January 2007

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?

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on January 6th, 2007:

Around this time last year, I was extremely skeptical about UNC's plans for a "Leadership Advisory Committee" on Carolina North. It seemed like just the latest in a series of bureaucratic bodies, at best another pointless waste of time and at worst a cooptation technique designed as an end run around substantive public input on one of the most important issues our area has ever faced.

Twelve months later, I am pleasantly surprised with the work it has done and cautiously optimistic about the direction we are heading in. Folks are engaging in a constructive dialogue about town/gown issues in a way that we have not often seen.

I have just added a feature that should help to reduce the amount of time required to run OrangePolitics. We currently get about 100-200 spam comments each day, and they all go into the same moderation queue as comments from new users who simply have to be verified and approved.

On the comment form you will now find an extra field where you can type in the numbers and letters that appear next to it to prove that you are a human and not a spam-bot (a captcha). Please let me know if you have any problems!

I know there are a few other broken things around here. I haven't addressed all of the problems as I am hoping to move the site to a whole new platform later this year. More about that later, but if you have any suggestions for hosted drupal solutions, do let me know. ;-)

The Herald reports that the Chapel Hill Town Council has voted to authorize the mayor to start discussing zoning for the 900-acre property in the middle of town that is slated to become UNC's satellite campus Carolina North. If it's true (as the article below states) that this process will be similar to how the Town developed the OI-4 zone that now applies to all of UNC's main campus then I am very afraid.

OI-4 was developed by a small negotiating committee including the Mayor and two Council members who met with the Chancellor and other UNC leaders in private meetings, and led to a process that allows UNC to push through through huge projects (the latest was over 1 million square feet) in just 4 months - a fraction of the time the town usually needs to review a simple Special Use Permit.

Mayor Kevin Foy has gotten the go-ahead from the Town Council to start talking with UNC Chancellor James Moeser about a vital aspect of Carolina North -- a new zoning district for the property where UNC wants to build its envisioned research campus.

I'd like to think that The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be proud to see communities like ours that remember him through acts of protest and radicalism. Do your part on Monday.

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP is holding a march and rally against war and racism on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Monday, January 15. Gather at noon at the Post Office on Franklin St. in Chapel Hill and march to the First Baptist Church on Robeson St. At the church, Rev. Curtis Gatewood will give a speech stressing the importance of building a united movement against war and racism, and will continued to build momentum for the massive march in Raleigh on February 10.

... and get ready for justice to pour down like a mighty stream on February 10 in Raleigh!

The North Carolina State NAACP and invites you and your organization to Historic K(Thousands) on Jones Street on Saturday, February 10, 2007.

Local bloggers are continuing the tradition of great live events. First there was the Triangle Bloggers Conference (video), then PodcasterCon, and now we have the North Carolina Science Blogging Conference.

Its this Saturday January 20 on the campus of UNC Chapel Hill in Murphey Hall, Room 116. The event gets going at 8:30 a.m. and wraps up at 5:30 p.m.. There are pre-events and post-events like dinner. See the NCSB Con schedule for more info.

So far over 150 people have registered. People are coming from all over the country and the world. Because of the limited seating and food there is a registration waiting list, so you can register now to try and squeeze in.

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro School System has an important announcement about our newest high school:

Teams at Carrboro High School will be known as the “Jaguars” and will wear uniforms that are purple, black and white.

Principal Jeff Thomas said he was pleased with the selection. “It gives some thematic unity with the Chapel Hill Tigers and East Chapel Hill Wildcats. The selection will only add to the pride parents and students have in the school and the Carrboro community,” Thomas stated.

You can already buy your Jaguars gear online.

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, January 20th:

Orange County won the state championship in 2005, finished a close second behind Guilford County last year, and is already well on its way to another state championship this year.

I wish I was talking about football or SAT scores or something of that ilk. Unfortunately I'm talking about the county's relative standing in the number of rabies cases it has compared to the rest of the state.

It seems like every day when I open up the paper there's been another confirmed rabies case. Most of the time I don't bat much of an eye. The vast majority of the cases are way out in the county, and since I live near downtown Chapel Hill, don't affect me.

But I kind of reached my breaking point when one of 2007's first pair of cases was a rabid fox that attacked someone walking near UNC Hospitals. I walk around there all the time, and that could just as well have been me.

Last year a mini controversy erupted around the awarding of a consulting contract to then Planning Board Chair Tim Dempsey. Seven months later, are we getting our money's worth?

I believe the answer is yes. Tim did a tremendous job co-chairing the Manager search process with Anita Badrock (BTW, congratulations on your new Chamber chairmanship- there is no one better suited for the job in my book!)

One of the things Tim worked on of late was pulling together last weekend's Council retreat, which by all reports was much improved from previous years.

I thought Sally Greene, now becoming a Council veteran, had an interesting perspective, this being her fourth retreat:

Kudos to the News & Observer for using their blog to expand the information in the paper, and vice versa.

While all they had time to write was a "staff report" (excerpted below), they also encouraged readers to Learn more about Lot 5 before the Town Council takes action by including a link to their blog at the end of the story and posting the Town of Chapel Hill's full summary of issues document for download from the blog.

The town has released a draft copy of its contract with Ram Development Co. for a $75 million downtown redevelopment project.

The town is partnering with Ram to build an eight-story condominium and retail complex on the site of a municipal parking lot along Church Street between West Franklin and West Rosemary streets.