Big job: Remake area economy

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Friday, October 13, 2006
Bicycle,
walking
trail plan
approved
n The BiPed plan calls for
miles of new greenways,
bike lanes and sidewalks.
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Big job: Remake area economy
n The region is one of 13
across the nation to get
$15 million grants.
B R M. B
Staff Writer
The Piedmont Triad’s economy doesn’t need just a fresh
coat of paint, business experts say. It needs an extreme
makeover.
Stopping short of that could
consign the region’s more
than 600,000 workers to a side
street as the world economy
thunders past, said Don Kirkman, who’s launching an experimental federal economic
development program here.
Everything from limited
population growth to a declining number of jobs in the 12county region suggests that the
disastrous implosion of traditional manufacturing indus-
tries that began in 2000 still
hurts the region’s workers.
“Our region is lagging,” said
Kirkman, the president of the
Piedmont Triad Partnership,
the economic development
group that is overseeing the
program.
Part of the problem, he
said, is that the region of more
than 1.2 million functions as a
bunch of disconnected pieces.
“Each of our communities in large part operates as
though it is not part of a larger
whole,” he said. “We just have
not cracked the code on how
we can work across city and
county boundaries to raise the
prosperity and visibility and
standing of our region. As a
top-40 metro area we should
be performing better than we
are.”
Kirkman began this month
setting up a staff and work
plan for the three-year, $15
million federal program.
WIRED, an acronym for
Workforce Innovations in Regional Economic Development, emerged from a federal
study that concludes the nation has too many disjointed
and overlapping economic development programs. Thirteen
regions across the country
with the greatest need were selected earlier this year for the
$15 million grants.
See Wired, Page B2
B T W
Staff Writer
“It was art from ceiling to floor.”
The Greensboro area now
has a detailed plan to improve
residents’ health and their
quality of life by increasing the
number of places where they
can bike, run or walk.
After nearly two years of
study and public review, the
city’s Metropolitan Planning
Organization
unanimously
endorsed a long-range effort
Wednesday aimed at those
goals, the so-called BiPed
Plan.
The BiPed, short for
“bicycle/pedestrian,” lays out a
series of projects that will take
decades to achieve, including
420 miles of new greenways,
900 more miles of bike routes
and 362 miles of new sidewalks.
Before the plan’s approval,
several people from Action
Greensboro and the bike-advocacy group Bicycling in
Greensboro praised it and the
extra care that planners took
to solicit suggestions from the
public.
“Just instinctively, as this report points out, we know that
our sedentary lifestyles are a
major factor in 25 percent of
deaths that occur from chronic
disease,” said Bob Klepfer,
executive director of Action
Greensboro, the civic-improvement group that helped pay for
the plan.
Mayor Keith Holliday also
praised the plan but said he
hoped city planners and bike-
Carla Butler, talking about the treasures that filled the home of the late John Philip Couch
See Bike, Page B2
PHOTOS BY JOSEPH RODRIGUEZ/News & Record
Carla Butler, with Butler & Associates, is handling the estate sale. The eclectic property of John Philip Couch, who died in March, has been tagged for the sale at his home.
SEE THE PLAN
The plan is available at public
libraries or online at www.greensboronc.gov/Departments/GDOT/divisions/
planning/bicycle/BiPed.htm
705& N.C. HOUSE
DISTRICT 58 PREVIEW
THE CANDIDATES
ALMA ADAMS
Party: Democrat
Address: Liberty
Valley Road,
Greensboro.
OLGA MORGAN
WRIGHT
Party:
Republican
Address: East
Lee Street,
Greensboro.
ANALYSIS
PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN
Former UNCG professor left house filled with art, assorted treasures
B J S
Staff Writer
GREENSBORO — Carla
Butler never met John
Philip Couch.
Yet, after having
practically lived in the
late UNCG professor’s
home since May, “I feel Couch
like we know him, only
through what he surrounded
himself with.”
She has been cataloging his
treasures. She says when she
first entered the lime-green,
early 1900s Queen Anne house
on South Mendenhall Street next
to the railroad, “It was art from
ceiling to floor.”
Butler, of the personal
property appraisal firm
Butler & Associates,
has cataloged in the
Couch house more than
300 paintings and etchings, thousands of art,
architecture and literary books, 2,500 vinyl
record albums and 800
CDs, antique chests,
pottery and china by pedigreed
artists, even a toy armadillo collection from Mexico and a considerable collection of vintage
model trains.
Butler is calling a tag sale at
the house Saturday and Sunday
See Property, Page B3
F B
This is a rematch of the 2004
campaign for this same seat. District
58 stretches from East Greensboro
through rural parts of Guilford County
to the Alamance and Randolph county
lines. Voter registration in the district
is heavily skewed, with 64 percent of
voters registered as Democrats to only
22.4 percent Republican.
The walls are filled with artwork. Couch taught French at UNCG for 30
years. He spent the summers in the south of France and traveled overseas
frequently. Proceeds from the sale will go to charities and institutions.
which has been at Dudley
and East Market for 67
years, lacks playing fields.
B J S
Staff Writer
NELSON KEPLEY/News & Record
Patrick Caudle takes a photograph of his damaged Mercedes-Benz
after he said it was hit during a police chase. Caudle, a junior at
UNCG, said he was in a nearby house when he heard a loud crash.
What: Estate sale of
belongings of John
Philip Couch.
When: 9 a.m. to 4
p.m. Saturday, 1
to 4 p.m. Sunday.
Admittance cards
in numbered
sequence issued
90 minutes before
the opening.
Where: Couch
home, 628 S.
Mendenhall St.
YMCA would like roomier site
n The Hayes-Taylor YMCA,
MORE
Inside: Read more about the House
District 58 race, including candidates’
positions on issues. B2
Online: Go to News-Record.com/nr/
election/2006 to read more about the
Nov. 7 races.
WANT TO GO?
GREENSBORO — The HayesTaylor YMCA, an anchor
at East Market and Dudley
streets since 1939, likely will
relocate in East Greensboro,
but not soon.
Michael Digh, marketing
director for the Greensboro
YMCA system that includes
Ys here and in Jamestown and
Reidsville, said Hayes-Taylor
has no expansion room because
of the N.C. A&T campus.
He said the Y wants athletic
fields, such as those enjoyed
by the relatively new Alexander Spears YMCA on Horse
Pen Creek Road in northwest
Guilford County.
Its two regulation soccer
fields and two regulation baseball fields, totaling about 12
acres, stay busy.
“It’s in our strategic plan to
relocate,” Digh said. “But we
don’t have land or a capital
campaign.”
He’s not sure of the cost of a
new Y. The Spears YMCA, with
its land and 74,000-square-foot
building, cost about $5.2 million when it was completed in
late 2002.
An ideal site for the HayesTaylor Y would be across East
Market on the block-long former Greensboro Postal Service site. The United House of
Prayer for All People church
owns the property.
MacArthur Sims, president
of the East Market Development Corp., a nonprofit group
promoting improvements to
the East Market corridor, said
See YMCA, Page B5
News & Record, Friday, October 13, 2006 B3
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PHOTOS BY JOSEPH RODRIGUEZ/News & Record
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One room is full of model trains as well as books and videos about trains. Couch collected HO scale model trains.
Boxes include a 1930 railroad post office car, a 1936 observation car and old steam engines.
250
only $
Property
Continued from Page B1
“The Property of a Gentleman.”
Couch, who taught French
at UNCG for 30 years and died
in March at age 77, wanted his
belongings sold, with proceeds
going to charities and institutions.
Visitors gasp entering the
house. Art saturates every wall.
Butler says bathrooms became
art galleries.
When Couch added a twostory wing about six years ago,
“It wasn’t six months before
that was filled up,” said friend
Virginia Tucker, whose husband, James Tucker, is retired
curator of UNCG’s Weatherspoon Art Museum. “There was
no place to sit in the house.”
Yet, friends managed to
squeeze in for gourmet meals
that Couch prepared.
“Once you get hooked, you
can’t stop,” Couch once said
about his collection.
He liked works by area artists and former art students
such as Maud Gatewood.
A lifelong bachelor who
came to UNCG in 1958, Couch
wanted to live near trains that
shake the house and to be able
to walk to work.
“He’d listen to see if trains
were on time,” said Jean Buchert, a retired UNCG English teacher who met Couch in
graduate school at Yale.
Couch collected HO scale
model trains. Cars still boxed
include a 1930 railroad post office car, a 1936 observation car
and old steam engines. Train
videos fill a chest and railroad
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Various armadillos from Mexico line a shelf.
books are numerous.
He liked Jugtown pottery,
owning pieces by the renowned
potter Ben Owen Sr.
Couch served on china by
1950s designer Russell Wright.
Cabinets crammed with LPs
and CDs are mostly opera and
classical music, with an occasional surprise such as music
from “Midnight Cowboy.”
Butler estimates Couch’s
book collection at several thousand volumes, hardback and
paper, including one he wrote:
“The Opera Lovers Guide to
Europe.”
Artworks include paintings
by 19th-century French Impressionist Henri Morisset; the
versatile man of letters and art
Jean Cocteau; abstract artist
Jean Arp; and Jean-Jacques
Sempe, who did New Yorker
magazine covers.
Couch summered in the
south of France and traveled
overseas frequently. Friends
think Couch, the son of a botany professor at UNC-Chapel
Hill, was an heir to oil money.
“He just lived a busy, intellectual life,” Buchert said.
He was one of a kind,” Vir-
ginia Tucker said. “We miss
him.”
Butler says she loves spanning the walls to see an artist’s
evolution.
Philip Moose’s large painting
of Grandfather Mountain contrasts with an abstract work he
did later. It hangs across from
a famed opera program signed
by singer Leontyne Price.
Butler prefers estate sales
over auctions.
“It’s the most respectful and
dignified way” she said. “People leave with a positive feeling
about Dr. Couch or whomever
we sell an estate for.”
Her previous work has included the estate of tire heir
Raymond Firestone of Pinehurst.
Couch enjoyed walking to
class with his dog.
When he had to drive, he
drove a heap. An old Chevy
Cavalier, paint faded and engine dead, is parked next to the
house. “That was his car,” Butler said. “It’s for sale, too.”
Contact Jim Schlosser
at 373-7081 or jschlosser
@news-record.com
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