Gastonia, ask for something better

Duharts Creek, January 2010, photo by Thomas Hopkins

The City has spent $4 million securing land for the FUSE district. Stopping neighborhood decay while adding commercial value can be a good use of community resources. The City is working with developers and private citizens to come up with an additional $15 million for investment in a multi-use stadium and surrounding commercial development to inject life into a stagnant part of our place.

This guest editorial was published as a letter to the editor in The Gaston Gazette on July 5, 2017

While we are looking at ways in our historic downtown to improve its vitality, I believe it’s time to ask for something better in our current commercial downtown at a fraction of those other costs. 

April 20,2016 Gazette reporting on the 7-0 Council vote to reject commercial zoning in Franklin Woods

A year ago City Council rejected plans to build a big box store on wooded land south of Franklin Square.   A local developer now has other ideas:  not one big box, but one or two smaller ones, with a service road and perhaps other shops on this pennant-shaped near-14-acre parcel, an area which I have described as “Franklin Woods.” 

The "Franklin Woods" parcel is a 40-acre wooded patch owned by the City and private interests located just south of the Franklin Square commercial development in east Gastonia, NC

Plans remain light on details of what and how development would proceed.  The developer chooses to emphasize projected tax revenue, from whatever goes there.  I hope that, rather than ignoring the costs of how this development generates tax dollars, the City Council will use a review process to defend a few of its values.  

2010 City Greenway plan

Defend your plans – Residential neighbors, City planners, and votes of commissions and councils have for forty years opposed commercial development in this natural flood basin for Upper Duharts Creek.  The parcel is not suitable for any use other than greenspace without substantial infill of land and severe alteration of water flow around the property.  Since 1997 five different City long-range plans have affirmed the consistent aspiration to reserve this area as greenspace.

The landowners have now threatened to clear-cut their parcel if they don’t get a rezoning this time, saying they are compelled to do so to avoid a large tax penalty.  The developer has conceded they could get a time extension, yet they legally can clear-cut at any time.  You can’t stop a property owner from some unwanted actions on their property – but you need not reward them for such.  Trees re-grow easier out of stumps than commercial paving.

However, should the owners wish first to create a conservation easement on the land, then sell to the City, I think a purchase could be structured to make them financially whole with no new City debt.  For considerably less than one-fifteenth of the public and private funds needed to build a baseball stadium and entertainment district in our historic downtown, you could secure a lasting green spot in the very heart of our current commercial downtown.  That green space would anchor and grow property values, commercial and residential, for years to come.

 

Dec 16, 2016 Gazette article on the Council-approved Duharts Creek Urban Runoff Initiative

Defend your votes –  As Council voted “no” last year, they committed to address concerns with Duharts Creek flooding.  Twenty-plus City acres, mainly west of the Franklin Woods parcel, are already set aside as a floodplain conservation area.  Yet the new developer proposes to make safe his project by building a regional retention pond in that protected City spot, of unknown dimensions and location, without concern for a more accurate survey of the actual 100-year-flood line in the area than existing inadequate data.

City staff has identified “two handfuls” of locations upstream where commercial sites could retrofit with detention basins to lower peak stormwater flow.  Instead, residences along the creek are to suffer the complete burden of commercial runoff mitigation?  Better to leave this spot wooded as a natural overwash filter for development upstream and a safety valve for when water flow downstream needs to back up there.  And guarantee increased capacity without damaging the use of neighboring properties by obtaining the rest of Franklin Woods.  

Artist rendering of proposed FUSE district, February 2017

Defend your process – Stay an honest broker and don’t count tax revenue from a project toward other developments until you determine a project’s design can stand on its own merits.  In cities, the best land use of every site is not the same as its most profitable.  Otherwise we would never have green spaces.  Or your home.  Just commercial development.  If someone tells the City that the success of FUSE is dependent on a rezoning from this or any one location, then talk to someone else and wait for a better deal. If our financing choices are truly that limited, perhaps it’s best to simply declare victory by having stemmed that area’s decay.   

Franklin Woods at center, viewed from top of the hill at Flanagans Lane and Rosemary Lane

Defend your neighborhoods – Don’t destroy the environmental buffer between the amphitheater of residences just south of this parcel and commercial areas on the north of Franklin Boulevard. As planned, nothing will be different in the commercial development of this parcel from a commercial development on the northside, other than a thin screening wall at back.  This is not a destination boutique development amongst the woods.  Healthy commerce can augment healthy neighborhoods. With this plan at this location, it will not.

 

Reedy River in Greenville, SC image from here

Defend your resources – One councilman noted recently how wonderfully Greenville SC uses the
Reedy River as a shared place of commerce, entertainment, residences, and self-identity.  We don’t have a river through our commercial heart, but we do have Duharts Creek.  There is nothing in the latest rezoning proposal that treats the woods and creek as shared community assets:  the woods are just something to be mowed down and the creek is just a carrier for stormwater.  If the nearby towns of McAdenville and Cramerton can preserve greenspace along their waterways, why would it be folly for us to try?

For economic, environmental, and quality of life reasons, I believe the entire Franklin Woods parcel should be purchased and set aside for conservation and preservation. Stopping neighborhood decay while adding commercial value can be a good use of community resources.  

Gastonia, ask for something better.  Keep Franklin Woods.