Welcome to Greensboro. As a relative newcomer to this city myself, I can tell you that it is a wonderful city in which to live. Not everyone living here is convinced of this, but I think you'll find there is a tremendous number of people actively engaged on a daily basis working to make Greensboro an even better city. Now, this isn't to say it isn't a challenge at times to see progress towards improving the quality of life and it can be difficult to measure and sometimes the barriers to progress can be frustrating.
My guess is that right now you are busy looking for a new neighborhood to call home. You'll get plenty of advice on where to live based on good schools, safety, proximity to this park or that shopping center, quiet, easy of walking, shortest commute, history, etc. Ultimately, you'll pick a neighborhood based on what is best for you and your family and people will analyze your decision much they way our current President is analyzed for which school his daughters go to, to the church they attend. Expect this to happen here too because expectations for your tenure hear are very high as we (hopefully) emerge from a very rocky relationship with our most recent City Manager. And, frankly, this is the first time, we've gone outside of Greensboro to find someone to lead our City. (BTW, there are tons of Ohioans here in Greensboro, including my wife, so you should feel mostly at home.)
I remember shopping for a home here with a well-respected real estate agent who virtually insisted we look at neighborhoods "north of the tracks" because that is where young families live. We are also told that only "those people, you know the ones I mean" take public transportation. Yet, our criteria was to live as close as possible to downtown, to be able to walk places, have access to green space, mature trees, older homes and a tight-knight proactive community. We found this in spades in Glenwood - one of Greensboro's oldest, but less distinguished planned developments. Most of the homes date from the early part of the 20th Century, but haven't had the care of homes in Fisher Park, Aycock, Irving Park,College Hill or the restoration efforts of ones in Southside. From my front door on Haywood I'm a 20 minute walk to our neighborhood library, a 30 minute walk to City Hall, our revitalized downtown, and a 10 minute walk to UNCG. We are now also a 3 minute bike ride to the first part of the new Downtown Greenway and a half block away from Steelman Park - complete with its basketball courts, community garden, creek, and playground equipment. Unfortunately, recent efforts to revitalize this park were turned away at the last minute by the Interim Manager Bob Morgan in a budgetary move this past summer relegating hours of volunteer community work to the dustbin.
Amidst the many benefits of living in Glenwood are some stark realities -more tenants than homeowners, lack of sidewalks, vacant homes harboring drug users and prostitutes, a lack of healthful, community-minded places to eat and shop. We have two neighborhood convenience stores whose primary target market are alcoholics. Glenwood is typical of probably many of the close-in neighborhoods of Dayton that suffered when development began being concentrated farther away from the center of the City. Neighborhoods south of downtown, in the historically black and low-income portions of the City have been particularly hit hard by the flight of infrastructure spending to newer areas. It's hard for many of us in Glenwood to hear about the need to spread infrastructure spending around the City to be fair to all neighborhoods when the neighborhoods south of Lee St, south of the tracks suffered a disproportionate amount of investment for many, many years. Parity as a spending policy isn't fair.
In short, Glenwood is a perfect microcosm about what is great about this City and also what challenges it. We look forward to you visiting our neighborhood. We'd be glad to give you a tour and show you around. Or, if you'd just like to attend a neighborhood meeting, you can join us on the first Thursday of the month at 7pm at the Glenwood Recreation Center on Coliseum Drive.
Again, welcome to Greensboro, Mr. Young. We look forward to working with you to improve our neighborhood.
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