Action Greensboro (AG) initiated a series of public forums to gain input on how to transform our center city into a more desirable destination; one of the recommendations of the three hundred participants was to locate a new baseball stadium downtown.  To this end, the group identified four sites as possibilities for a ballpark. 

In a stroke of great urban planning and with the guidance of Rich Fluer of Cooper-Cary Consultants, South Elm Street was chosen as the preferred baseball location to serve as an anchor for a blighted part of our City.  Along with extensive plans for businesses and mixed income housing adjacent to the site of the ballpark, this S. Elm site was widely lauded as forward thinking development in an area that is desperate need of it.  Renderings were drawn and land options were obtained. But Action Greensboro neglected to gain any grassroots support from the people who actually live in the area.  This oversight proved fatal to baseball on South Elm Street.

Following the announcement, AG ordered a (still unpublished) preliminary environmental study of the site.  The organization reported that the site would require millions to clean up before it would be suitable for development.  The project was presented to the Community Resource Board to request Federal Community Block Grant money to clean the site up.  But because AG did not obtain the necessary buy-in from the surrounding community in advance of announcing its plans,  the request was denied and the project withered.

After this denial of public money, AG scrapped the South Elm plans and it appeared to most citizens that there was no other preferred site for a new Minor League ballpark in Greensboro.  In light of newfound support for a first class baseball stadium from AG’s member organizations, it occurred to several folks that perhaps Greensboro might want to take a fresh look at War Memorial Stadium. 

Upon hearing that the South Elm plans had been scuttled, several members of the community and members of the Aycock Neighborhood that surrounds War Memorial Stadium decided to explore the possibility, feasibility and costs of renovating it to continue its role as the venue for minor league baseball in Greensboro as it has since 1926.

A copy of the 2001 KPMG report that had been commissioned by the City to evaluate the feasibility of WMS’s renovation was obtained.  We discovered that despite reporting to the contrary, the KPMG report did NOT say that a renovation of WMS was unfeasible.  It DOES state however that the City should undertake a thorough study of the WMS site before making a decision involving the future of Minor League baseball in Greensboro.  Since this study was recommended but not carried out by the City, Aycock made the decision to look in to undertaking the study ourselves.

Renowned urban planner Philip Bess was contacted to do a preliminary evaluation of WMS because of his work on Boston’s Fenway Park and the surrounding neighborhood.  One of his first questions to us was, “does the team want to play there?”  Because we did not know the answer, we scheduled a meeting involving the Bats ownership and Bess the day after his initial and favorable evaluation of the old stadium. 

In attendance at this meeting were two of the Bats managing partners and four minor partners, however all seventy of the owners were invited.  When Bess asked the owners, “If it could be shown that War Memorial could be renovated to meet your program requirements, would you consider remaining there?”  Their responses were favorable. 

We made it clear that we would not undertake this expensive renovation proposal unless the Bats would consider the plans.  In the cordial meeting we were provided with some of the requirements they were looking for to gain profitability.  Similar meetings were held later that same day with City staff, City Council, Action Greensboro, DGI and other “stakeholders”.  Those who chose to attend were supportive of the idea as well.  Encouraged by the meetings, we pressed on.  As it turns out , the Bats had different plans.

The Aycock Neighborhood Association contracted with Bess to assemble 15 architects and planners from around the world to come to Greensboro to undertake an eight day design “charrette” for the renovation of WMS and to create a master plan for the entire Aycock Historic Neighborhood.  The cost: $65,000.  We raised the money in six weeks.

The Aycock Plans (PDF File, 166 pages), by all accounts, are extraordinary.  The envisioned renovation of WMS to exceed AA minor league standards, when executed in context with an overall neighborhood master plan, would become one of Greensboro’s crown jewels, but the Bats ownership reneged on their previous statements of interest in our plans.  Shortly after the Aycock plans were unveiled, Action Greensboro announced they had chosen a new location for their stadium and the Bats made it clear that they had no interest in our renovation plans.

As with the South Elm site, Action Greensboro once again neglected to lay the necessary groundwork for grassroots buy-in of the new plans.  They presented Bellemeade as the ideal spot for baseball, but a significant historic building would have to be demolished to make room for the ballpark.  In addition, many residents of Fisher Park, one of Greensboro’s oldest and most established inner city neighborhoods, and nearby Westerwood perceived that the new stadium would irreparably alter the character of their neighborhoods. 

The new plan was touted as the only way to keep baseball in Greensboro because the Bats stated that if they didn’t get to play in a new stadium, they would likely sell the team.  However, getting them a new stadium would prove to be a convoluted affair that would involve two elected bodies and much more in public subsidies (albeit largely hidden) than the site clean up on South Elm.

It has been reported that in the months before the Bellemeade site was announced; agents of Action Greensboro had been laying another kind of groundwork it.  Then County Manager Roger Cotton held several meetings with Jim Melvin et al to smooth the way for the stadium’s construction.  The details of a complicated land swap agreement were hashed out behind closed doors, purportedly to protect the taxpayer’s interest.  As it turns out, the taxpayers were about to get fleeced.

The first draft of the land swap agreement between the County and DGR, LLC (a for-profit subsidiary of The Bryan Foundation) in September ’02 stipulated that the sale of the County property would be advertised for upset bid pursuant to N.C. G.S. 160A-269, This would have insured that the taxpayers would get the fair market value for their property, but by the time the final agreement hit the streets the next month, the upset bid clause had been removed.  In its place was the stipulation that the contract would be executed under N.C. G.S. 160A-271.  This statute precludes upset bids.  A call to County Attorney Jonathan Maxwell resulted in no reasonable explanation as to why this had occurred or how the change best served the public interest.

After finding out that the County was offering its land and buildings at fire sale prices Landmark Assets, LLC of Winston Salem presented the County with an offer to purchase for the DSS property.  This offer was $1.5M higher than DGR’s, however, because the second land swap agreement precluded upset bids, the offer was dismissed out-of-hand and the County Commissioners never considered it, nor were the Commissioners ever publicly apprised of the change in the contract that denied the upset bid process.

Long before the land swap agreement was presented to the Commissioners, Guilford County’s staff had ordered an appraisal of its own Social Services property.  The appraising company made it clear throughout the document that the appraisal was undertaken with the understanding that the County property was to be the future site of a new minor league baseball stadium. 

Despite the fact that the County had appraised its own DSS building and property in 1991 for $7,074,300.00, the appraisal valued the property at $3,745,442.00.   This $4.5M reduction in valuation was because appraiser assigned no value to the buildings on the property. The appraisal concluded that these existing structures would not be needed for the construction of the stadium and so were superfluous to the deal.

In fact, the appraisal concluded,that the buildings had a negative value because they had to be demolished to clear the land for the stadium.  The appraisal went on to deduct the cost of demolition of the current DSS buildings from the zero value of the existing structures.  The taxpayers will actually pay $387,875.00 to D.H. Griffin to have their own buildings demolished to make way for the stadium. 

In the land swap agreement, DGR, LLC offers to build the County a new $11M Social Services building for a $4.5M in taxpayer cash plus the “swap” value of the current DSS property. Adding this $4.5M to the 1991 valuation of $7.075M, in real terms the taxpayers are getting a new $11M property for $11.575M in cash and trade… millions more were identified for building up fit costs.  But because the County accepted the questionable $3,745,442.00 appraisal as the true value of its property, the new DSS building on Maple Street was promoted as a “good deal” for the taxpayers.

Despite much public outcry, the deal was struck and the land swap agreement was agreed to and signed by the County Board of Commissioners in October of 2002.  The only other stumbling block was that the land swap agreement stipulated that the County would have to ask the City to close a block of Lindsay Street.  This closing was necessary because the street would run through center field of the new stadium.  The City Council had to weigh in for this to occur.

In the face of a great deal of effort and pleading on the part of several citizens and affected neighborhoods, the Council voted to close the street and GIVE an estimated $500,000 worth of City property to DGR,LLC.  Other costs associated with accommodating the land swap were revealed which brought the City’s first year out-of-pocket expenditures to over $967,000.  The hearing on the matter was notable because both sides knew how the vote was going to turn out well in advance of the public hearing. As with the previous hearing before the County Commissioners, it appeared that this deal had been struck well in advance of the actual public hearing on the matter, which infuriated opponents of the stadium.

After the City Council and the County Commissioner’s decisions, opponents of the stadium proposal were left with few options to truly get their voices heard.  Five of the opponents formed the Petitioner’s Committee for Downtown Neighborhoods and drafted a petition that outlined the only legal way to attempt to obtain true public input on the stadium issue.  Through the use of the City’s charter provisions concerning Citizen instigated referendums, the committee undertook the task of insuring that the voters would have the final say on the matter.

The committee looked at language for the petition that would include only the proposed stadium site as a target for the required zoning change, but the legalities of “spot zoning” precluded this as an option.  The petition necessarily had to propose a ban on all open-air stadiums in all of the CBD for the petition to achieve a legal and defensible result.  The proper numbers of signatures were assembled and the referendum will be before the voters on October 7^th.

Those who oppose the new stadium - for any reason - are labeled as naysayers, pea-brains, CAVE’s (Citizens Against Virtually Everything) and worse.  The truth of the matter is that I am not a naysayer, nor am I against progress, nor am I small minded.  What I am is fed up with an obviously corrupted process as outlined above. 

I am fed up with public policy being directed by an oligarchy.  Fed up with our elected officials ignoring the voices of neighborhoods that have real and quantifiable concerns regarding their own futures.  Fed up with “my way or the highway” directives and initiatives that mainly serve the narrow interests of a few well-heeled citizens.  Fed up with the oligarchy’s no compromise attitude toward all opposition. 

It is my fervent hope that the citizens of Greensboro realize that the upcoming referendum is not really about a baseball stadium; from a wider view, it is about re-exerting their rightful control over their own government.

No one is more concerned about the divisiveness that has occurred in this community because of the current baseball stadium debate than I.  But as in all such decisions, I must vote my conscience on this issue.  My conscience tells me that the process that brought Greensboro to such a divisive impasse is fundamentally flawed so I will cast my vote to ban stadiums in the center of Greensboro as my way of pointing out that this flaw must be corrected.