Economy & Downtown

Chapel Hill Herald, Saturday November 19, 2005

Last summer, as the threat loomed of a Wal-Mart just south of the Chatham County line, there was much talk of how to stop the retail giant from moving in and sucking the life-blood out of local business. Less attention was paid to strengthening our home grown retail sector to create an economic base that might withstand such an onslaught.

As the Wal-Mart style big box has spread, the business districts of small town America have been hard hit, losing their historic retail anchors and leaving residents to drive out to a freeway interchange for the nearest strip mall.

In 2001, Powell, Wyoming was in trouble when the Stage store, the latest owner of the downtown department store that had operated for generations, decided to pull out.

Citizens of Powell formed a corporation and began selling stock to open their own store. Some 800 investors bought shares, and in the summer of 2002 the Mercantile opened in a 7,500-square-foot space downtown that once housed a portion of the Stage store.

Is anyone else as sick as I am of the Chapel Hill News harping on how much downtown sucks? Last weekend there was a big spread mostly about how we are doomed (again). It was way too lengthy for me to dissect it all, but if you read it, please share your thoughts.

Here's one great letter to the editor in response:

How dare they be homeless?

I, too, am outraged at the panhandling that occurs on Franklin Street. Even all of the letters from Sunday's paper could not convey my disgust at those homeless. How dare they ask me for money! I mean, they chose to be homeless; it's their fault.

They buy drugs and alcohol and don't save their money like us good, righteous folks. They stand there smoking expensive cigarettes, and turn right around to ask me for change. They waste their money, so they deserve to sleep on freezing concrete. My rights are being trampled when they ask for money, and their poverty makes me so uncomfortable.

I have long felt that the placement of candidates' yard signs can tell you a lot. Each of us tends to put signs in places we think people are likely to see them, usually based on places we ourselves feel likely to see them. For example, if there are gaps in signage, we don't notice them unless we see the gaps ourselves.

Since most yard signs are put up by friends of the candidate, if not the candidate herself, they tell us a lot about the milieu of each candidate. Do they spend a lot of time near local schools, downtown, the mall, the grocery store, parks?

Today I went on a walk to see what yard signs are up in my neighborhood. I walked about a mile west into downtown Carrboro and a mile east into downtown Chapel Hill. Here is what I saw...

Here are SOME of the many signs I saw in downtown Carrboro: