Economy & Downtown

Chapel Hill's downtown has long benefited from its proximity to a captive audience of University students without cars. While downtowns around the country have been failing, ours has survived fairly well. However, we have seen an increase in the number of chain stores locating downtown, and instability in the Downtown Economic Development Corporation. In the near future, we will see new Town-directed development on two major parking lots have a big impact.
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Carrboro's downtown has also done better than many towns of comparable size, thanks largely to the presence of Weaver Street Market and progressive shoppers from the rest of the county. The Board of Aldermen has been addressing the evolution of the downtown, and have established a number of community resources in the downtown area including free wireless Internet access, and a low-power radio station.

Dream Up Downtown Chapel Hill: Paving Our Pathways (Jane's Walk #1)

Nathan Huening of Sprocket House will lead this first Jane's Walk in Chapel Hill, focusing on 'Paving Our Pathways.' During this walk, we will tour the places in the Chapel Hill Downtown area where individuals are developing projects and businesses to reshape the downtown area, focusing on sites accessed through pedestrian pathways to explain the need for shorter block lengths to allow non-linear expansion of the Chapel Hill downtown area.

Date: 

Thursday, September 6, 2012 - 6:00pm to 7:30pm

Location: 

University Baptist Church's Memorial Garden at the corner of Franklin and Columbia streets (100 S. Columbia Street)

Super 16 Walk for Education

The Super 16th Annual Walk for Education will be held on Saturday, October 13th at 1:30pm rain or shine.  Walk for your school down Franklin Street and enjoy the festive post-Walk carnival at Lincoln Center. Fantastic inflatables, games, food and fun await you at the carnival.

Date: 

Saturday, October 13, 2012 - 1:30pm to 4:30pm

Location: 

McCorkle Place to Lincoln Center

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Let's increase the ROI on Inter-city Visits

I've long been skeptical of the bi-annual Inter-city Visits organized by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce, err sorry, that's actually the Chamber-owned Partnership for a Sustainable Community. The intention to visit a community and learn from their successess and failures is a good one. But the reality of an expensive trip with the wealthy and powerful of Chapel Hill - where the learning stops when the return flight touches down at RDU - is a little different.

Pricing out Food Trucks is Protectionism

I support environmental protection and the mitigation of global climate change. I do not believe that every business should be allowed to do what they what. But there are times when government is in the wrong and shouldn’t kowtow to existing businesses and their supporting organizations at the cost of new business. So to kick this post off I’m going to reclaim a bit of conservative rhetoric. Because it applies in this situation.

It should not be the job of the Town of Chapel Hill to pick which business succeeds and which fails. But this is what they are doing by aggressively regulating food trucks away from the streets of Chapel Hill. It’s called protectionism. The result of the Town of Chapel Hill food truck ordinance is protecting existing brick and motar businesses from competition with food trucks. This is accomplished by charging a fee that is unaffordable to food trucks. The fact that almost no food truck owners will pay the Town fee to provide services in our Town is evidence of that.

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