What’s happening to East Boulevard?

A neighborhood activist in Dilworth tipped me off to property that’s changed hands along East Boulevard, at the corner of Garden Terrace and East, where East Boulevard Bar and Grill has lodged for decades. EBB&G is moving (has moved?) up the street.

Word on the street is that Carolinas Medical Center bought that property and has “plans.” I know a meeting is planned in coming weeks between hospital officials and Dilworth neighborhood leaders.

This much I know to be true: Many Dilworthians worry about the hospital’s continuing expansion. Yes, expanding is understandable for a large, urban medical center. But CMC’s campus so far is a suburban office-park-style configuration: lots of surface parking lots, parking decks with no other uses, oversteet walkways, grass that isn’t a public park where you can play Frisbee or have a picnic, etc. etc. Not suitable for an in-town neighborhood.

But even if new buildings are better designed, as I hope to see, CMC’s campus is still a gigantic single-use footprint. In an urban setting, that’s not a good thing.

The city’s zoning standards allow suburban office-park parking and other suburban-style hospital uses in any neighborhood if the property is zoned for office or commercial, etc.

Some of this block is zoned multifamily, so maybe there will be a chance for neighborhood and/or planner input. Let us hope. But a scroll through the Carolinas HealthCare System’s board of directors shows a lot of big names – the kinds that too often make elected officials bark prettily, lie down and roll over.

A check of online property records for parcels in the old EBB&G block (which includes the site of the former Chez Daniel restaurant, among other businesses) lists as owner Robinson Bradshaw & Hinson, a well-connected law firm (Russell Robinson, Robert Sink, Richard Vinroot, etc.)

I checked with a helpful city planner, who knew of no conversations about development plans for the block.

In September, the Observer’s Karen Garloch reported that CHS president and COO Joe Piemonte said the hospital system didn’t have specific plans for its East Boulevard property. “We’re kind of standing pat … and monitoring very closely for maintenance. Some of those buildings need to be torn down,” he said then.