With the fire that claimed four restaurants on Greenville in the news this week, there’s another issue to contemplate a little further down the street: What’s to be done with Greenville near Ross?
Jim Schutze with the Observer offers an interesting column about whether Greenville near Ross needs to be cleaned up and, if so, how to do it. Schutze also has an interesting take on crime in that area, which is generally perceived to be one step removed from hell — his unofficial crime analysis shows that crime in that area is actually 50 percent less than that in the McKinney/Oak Lawn area.
The column’s conclusion seems to be that for that area of Greenville to become a little higher-class, it’s going to take one of two equally unsavory things: Either landlords clamp down on lousy tenants who prefer to skirt the liquor rules and then run, or city politicians clamp down on the landlords by using "planned development district" zoning that would require people running the businesses there to seek city approval periodically to keep running the businesses there.
So then the question becomes "who do you trust more" to clean up an area that should have a lot of things going for it — property owners or politicians? It will take some serious political capital to wade into this fray, and Schutze sets up Angela Hunt as the politician to get it done. She’s smart enough, she knows the neighborhood, and she has been successful breaking down tough projects in the past.
With the former Whole Foods location sitting vacant, and with the former Arcadia Theater site home to an outdoor gardening business for the time being, there may never be two larger pieces of property in transition in that neighborhood. If there’s ever a time to shed some blood in the area, other than the occasional blood shed by the bar patrons, this would appear to be it.
