Is the 300 East Main proposal worth supporting?

I've liked this project from the beginning. Pairing a hotel with two existing performances spaces makes a lot of sense to me. (And improving the performance spaces as well.) So instead of people driving in for shows at the Cradle and then driving out to East Chapel Hill, there concert goers are still in Carrboro. And out of town guests who aren't so inclined to stay at our house also won't have to drive across town.

I find it hard to imagine it looking worse than that particular spot does now - parking lot at the street with refurbished strip mall behind it, but I also would like to see landscaping made a priority.

I'm sorry to say that I was not at all impressed with the Chapel Hill News article on Sunday. It seemed to mostly rely on quotations from a few detractors. Posing the vague question "Is it Carrboro enough?" struck me as a way of avoiding actual analysis based on any quantifiable information. (Although I believe there is such a wonderful thing as Carrboro-ness.)

I'm glad to see Laura Van Sant weighing in above (but I hope she will register first in the future). As she points out, there has been a public dialogue about this project going on for four years. For example, these OP posts from September 2004, February 2005, and January 2007. (I just tagged them all 300 East Main for reference.)

Personally, I have some concerns about the aesthetics of the plan and would like to see more of the elevations (exterior building plans). I hope to see designs that are a friendly human-scale and consistent with Carrboro's sort of antique/funky style.

I'm all for this new development as a engine for long term support and growth of the arts in Carrboro and Chapel Hill. It is vital that the Arts Center and Cat's Cradle have new modern spaces with room to grow. Otherwise they will stagnate and disappear as we know them now. I hope both arts organizations have written agreements in place to secure their spaces in the new buildings. Losing either would be an utter disaster for our communities and the entire Triangle.

Strong arts organizations are a key element in supporting artists with fewer resources. The Arts Center trains and promotes artists of all kinds. The Cat's Cradle puts on shows with local bands and helps raise thousands of dollars a year for great causes. These groups give so much. They are a major reason I love living and working here.

Its time for our community to give back to them in a big way. A good way to do this is to help them grow the way they want to grow.

Much of the focus on creating local economies, the driving force behind the economic development plan pursued by Carrboro, is in providing the daily needs of local citizens. Is this development going to do that? Will we be able to purchase socks and underwear at one of the retail venues? Another local economies focus is on diversification of revenue. Will this development do that or will it simply add to the current dependence on sales tax revenues?

What impact will such a large development and yet more high end residences have on the neighborhoods surrounding the site? Will this site improve their quality of life or will it be another force pushing them to immigrate out of Carrboro?

 Laura is absolutely correct when she says this has been a very publicly reviewed development. The developers deserve a great deal of credit for that openness. My concerns with the project are that the town leaders have developed this plan for building a local economy and are now ignoring the basic tenets of that plan. Land use and economics are not independent of  one another.  I appreciate Jacqui speaking up so that this discussion can take place.

 Carrboro does offer most types of merchandise, and I feel confident that Main Street Properties will make sensible, sustainable decisions about street-level tenants.  The partners have proven themselves as corporate citizens who want what's best for Carrboro -- at considerable expense.   They're certainly not shoving anything down our throats. 

My only wish for 300 East Main is that it could get underway once and for all.  Construction will be very disruptive, but well worth the inconvenience.  I don't want to hear any complaining when it's only half done in four more years.  This is the cost of doing things right.  

There's so much to address here.  This will be a bit disjointed.

1.  Notice.  Anyone who says this process has not had enough public input opportunities has simply not been paying attention. 

2.  Community Character.  This term often seems to be a proxy for architectural style.  300 East Main has no residential component.  I think most Carrboro residents would agree that the non-residential buildings that most exemplify the style of Carrboro architecture are Carr Mill Mall, the old post office (Spotted Dog), The Century Center, the storefront buildings on the south side of Main Street between the railroad tracks and Greensboro Street. 

These buildings share a few common traits- they usually come right up to the sidewalk, have a significant amount of brick in their facades, honor the pedestrian over the automobile (reflecting their time of construction), and sometimes have simple decorative elements using wood or iron. 

The current 300 East Main buildings are from the 1950s automobile era- low slung suburban boxes set back from the street with parking in front.  Structurally, the only physical element worth saving from the ArtsCenter/Cradle building is the angel sculpture above the ArtsCenter, and that should be easy enough to relocate.

The design of the first 300 E Main building definitely fits the Carrboro vernacular as expressed by our urban building stock.  The hotel and later phases, from the drawings I’ve seen, could probably be improved by trying to look more like the first building, but that’s not a reason to hold back on this project.  They’re still using urban building siting and significant brickwork, which should be commended. 

3.  Access to 300 E Main and Downtown.  David Beck asks the wrong question when he says “what’s the plan to accommodate new traffic and parking?”  Essentially, he’s asking, “what can we do to subsidize motorists from out of town at the expense of our tax base and local mobility?”

The correct question to ask is “how do we get PEOPLE to 300 East Main in a way that imposes the least negative impacts on accessibility to downtown?”  Right now, the question is framed to get CARS to the site, not people.  This is also the standard orientation of most parking management practice.  I appreciate that Laura and her team have done due diligence on parking by retaining the usual consultants for these things.  That said, the state of the practice in parking studies is for the most part, pretty horrendous and committed to suburban motoring assumptions. (this is not the fault of Main Street Properties)  I will try to get ahold of the parking study next week and give it a good look, and provide some specific feedback. 

Carrboro has one of the highest bicycle commuting mode shares in the country (not the Southeast, the country) for a community our size, a new transit plan coming out soon for Chapel Hill Transit which ought to bring some serious improvements to local service in Carrboro, and a 443-space parking lot less than 6 minutes from downtown which sits empty at the time when 300 East Main and downtown Carrboro experience peak demand.  We really need to connect the dots.

A 843-space deck is also going to cost Main Street Properties a lot of money.  Laura Van Sant told me at the public meeting that the deck could be built in phases, with the first piece being about 525 spaces (correct me if I’m wrong, Laura).  One goal could be to commit to not going above the number of parking spaces in the first phase of the deck at the approval.

A better goal would be to recognize that this whole project could possibly work quite well with 300 or 400 spaces if the Town gets thoughtful about downtown mobility across multiple modes at once, instead of just thinking about providing maximum free parking at any cost, and trying to force developers to solve a district-level problem with a parcel-based approval process. 

Let’s save the development team some money, and let them get started soon with much less parking.  Maybe they can even throw in some more retail/office square footage and give us some additional productive tax base, instead of more parking in an age when gasoline is going up $0.50/gallon every 15 months.

I'm very glad to see this project. One thing I'm wondering tho: what is the nature of the parts of the buildings that actually front Main St? The CHNews graphics make these parts of the hotel and the other building directly on the street seem closed off from the street - no entries or awnings to welcome foot traffic. All the pedestrian focus seems to be on the diagonal mall. Seems a shame for the Main St front to be closed off that way. Maybe its just the rough diagram that gives the wrong impression.

This plan seems to be very different from the one submitted a couple of years ago which featured the diagonal extension of the greensward from Weaver Street Market. As for aesthetics, don't assume MSP cares all that much about anything but maximizing their bottom line--their argument being that whatever they put up will be better than the strip mall. “Whatever” is pretty much right. Their principle shareholder (and this is public record) owns one of the premiere properties in CH's historic district adjacent to campus at 115 Battle Lane, and has seen fit to let the old house fall over, refusing several more than generous offers along the way which would have more than doubled his original investment from 10 years ago and saved a fine piece of university history (home of past UNC president Edward Kidder Graham) in the bargain. He's got it priced right now at way above what anyone in their right mind would be willing to pay, because he'd rather tear it down and is simply playing charades with the state preservation office before he tears it down and builds some monstrous spec home. Wonder how our brethren in Chapel Hill will feel about that.

...a few traffic changes (fully signalized light at Lloyd & Main, restriping - but not widening - Roberson & Main to add a turn lane, etc.)

What sort of turn lane?  e.g. center turn,  right turn, ...

If we restripe to add lanes, without widening the roadway, are we narrowing the lanes?  If we narrow the lanes are we moving from a bike+car shareable lane to a lane where a car cannot safely overtake a bicycle within the lane?

There's a LOT of bicycle traffic on Roberson headed to/from UNC via the Libba Cotton greenway.

I have been hearing a lot of alarm after a couple of local papers published a rumor from developer Laura van Sant that the Cat's Cradle would move to Durham if they didn't get this new space approved. The only paper that actually talked to the owner of the Cradle was the N&O, and I think they made clear that van Sant was exaggerating (or at least misunderstanding) the situation:

When asked about Van Sant's claim he'd been offered rent-free space in Durham, [Cat's Cradle owner Frank] Heath answered that it was more along the lines of booking shows elsewhere than a space of his own elsewhere.

From a competitive standpoint, the Cradle could benefit from a capacity larger than its current cap of around 600. Many acts bypass the Triangle for larger clubs such as Asheville's 940-capacity Orange Peel.

- OrangeChat: Cat's Cradle's Carrboro days numbered?, 9/17/08

As you may know, the Cradle already books shows at other clubs around the Triangle, so this should hardly be read as a threat to leave. In fact, they would probably do a lot more of this kind of booking if their current building was torn down to build the new one van Sant proposes. And the Cradle has moved 3 times in it's 30+ year history, so Frank knows how to handle it.

I probably shouldn't have been surprised when the Cradle thing became such a big deal, but as an interested observer of media it did tick me off.

It was a second-day story and sounded big on the surface, but it just didn't make sense that the Cradle would up and move. 

I watched the meeting (whew) and saw it as a legitimate reason for Sherman to advocate for moving forward, but it was just one of many he cited. It got up high in many stories because it was sexy — the venue is a familar name— and could play to the rest of the Triangle. Unfortunately, that seems to be what the dailies are looking for any more.

As Laura was begging at the last BOA meeting, they should vote right now.  This is a travesty.  After four years of dog & pony shows with elevations and aerial views, the Partners are running out of storage space!  I might add that these delays are costing the town a bundle too.  Time is money, folks.  Let's get to work.