price because Perkins wanted the land for the Greensboro Performing Arts Center. Greensboro has plenty of money, and it would make far more sense to go ahead and buy the Cascade building than to punish every downtown property owner with these oppressive new regulations or to tear down a historic building on property where nothing could be built.
Also the city staff doesn't seem to be aware of the current economic situation, although Perkins, whose home is being foreclosed on and who ran up a tremendous debt to the Internal Revenue Service, should understand. In this economy some buildings have cracked windows and peeling paint, not because the owners are deadbeats or don't care about their buildings, but because they are short of cash. Being fined by the city is not going to help get the building repaired or help the owner pay for fixing up the building.
Because of the drop in real estate values many property owners are upside down on their buildings, meaning they owe more than the current value, so selling is really not an option. In other words, a lot of small businesses are just struggling to keep their doors open, and their buildings don't look as good as they might because they don't have any spare cash lying around to fix them up.
But if it is a good idea to have property owners fix every cracked window and have everything freshly painted, why is this ordinance only for the downtown. If Perkins thinks this ordinance is such a good idea for property values, it seems only fair that the strip shopping centers and buildings that he owns all over the city should have to comply, as well as every other building in the city.
Why should only the downtown benefit from this helpful ordinance?
This City Council, in part because of a lack of business experience on the council, is on the path to turn downtown Greensboro back into the ghost town it was 20 years ago. At The Rhino our sales people used to park out in front of the building on a regular basis because they don't stay in the office long and The Rhino Times parking lot on two one-way streets is ridiculously hard to get to from the west. But nobody from our office parks on the street anymore, even to run in the office for a minute, because the parking police are much more diligent and tickets are $15. It makes doing business downtown really difficult. If your business is anywhere else in the city you don't have to worry about parking tickets, but downtown you do. I talk to people all the time who do not want to come downtown because they don't want to get another ticket. A $15 ticket is not just a real deterrent for improper parking, it is a deterrent for coming downtown. When I started The Rhino 21 years ago, a parking ticket was $3. Now it has increased by 500 percent. Even gas hasn't gone up 500 percent.
Finally, this ordinance is simply part of the Downtown Design & Compatibility Manual that the city tried to force on downtown property owners a couple of years ago. The design manual would have codified in law the aesthetic tastes of the city planning department. A number of downtown property owners got together, hired attorney Henry Isaacson to represent us and defeated the manual. Now the planning department, with the support of a new mayor, is trying to bring back the design manual one piece at a time. If this passes there is no telling what part of the design manual will be dredged up next by the staff at the bequest of Perkins or some councilmember. The staff is only too happy to put regulation on top of regulation. The only protection property owners have is the City Council, and in this case it may turn out to be no protection at all.