Growth & Development

Rogers Road Proposal Under Consideration this Week Deserves Support

My op-ed from today arguing that the proposal under consideration this Thursday reflects the best of our progressive traditions while beginning to repay our debt to the Rogers Road community:

In 2011 a conservative faction of the Greensboro City Council moved to expand their White Street Landfill, located in the overwhelmingly African-American northeast portion of the city.

As the attorney for community members opposing this expansion as well as a long-term resident of Orange County, it was endlessly frustrating to me when expansion supporters pointed to our own Rogers Road to justify their decision.

Wake county just isn't crowded enough to support rail transit outside experts say

http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/11/12/3365566/wake-county-just-isnt-crowded.html

The panelists said Wake County was not likely to attract the federal funding it would need for a light rail line, and it doesn’t have a dense downtown employment center that would support rush-hour commuter trains.

“It’s a mass mode,” Polzin said. “And you need mass to make it work cost-effectively."

But Chapel Hill is going to bet $30 million (with Durham) that we could use for other transit on getting federal and state funding?  Now that's something worth ranting about!

'Luxury' Changes Coming to University Mall

It was just announced this morning that big changes are coming to the University Mall (no more Dillards sadly - where will I buy my ladies underpinnings...) and a 13-screen, $16/movie ticket high-end movie theater instead. More details are here. So, what do you think? Do we need another movie theater when we already have 4 first-run movie theaters within a 15-minute drive? How about a high-end one with dining featuring a $9.75 mini-cheeseburger?

Making Sense of the 2013 Election Results

With another Election Day behind them, our elected officials in Orange County are now tasked to turn their attention from the challenges of the campaign trail to the challenges of governing. But following a sleepy election cycle in which all mayoral candidates ran unopposed and election results show most races were uncompetitive across the county, what message should our electeds take with them as they prepare to take their seats at the dais for new sessions?

With just 11.72% of eligible voters casting ballots in 2013, it’s unclear what message voters are sending. Was municipal turnout its lowest in over 10 years because voters simply don’t see any local issues directly affecting their lives? If so, does that mean voters are content with the status quo of the towns, which is why they didn’t get to the polls in the first place? Or are voters simply apathetic and nothing more can be discerned from the low turnout figure?

Rosemary Imagined Process - Next Steps

The Rosemary Imagined Neighborhood Project Team, which is helping guide the process for the Town of Chapel Hill and the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership, met again on November 1, 2013 to discuss next steps for the development of a Rosemary Street Concept. We were given a summary of the feedback that has been garnered from the process so far.

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