Economy & Downtown
Chapel Hill's downtown has long benefited from its proximity to a captive audience of University students without cars. While downtowns around the country have been failing, ours has survived fairly well. However, we have seen an increase in the number of chain stores locating downtown, and instability in the Downtown Economic Development Corporation. In the near future, we will see new Town-directed development on two major parking lots have a big impact.
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Carrboro's downtown has also done better than many towns of comparable size, thanks largely to the presence of Weaver Street Market and progressive shoppers from the rest of the county. The Board of Aldermen has been addressing the evolution of the downtown, and have established a number of community resources in the downtown area including free wireless Internet access, and a low-power radio station.
ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
SPECIAL MEETING NOTICE
FOR
June 2, 2011
The
Orange County Board of Commissioners will meet for a Special Meeting
(closed session) on Thursday, June 2, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. at the Link
Government Services Center, 200 South Cameron Street, Hillsborough, N.C.
for the purpose of ““discussing matters related to the location or
expansion of industries or other businesses in the area served by the
public body, including agreement on a tentative list of economic
development incentives that may be offered by the public body in
negotiations,” NCGS § 143-318.11(a)(4).Date:
Thursday, June 2, 2011 - 7:00pm
So I was catching up on the Chapel Hill News yesterday and I noticed some eery similarity in two stories about new downtown developments in both Carrboro and Chapel Hill. In one article, questions are raised about how the developers of Greenbridge qualified for the gigantic loan that they are currently unable to repay. It should surprise no-one to learn that the 15% of the condos that were mandated to be affordable by the Town sold first. It turns out that when the bank looked at pre-sales to determine demand, they counted the number, rather than the value, of the units. In fact, the News goes so far as to ask whether the affordable housing policy itself is somehow at fault for Greenbidge's current financial problems. I think that's a stretch, but it does make you think twice about the process by which banks decide to make commercial loans. (Housing bubble anyone?)
In another story, the News talks about the recently restarted mixed-use project at 300 East Main Street in Carrboro, which will bring 5 stories of retail, housing offices, a hotel, and parking to the current run-down strip mall that houses the ArtsCenter and the Cat's Cradle. (VisArt, RIP.) One key element that helped Main Street Partners to secure their financing for this was the Town of Carrboro agreeing to lease a large number of parking spaces for the first few years after construction.
As reported in our local newspapers (see here & here), CVS has submitted plans to the town of Carrboro to build a large CVS and parking lot on the corner of N. Greensboro St. & Weaver St. This development would demolish at least 2 historic buildings, cut down many trees, create more traffic problems and the parking lot would be placed on a residential street.
See my previous two posts to get more details on the history of the project so far.
There are some new pieces of information that are relevant to the development:
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