Franklin Street

Hey there.  My name is Andrew Neal, and I'm the owner of Chapel Hill Comics on West Franklin Street.  I've had orangepolitics.org in my RSS reader for a long time, but can't remember if I've ever posted anything here despite the fact that I have an account.

As a downtown business owner, I'm primarily interested in orangepolitics for the discussions in the Economy & Downtown category.  With recent posts about the lack of recent posts here, I thought I'd throw something into the mix and see if you're interested in discussing it.

Last week, the Independent ran the following article by Joe Schwartz

If you are interested in the Downtown "Riddle," you must read the May/June edition of the Chapel Hill Magazine.  On page 56, there is an interview with Fayetteville's own Joe Riddle, the well-known owner of some of our empty Franklin St. property.

In the "Letter from the publisher," Dan Shannon says the interview is "a lively mixture of raw honesty, combativeness, disingenuousness and skepticism."  The wary Riddle doesn't treat reporter Lisa Rossi with much respect and obviously doesn't believe that any interview will do him justice.

In speaking to the Friends of Pat Evans, err, I mean Friends of Downtown, Meadowmont developer and Board of Trustees Chair Roger Perry identified the same problems that I have been talking about in regards to Chapel Hill's downtown.

"You have to treat downtown with deference," Perry said. "You've got to put more money into downtown than into outlying areas." That means more and better lighting and, in the case of one particular area, sidewalks.

"That we don't have sidewalks along Rosemary all the way is nuts," he said. "We're tying an arm behind our backs." [...]

Perry saved his most critical words for the "irresponsible ownership" of some downtown buildings. Without mentioning specific names, he riffed on "absentee owners" who don't act as good stewards of the town or their properties, allowing buildings to slip below fire code standards and otherwise exhibiting no sense of urgency in filling vacancies in prime retail locations.