I wanted to highlight the fabulous retail spot, Our Town Gifts by All Wrapped Up. It is located at 211 Southside Sq. in Greensboro. They offer several gift baskets including one filled with things uniquely Greensboro! Be sure to check it out.
I just wanted to remind everybody about Live Jazz with Brunch every Sunday at 11:30-2:30. Vintage 301, recently won several awards including first place for the best of Greensboro, awarded by Yes! Weekly.
I found this great site which features a step-by-step tour of Southside. You can either listen to the tour, or simply read the information. I highly suggest you check it out. Not only does it have great information for tourists, I’m confident that residents will learn some valuable information about Southside’s rich history as well.
Including the fact that the Old Fire Station 4 was home to the first all-African American fire department.
Click here to check out Greensboro’s Preservation Facebook! It’s a great place to stay informed.
Tags: facebook, greensboro preservation
I found this insightful article at triadhomes.com and wanted to share it with all of you. Although the major phase of the Southside Revitalization Project has been completed, there are still things locals would like to see.
Renewed life: Revitalization effort still shaping Southside
By Eddie Huffman
Staff Writer
Staff Writer
Sunday, November 22
updated 4:35 am
Lindsey Weir walks her dog by her home in Southside.
If pressed, Southside residents make minor gripes: The neighborhood could use a grocery store, and it feels a little disconnected from the rest of downtown. Beyond that, they love their almost-new community at the edge of Greensboro’s city center.
“I moved there because I was living in Graham,” said Lindsey Weir, who lives on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and now works as regional property manager for Signature Property Group. “I worked in Graham. I realized, with all due respect to Graham, it was not the social life I wanted for someone in her late 20s.”
In Southside, Weir, now 30, discovered that social life, and she has helped expand it. She was a founder of the Southside Running Club, and hosts potluck dinners in her home. Weir and other residents praise its diversity as they describe a neighborhood that’s urban but still welcoming to children, pedestrians and pets.
Those factors lured Deborah Rondo to Southside when her children grew up and she wanted to downsize from her family-sized home on Randleman Road.
“I like this a lot better,” said Rondo, 55, owner and operator of the Cutz-R-Us beauty salon in a townhouse-style live-work unit on Lewis Street. “The neighborhood where I was living was fine, but when your kids leave the nest, this was a little more suitable for me.”
Southside covers only a few blocks, roughly hemmed in by railroad tracks on the north, Murrow Boulevard on the east, Lee Street on the south and Elm Street on the west. Wander through the neighborhood on foot and you’ll find a warren of townhouses and hair salons, service alleys and cozy single-family houses. A neighborhood with a great deal of new development — condominiums, apartment homes and townhouses — Southside also boasts some of Greensboro’s oldest homes.
According to the city of Greensboro’s Web site, the community was identified as a redevelopment project area in the early 1990s. A bond package approved in 1996 financed the Southside plan to rejuvenate the blighted area. The plan promoted the renovation of historic houses for occupancy, construction of new housing and commercial growth.
The neighborhood’s new homes were built to evoke a 20th-century ideal of residential life before car culture and flight to the suburbs spawned strip malls and tract housing.
“The neighborhood is a market success,” says an “UnSprawl Case Study” at Terrain.org, “A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments.” “Not only did all the rehabilitated and new homes sell out, but the neighborhood generates significantly more tax revenue for the city.”
Before the public-private partnership that revitalized the neighborhood got in gear in the late 1990s, Southside was a decaying area with a defunct chemical plant and a bad reputation. In the 1990s the entire neighborhood only brought in tax revenues of about $9,000 a year, said Ed Wolverton, president and CEO of Downtown Greensboro Inc., citing figures from the city’s Community Development Department. By 2005, however, the neighborhood was generating $82,000 a year in tax revenues.. . . .
To read the rest of the article, click here
There are some great public spaces and amenities in Southside, for instance, Southside Square, located along Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, shares frontage along public streets with a great historic church. You can also find Schools and two universities, North Carolina A&T University and Bennett College, nearby.
Local artist Jim Galluci designed an art sculpture displayed proudly in Southside Square which is the civic center of the neighborhood. The square also boasts a beautiful fountain, and lovely landscaping.
There is also a beautiful open park tucked in between single-family and dual-family homes. It is known as the neighborhood common and is located in the center of the largest block. There is a georgous canopy of mature trees making the setting cozy and inviting. Rear lanes with garage apartments and rear yards surround the edge. The pocket park located at the close—the square “loop” drive that replaces a large paved cul-de-sac with an open space amenity—is intended to be a place for small gatherings. It hosts a tot lot playground, as well
Tags: ammenities, public spaces
Greensboro, North Carolina’s Southside neighborhood is home to a 10-acre revitalization project. The project is one of the city’s first major mix-use infill projects.
The Southside neighborhood boasts a fantastic location just one and a half blocks from Greensboro’s Historic Main Street, Elm Street, and just south of downtown Greensboro. It is also only a five-minute walk from the business district. The direct views of Greensboro skyline are breathtaking, and the pedestrian friendly streetscape has many unique attributes showing off Southside’s personality. Not-to-mention the town square which serves as the civic center and features a variety of public art, and the neighborhood park which is flanked by gorgeous mature trees.
Another great quality of the Southside neighborhood is the variety of housing options that are offered. The development includes 30 single-family homes, 10 two-family homes, 50 townhouses, 10 restored historic homes, and 20 live-work units where business owners live upstairs from their shop or office. Some residences include studio apartments above rear-detached garages, providing another housing or office choice.
In citing its 2003 award for Outstanding Planning: Implementation, the American Planning Association noted that in creating the Area Development Plan, “the importance of Southside could hardly be ignored. This blighted downtown community connected five neighborhoods, served as the gateway to the downtown business district, and was vital to enhancing residential development in the downtown generally.”
Tags: City Park, Civic Ceter, Infill