Yesterday's Chapel Hill News looked at the rapid pace of new development in northwestern Chapel Hill, as originally blogged by Del Snow here on OP last November.
Developers have plans for at least 1,400 new housing units  more than half as many as in the entire town of Hillsborough  all within a 2.5-mile radius of the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Weaver Dairy Road.
[...]
Town traffic engineer Kumar Neppalli said the town already considers multiple projects whenever they're relevant to any one proposal, but the town cannot include projects that have not been officially proposed.
The Herald-Sun reports,
Developers of the 300 East Main Street project in Carrboro have rearranged and resubmitted their application to town staff members in hopes of hastening the project's approval and possibly beginning construction toward the end of 2007.
The development, which will include a hotel, office space, retail shops and restaurants, has been broken into two separate conditional use applications, said Laura Van Sant of Main Street Properties, the company that owns the strip mall and surrounding properties.
Read the full story here.
Van Sant also said the hotel interested is a "mid-priced national chain." I'm eager to see a hotel in Carrboro, but I hope it doesn't come with huge, tacky signs.
What are other folks thinking about this project? Are there still concerns? Or are we ready for this?
It looks like Chapel Hill may end up being more deliberate in hiring a new police chief than they were hiring a new manager last year. From a recent Chapel Hill town news notice:
What qualities do you want in a new police chief? This is the question to be posed in a series of focus groups for citizens, the Council, staff and the police department.
The focus groups are being held to gather early input that will help develop community criteria for the police chief. Those criteria will be used to assess the skills of candidates for the position.
Interested citizens may attend any of the following meetings to be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 9, at Town Hall, 405 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.; 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 11, at the Chapel Hill Public Library, 100 Library Drive; and 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 23, at Hargraves Community Center, 216 N. Roberson St.
- Public Input Sought on Police Chief Search
From "Seven who will matter in 2007" (News & Observer, 1/1/2007):
Tom Jensen has worked on two dozen political campaigns.
He writes weekly columns for a local newspaper. He helps edit a local
political blog. He's on Chapel Hill's planning board.
And he is 23.
Jensen's latest project is to persuade North Carolina cities to sign a commitment to reduce greenhouse gases.
The effort, based on a climate protection agreement by the U.S.
Conference of Mayors, amounts to sort of a local government version of
the international Kyoto Protocol, Jensen said.
Five cities have already signed up. The N.C. Sierra Club's goal is
12 by the end of 2007, although Jensen confided that he is hoping far
more will commit. Jensen said he isn't interested in only the biggest
cities.
"There's no reason small cities shouldn't be environmental leaders,
too," said Jensen, who rides the bus from Chapel Hill to Raleigh for
work each day.
I swear Rosemary and I didn't plan this, but I just read and wanted to post about this article by my friend Micah Sifry about Elizabeth Edwards. He says she is the "only person who I think we can genuinely say is participating in the blogosphere, as opposed to just using it." One of his supporting examples is Eliabeth's visit to OP to answer some questions I had raised about the location of their new home and the status of their voter registration.
As usual, she responded openly and directly. As I wrote to Micah, Elizabeth is so smart and fierce and charming it's scary. Further proof was seen in her graceful handling of that clown Chris Matthews on live TV recently. I sometimes have complaints about her husband's policies (the same I have of almost every Democrat), but as a person I only admire her more the more I get to know her. I wish nothing but the best to the entire Edwards family.
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