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.
When the former Yates Motor Co. Building was taken over on November 13th it was in the process of becoming the temporary home of an art installation for the holiday season - an effort led by the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership. Those events derailed the art installation, but did not curtail it. The art installation will be unveiled this Friday, December 9th, 2011. The road has not been an easy one as described in this blog post by Meg McGurk of the Downtown Partnership.
I visited the Triangle-area anarchist website to see what they're planning next, and was surprised to find advertising! Why, that's capitalist, and the first ad was from big pharma. How can you be anti-capitalist, and then make use of "free" online services that are actually paid for by advertising?
http://trianarchy.wordpress.com
I want to begin by thanking all of the stakeholders who came out to Chapel Hill High this morning, a beautifully sunny fall morning, and participated in our first “come together” session in which we heard reports from all of the theme groups on what transpired in their first work sessions. We had over 100 stakeholders participate and we got to hear from about ¼ of you in the discussion portion of the meeting. For those of you who didn’t have time to share your thoughts please think about posting them on either the blog or the web.
![[carne asada is not a crime, saveourtacotrucks.org]](http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6120/6259032121_06c638b839_o.jpg)
Last night while much of OP was intently watching our live online candidate forum for aspiring Aldermen, the Chapel Hill Town Council was discussing proposed new foodtruck regulations. To me they sound very limiting, including provisions that they cannot operate within 100 feet of an open restaurant, that they can only be located on private property, and that the truck and property must both get permits from the Town. Even with these restrictions, WCHL's Elizabeth Friend reported that the Chapel Hill Chamber of Commerce and the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership opposed the change.
This makes it pretty clear to me that the perceived interests of their members is more important to the Chamber of Commerce than the success and sustainability of our local economy.
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