Let me apologize in advance for the unseemly display of optimism in the following column. I know that feeling good about Greensboro is unfashionable, and I acknowledge that we are still a few bricks shy of rebuilding our battered economy. But good things are happening here, and they will lead to more good things to come.

Maybe it is time for the Greensboro Disease, which has for many years afflicted the body politic with reflexive negativity, to go into remission. It's going to take a few breaks before we can declare ourselves cured, but there is definite improvement in some of our vital signs.

I don't want to get all Petula Clark on you, but a lot of the good stuff is happening downtown. And downtown matters. As our old industries hollowed out, Greensboro developed a sense of rootlessness and rudderlessness. We didn't quite know who we were anymore, where we fit on the economic map of the state after a century of prominence. Downtown is one very tangible way to answer the question of what kind of place Greensboro is and wants to be.

Walk around downtown and you can feel that times have changed. The gradual comeback of the area has taken on a momentum of its own and reached what would seem to be a point of sustainable, organic growth. Consider things that will happen there (the rehabilitation of the lots at South Elm and Lee, more residential options), seem likely to happen (the proposed Elon law school) and just damn well need to happen (the improvement or implosion of the old Wachovia tower), and the picture gets even brighter.

It is not hard to look down the road a few years and see downtown Greensboro as a regional hotspot to live, work, play. This emerging asset will create jobs and help lure companies and talent here, too.

Downtown's renaissance should help inoculate us against another local malady, Silver Bullet Syndrome, which demands that all development ideas solve all problems immediately or be declared a complete failure. But downtown is a triumph of incrementalism, driven by many different players, including small businesses, nonprofits and corporate leadership. The storefronts and nightspots and the baseball stadium and the Southside development are all part of the solution.

Now look along downtown's often-ignored Y-axis, which is blessed with a campus of the state university system at either terminus. A&T and UNCG have learned to work together, with the anticipated research campus as one promising result. The federally funded genomics project led by UNCG, Duke and the Moses Cone Health System is a long-term effort that will focus a lot of brainpower and money on Greensboro. The Y-axis gives us skin in the knowledge-economy game.

Once you start feeling the downtown energy, it's easy to see that Greensboro's assets go well beyond these city blocks. It is still, despite our best efforts, a comfortable place to live. We are the natural center of the horizontal metroplex that runs from Burlington to High Point. Our airport is about to add an enormous overnight freight hub (not without cost to our quality of life), which is supposed to spur job growth and may have already contributed to the decision by Dell Computer to consider the Triad for a new plant.

A Dell presence in Guilford County would be the biggest boost to the local manufacturing economy since the textile industry came south in the 1890s. It would help us get well in a hurry. But landing Dell or other worthwhile companies might mean subsidies and tax breaks and all those things that cause people with Greensboro Disease to go into convulsions. The same might be said of another critical economic-development job, making our public schools the best in the Southeast.

Remember, Greensboro Disease is not dead. You can hear the sneezing and hacking already as people consider improvements to the coliseum complex; symptoms of the disease include a fixation on a coliseum operating deficit that amounts to a fraction of what the city spends on routine grounds-keeping for its park system and an inability to count the tax revenue, business activity and marketing value it delivers in addition to entertainment.

This is a critical moment for Greensboro. A relapse of our eponymous ailment is possible, but we can't afford to let that happen. Let's get well soon instead.

© News & Record 2004