Growth & Development

While it is really hard to imagine, Carolina North is going to have a HUGE impact on all of us, from the west end of Carrboro, through the Barclay neighborhood, the Bolin creek neighborhoods, and all the way to Martin Luther King Boulevard, Homestead Road, and all of Estes. Please pay attention to the emerging plans. It might not be possible to halt the beginning of this development, but we can influence the pace and design at this stage.

For further information about campaigns to alter the development, see the Friends of Bolin Creek website: www.bolincreek.org .

It is amazing how little publicity these plans have had, after the initial hubbub. If anyone can write more about it, please take the lead!!! We need to get the word out.

Members of the campus community:

The University will host a new series of meetings about Carolina North for the campus and local communities on the last Tuesday of each month through May, beginning Tuesday, March 27.

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, February 17th:

Last Monday night's Town Council agenda pretty much summed up the amazing number of growth issues happening now in Chapel Hill. There are three developments on the table this month -- Lot 5 and Greenbridge downtown, the Residences at Chapel Hill North in the northwestern part of town, and East 54 on, well, East 54. There are also the issues caused by the large number of proposed developments -- re-evaluations of the comprehensive plan and tree protection ordinance, and a neighborhood conservation district in the Whitehead/Mason Farm area.

When all this stuff is going on, the Town Council and Planning Board (of which I am a member) get a lot of attention, as do the engaged citizens who speak out and make their feelings known.

Yesterday, at our day-long retreat, the Board of Aldermen worked through several dozen possible next steps for our economic development strategy and chose three to refer to staff and three to refer to itself.

Staff will be looking into:

-A leakage analysis of the Carrboro economy. Leakage analysis looks at what goods and services are being purchased in Carrboro from non-local sources and develops strategies to develop local alternatives. Although discussion of leakage locally typically focuses on retail sales, our consultant Michael Shuman points out that significant leakage occurs in such areas as food, energy, financial services, absentee landlords, and transportation. Leakage analysis is foundational to related initiates that, Shuman recommends, could include fostering entrepreneurship, building business support networks, mobilizing demand (what he calls “think local first” campaigns), and better systems for making equity available to locally owned small business. (Shuman’s powerpoint presentation developed for Carrboro should be available on the town web site soon)