Late Night in the Council Chamber
Last night I went to the Greensboro City Council meeting, where a vote was scheduled on closing a downtown street so a baseball stadium can be built. The meeting started at six. Baseball was #24 on the agenda, after several rezoning and annexation cases, and discussion didn't get cranked up til after ten. The clock on the back wall read 1:22 when the Council finally voted in favor of the proposal, thus clearing the way for the stadium.
I spoke against the closing of Lindsay Street, for the same reason I've written about it in the paper: everyone agrees that it's the second best site. The brownfield acreage across Lee Street from my office is crying for redevelopment in a way that the so-called Bellemeade site to the north is not. But the case was made that the better site was off the table, that the Council had choked at a critical moment last spring by not funding a site cleanup, and that it was Bellemeade or nothing. So we get a cool downtown stadium, and maybe, if we're smart, we keep our focus on this side of the tracks as well and bring South Elm Street along for the urban renaissance we are supposedly embarking upon.
It was about midnight by the time I took the mic, emerging from a long and not overly-organized line of Bellemeade site opponents. The pro-stadium folks had already spoken--a couple of dozen big hitters from businesses and foundations, each dropping a quick, well-crafted, soundbite in support of the project. The antis were much more casual in their presentation. People went on too long, got angry, went off on tangents. But they made their case, it just wasn't enough to carry the vote.
I was home and trying to play quietly with the puppy by 1:40, but the Council actually stayed in session long enough to reverse itself on a bad scenic corridor plan it had passed last month. The improved plan is to keep billboards off our new urban loop. All in all, a good night for the City.
4:20:19 PM 
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