Frequently Asked Questions

The core, South Elm area, a southern gateway to Downtown Greensboro, covers 12 acres. It is bounded by Lee Street to the north, Arlington Street to the east, Bragg Street to the South and the Norfolk Southern rail line to the west. A larger area was studied in the master planning process to understand the context of the redevelopment (refer to the map).

South Elm Street redevelopment will extend the impact and value of existing public investment -- Greensboro’s citizens already have invested over $25 million in the adjacent neighborhoods of Southside, Ole Asheboro and Arlington Park.

• The South Elm Street site will help the City use existing infrastructure to preserve undeveloped land and tax dollars. Greensboro’s taxpayers have already paid for the roads, water service and utilities at the South Elm Street site. Using it to create greater quality of life benefits for the area makes sense.
• The South Elm Street site will provide an attractive, 21st Century welcome to downtown. South Elm Street is the visitor’s first view of downtown from two highways, and the site should make a clean, positive, modern first impression.
• The City’s Comprehensive Plan supports infill and brownfield redevelopment. That plan, Connections 2025, is the result of extensive research, planning and community visioning. It recognizes the need for more balanced growth including urban development.
• The redevelopment of the South Elm Street site, Greensboro’s first public brownfield project, offers a valuable opportunity to develop a broad-reaching approach for sustainable brownfield reuse, particularly in Greensboro’s urban core.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines brownfields as abandoned, idle or underutilized industrial or commercial properties where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived environmental contamination, building deterioration/obsolescence and/or inadequate infrastructure. It has been estimated that as many as 650,000 brownfield sites exist in the United States and that the total cost of restoring these sites to productive use may be in excess of $650 billion.

The EPA and the North Carolina Dept of Environment and Natural Resources (NCDENR) offer detailed information about brownfields remediation, and the South Elm Street redevelopment website offers information specific to this project.

• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at www.epa.gov/brownfields
• North Carolina Department of the Environment and Natural Resources (UCDENR) at www.ncbrownfields.org
• South Elm Street Redevelopment at www.southelmstreet.com. You can also download our Brownfield Information Sheet.

Clean-up and redevelopment can turn a problem site into a significant community asset and improve community quality of life and overall civic pride. A restored brownfield can stimulate a community’s economy, save green space from development and provide an opportunity for habitat restoration or park creation. Cleaning up and reinvesting in these properties also increases local tax bases, facilitates job growth, utilizes existing infrastructure, takes development pressures off of undeveloped, open land and both improves and protects the environment.

The City is looking toward this process to achieve three main goals:

1. Create development anchors to stabilize the area and increase employment opportunities.
2. Improve streetscapes and pedestrian paths to access downtown from adjacent neighborhoods.
3. Design a thoughtful reuse plan that will achieve the vision of the many stakeholders in the planning process.

The preferred development alternative is a mixed-use project to include housing, retail, office, cultural/institutional uses, parking and open space. The specific goals for this site were created with extensive public input as part of creating the South Elm Street Redevelopment Plan, completed in 2006. For the complete plan, including visuals, download the full Redevelopment Plan.

The effort combines a diverse number of funds, each with its own requirements for use. The funding sources for the redevelopment project are below:

Sources of funds:

Public-private redevelopment projects are multi-year efforts involving many different partners and entities. A more defined development schedule will be available once the master development selection process is completed. We believe that will occur by Spring 2010.

• Property cleanup will be conducted based on the Remedial Action Plan approved by NCDENR and EPA.
• It is possible that additional site work may be required once the cleanup is complete to provide infrastructure that is sufficient to support new development. This can include grading and fill, as required, to even out the slope and to replace or upgrade existing sewer and water lines, sidewalks, bus stops, and streets and parking areas.

In a word: “Everyone!”

The redevelopment of the South Elm Street brownfield will have an enormously beneficial impact on our local community and all the citizens and businesses in Greensboro, from residents of Ole Asheboro, Arlington Park and Southside to everyone else. Currently, the mostly vacant site creates a physical and cultural “moat” or barrier separating many from direct access to the exceptional diversity of the renewed, downtown district. And, the site’s poor soil condition prohibits any immediate, new development and hinders the many benefits of ongoing, downtown development and investments from impacting those
nearby neighborhoods.

Once completed, the project will be a boon to those neighborhoods and to all of Greensboro. Significant, positive economic benefits will include the creation of more than 320 new jobs (estimated onsite) and 195 new units of housing of which 63 would be affordable and 132 would be market-rate units. In compliance with HUD requirements, 51% of for-sale housing units in the project are for low/moderate income housing (80% of median household income). For rental housing, 20% of all units are low/moderate income eligible.

Other benefits include:

• Elimination of health and safety hazards
• Elimination of eyesore structures
• An architecturally integrated, environmentally friendly, 21st Century gateway to Downtown Greensboro
• Reduced crime
• Creation of even more new jobs in the community to serve commercial/residential uses on the reclaimed site
• Add-on investment into the community, as Greensboro’s reputation for being a modern, up and coming community spreads in the business arena
• Increases in the productivity of the redeveloped land Increased property values and tax receipts by local and state governments

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The Phase I and Phase II Environmental Assessment reports (Completed by ECS 20XX) indicate that 11 of 15 parcels on the 10-acre site have environmental concerns. These range from possible underground storage tanks, vent pipes, soil staining, solvents left from print shops, asbestos, and lead based paint. All of these concerns are “low risk” according to the EPA standards, but the diversity raises the cost of remediation.

At the South Elm Redevelopment site, the contamination is considered ”low risk,” according to EPA standards. During remediation (or cleanup), the remediation contractor will take safety measures to ensure that workers and the public are not in any danger.

Yes, once remediation is complete the site is considered safe for development and use.

The Redevelopment Commission of Greensboro (RCG) controls the majority of the site. The RCG will continue to maintain site control through disposition to ensure that the vision embodied in the South Elm Redevelopment Plan is realized and that acceptable levels of affordable housing and new goods and services are delivered in order to strengthen the quality of life for residents in the area.

The City is. The Greensboro Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) is managing the cleanup and development of the site from initial funding to selection and oversight of the contractor and all of the state and federal approvals required to deliver a clean site.

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