October 2003

Let’s talk about Carrboro’s current development policy (probably the most contentious issue in Carrboro politics this month). At the risk of oversimplifying, we seem to have 3 camps here in town. One camp seems to be the majority (and vocal minority at times) and advocates the current administration’s policy of increasing commercial space downtown by allowing taller buildings to make dense development economically feasible for the developers. This camp (or at least lots of people I’ve talked to) generally approves of dense housing and commercial downtown and has mixed feelings about high density village mixed use development outside of the main part of town but understands that village mixed use has its positives and negatives and generally supports it as a way to reduce sprawl and the cookie cutter subdivisions that are its alternative. These folks also tend to be resigned to the fact that Carrboro is going to continue to add population whether they like it or not and they look for ways to accommodate that without the sprawl and increased pricing that has occurred in every other town where this has happened.