Walkable Communities

Ok, so the Topix folks and the Gazette broke this story yesterday. However, on Sunday morning one of our editors was purchasing papers about 9:00 AM and overheard the police and Nichol’s staff talking about the shooting. Kinda sounded like Alice’s Restaurant type of discussion. You know, “…27 8×10 color glossies, with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each on …”, etc.

Since it happened in the walking neighborhood of our fair town, it is news, just like the vandalism that occurred this fall over in Hawthorne.

Seems that our Po-lice have themselves a real-lyfe inve-stig-a-shun a goin’. It appears that the fancy crime scene van finally got to have some work rather than bein’ parked in the shiny lot over on Chronicle Street.

Good luck officers. You broke the summer vandalism thingy. You can do this one too!

Seriously though,

We are happy that nobody was injured, and we are sorry for the Nichols folks for the damage. May the shooters were angry that they were closed for the night… who knows?

Maybe the Gazette does like Belmont just a tad.

Front page above the fold article in Monday Gazette (10/29/07) briefly discusses what makes up a walkable community and which towns in Gaston are the best.

(Mike Hendsill – Gazette Photo)

Unfortunately, the Gazette writers chose the Hawthorne (Imperial Mill Village) neighborhood as an “established” neighborhood. It is in reality, a new community (built-out over the last 4 years) constructed over what was once an historic textile mill village.

And that is just part of the overall landscape.

Imperial Hawthorne (the forward slash deliberately left off), or now commonly referred to as the Great Wall of Keener, is indeed a very walkable community — for those who could afford to live there.

The more established, and mature neighborhoods, such as Reid, Davis Park,  Mt. Pleasant, Cottonwood, and Adams Bluff, are even better suited for the tag as walkable communities within Belmont. Adams Bluff, however, being the only neighborhood with intersecting sidewalks.

Each are within the mile and a half of shopping and library. Each have low traffic flow which allows for some roadway walking, and the neighborhoods also have distinctive cultural diversity not generally found in the chosen neighborhood. Each are safe in relative terms.

We hope that the new in-town communities of Belmont Reserve (Belmont Hosiery), Eagle Park (Eagle Mill and Village), can and will be rated, because each of these will have internal sidewalks that interconnect with the existing city sidewalks and other neighborhoods.  

Under the Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND) concept, and within the Neighborhood Preservation vision as outlined in the recent Comprehensive Land Use Plan, we encourage more developers and in-fill projects to highlight their plan for keeping Belmont a “Walkable Community”