Source: Rhino Times Greensboro

Mayor Perkins & Co. Flee Downtown

by John Hammer

December 20, 2012

Mayor Robbie Perkins at several meetings has bragged about living and working downtown. Not any longer. Perkins is president of NAI Piedmont Triad Commercial Real Estate, which recently moved its office out of the downtown.

Perkins gave the same reasons for the move as have many other business owners that have moved out of the downtown over the years. The first thing he mentioned was the rent was less expensive, and the second, third and fourth issues he mentioned were parking. He said all the other commercial real estate firms had their own parking, and now everyone at his firm parks in the same lot, which is really convenient. He said it’s a lot easier to zip in and out of a parking lot on State Street than a parking deck downtown.

What makes Perkins different from other business owners who choose to relocate their businesses is that he is mayor and has been on the City Council for all but two of the last 19 years. So Perkins is largely responsible for many of the policies that make downtown a less desirable location for a business to operate.

Parking is a huge issue and downtown it is expensive. There is very little free parking in downtown Greensboro. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The city could pull up the meters tomorrow and do away with paid on-street parking. Time restrictions could still be made, if the city wanted, or the city could try allowing people to park where they wanted.

Another possibility, the city parking decks are paid for, so the parking decks are essentially just moneymakers for city government. You might say it’s another tax on people who live, work and play downtown.

What if the parking decks were free, or the top two floors of every deck were free, or one of the parking decks was free? What if the City Council decided to provide some free parking for people downtown? Would that help downtown businesses? The 200 block of East Market Street is lined with metered parking spaces on both sides. Many times during the middle of the day there isn’t a single car parked in that long block. What if the city made blocks like that free, unrestricted parking. Might that help businesses downtown? It’s hard to see how it could hurt, and the city wouldn’t be losing much revenue because no one parks along there.

Perkins, who says he loves the downtown, moved in large part because of parking. So it seems reasonable that he would try to get some parking policies changed, and it appears that he is. But Perkins is moving the city in the opposite direction. Parking fines have increased, more enforcement officers are being hired, and parking fees have increased. Parking at night used to be free in the parking decks. Now there is a charge.

So one of the big reasons Perkins moved out of the downtown was for free and convenient parking, and the policies of the city are making parking downtown more expensive, and less convenient because you have to worry about getting a ticket.

How about eliminating the Downtown Business Improvement District tax, which is about an additional 8 cents on the property tax rate? If that were done then the property taxes on all the property downtown would go down by about 6 percent. That’s a good bit of savings. That means rents could go down, or property owners who are struggling just to make ends meet could use that money to improve their buildings.

The city could also tell the Bryan Foundation to take care of its own park rather than taxing the downtown property owners to provide care and maintenance for Center City Park, which is the private property of the Bryan Foundation. Does the city maintain your yard for you? Why should everyone downtown be taxed to give money to the richest foundation in Greensboro? It would cost less to operate a business downtown if the businesses didn’t have to maintain the park.

Instead of trying to make it less expensive to do business downtown, the city is in the process of passing, in pieces, the Downtown Design & Compatibility Manual that downtown property owners hired an attorney to fight and successfully defeated. It appears the plan of the city under Perkins is to put the design guide into law piecemeal, making it far more difficult to defeat.

The city could be taking steps to make working downtown cheaper and more convenient, but it appears to be moving the opposite way, much like Perkins who, rather than use his position to change the culture of the downtown, decided to just flee.

In a few years, lawyers and nonprofits may be the only people who can afford to work downtown.