The Rhino Times has a new article out this week by John Hammer called "City Staff Wants To Control Your Home", click on the link above. John Hammer writes this,"The City of Greensboro now has a program called the neighborhood conservation overlay (NCO) district, designed to force an eclectic, older neighborhood – like what they are calling "Greater Kirkwood" – into the mold of a new, cookie-cutter housing development with a homeowners' association".
Let's do a little history lesson on Rhino Times and Protest Petition for Greensboro, here is a post back on May 3, 2008 when the state legislator of this state were getting ready to go back into short session here is that post CLICKHERE and here is a quote from the first paragraph,"The reason I post this e mail is because I have e mailed the Rhino Times 3 times with no correspondence , while I also went to their web site and did a letter to the editor about Protest Petitions to no avail. Maybe this might help with a correspondence."
Then finally on July 17, 2008 after the short session of the state legislature was over and plenty of anonymous letters to the editors in between this time at the Rhino they finally printed the letter to the editor about restoring Protest Petitions to Greensboro. It was amazing to have to fight so hard to get a letter to the editor printed in the Rhino but when your whole middle section of the Rhino is real estate industry or TREBIC CARTEL as they have been nicknamed as a parody to their fight to deny the citizens of Greensboro the right to Protest Petitions.Then we see in this new article that John Hammer had a epiphany for the use of Protest Petitions in Greensboro because in the past John Hammer never wanted to talk about this issue that was resonating all over the City of Greensboro.
The Rhino Times article talks about the Kirkwood area of Greensboro which is off of lawndale and cornwallis drive near battleground avenue.John Hammer talks in length about the neighborhood conservation overlay but at the end of the article he had this to say.
"One final note, the push for an NCO in Greater Kirkwood seems to be a result of a failed plan to build a Walgreens at the intersection of Cornwallis and Lawndale drives. Since that attempt was made, the city has passed a protest petition amendment that gives neighborhoods much more power in controlling development.
The protest petition was passed by the North Carolina General Assembly, and went into effect in Greensboro, this year. It gives nearby property owners a tremendous amount of power to have a voice in rezoning requests. If a protest petition is signed by 20 percent of the property owners affected by a rezoning, or 5 percent of the property owners within 100 feet of the boundaries of the property in question, the rezoning comes to the City Council. Then the rezoning has to pass by a 7-to-2 majority. Passing a contested rezoning by a 7-to-2 majority on the City Council is extremely rare, which means the developer is going to make every attempt to get the support of the neighborhood before moving forward.
The way to keep unwanted development from Lawndale and Cornwallis is with protest petitions, not by putting another layer of regulations on the neighborhood."
It is nice to see John Hammer come around on this issue because it was very hard at the beginning to convince the good professor in David Wharton from a blog called A Little Urbanity CLICKHERE on this issue but he was a great advocate at the end and now John Hammer can see the light as well in Protest Petitions for Greensboro
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