Merritt Crossing
Yesterday I attended an informational meeting about the proposed Tanyard Branch greenway and bridge that the Town of Chapel Hill is planning to build from the end of McMasters Street (near Northside Elementary) to the other side of Bolin Creek, ending at Jay Street, which is a dirt road that connects to Village Drive. (Tanyard Branch is the name of the stream that comes in from Carrboro and feeds into Bolin Creek at Umstead Park.)
This is a project that I personally stand to benefit from greatly. My comment from a year ago on being districted in the Northside Elementary walkzone explains that this will change our daily walk to school from 1.2 miles up a steep hill to .5 miles through the woods. This small greenway will also eventually connect to Phase III of Chapel Hill Bolin Creek Greenway, which will bring the path from MLK to Umstead Park. UNC is also creating a "Campus-to-Campus Connector" from Carolina North which will run paralell to the railroad tracks and just feet from Village Drive. This Tanyard Branch connection will someday make it much easier for people to get to central Chapel Hill from downtown, which is great.
The informal foot path connecting Estes Park Apartments and Pleaseant Drive in Carrboro is a critical link for hundreds of pedestrians and cyclists like me who don't want to brave the shoulders of Estes Drive. I hadn't been there in a while due to the idiotic closure of the Merrit Crossing, but I walked through yesterday and found that the residents of the co-op housing on Crest Street (which backs up to the path) have been inspired by Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree (a book I still can't read without crying) to create "The Giving Communitree." It's a collection of little spots and works of art with books, art, and other gifts to share with anyone who wants them.
I took some pictures.
Yesterday I received a call from a woman who lives in a tent she assembled in the woods east of the railroad tracks near land that Chapel Hill purchased from the estate of Leo Merritt. I have known her for several years and she has been a part of the downtown Carrboro community for a long time. I had mixed emotions about what she had to say. She is moving next month to be with another member of her family in a nearby state. On the one hand, I am happy for her that she will (presumably) have more formal housing arrangements, but on the other hand I will miss seeing her around Carrboro.
A few years ago, the voters of Carrboro approved a couple million dollar bond issue to build sidewalks in various locations around Carrboro. One of the projects on the list was a sidewalk on the south side of Estes Drive Extension from the railroad tracks to North Greensboro Street. But the sidewalk bond money has not gone as far as people had hoped. Considerably higher engineering, materials, labor, drainage and utility-relocation costs have cropped up and we will not be able to build the entire original list of sidewalks with the bond money. Also, in the intervening years, the Town annexed neighborhoods on the west side of Rogers Road and it became apparent that Rogers Road was a place that needed a sidewalk, but had not been on the list before because it was not within town limits.
I imagine many OP readers have heard about area residents who are concerned about the new fence blocking access between Estes Park Apartments in Carrboro and Village West Townhouses in Chapel Hill. The management of Estes Park erected a fence and gate which is padlocked. The fence is 8' tall with three strands of barbed wire at the top. It blocks a traditional connection between the two neighborhoods and by extension connections from each neighborhood to downtown Carrboro and Chapel Hill.
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