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.
The Orange Chat blog reports that the Chapel Hill News has received 12 submissions for it's Draw Your Own Mural contest. The deadline is Monday. I wonder if the Chan's gave them permission to determine what would be painted on their wall or if they're just making suggestions. Here's one:
"The mural meant a tremendous amount to Club Nova," Karen Dunn at Club Nova writes. [...] I ask that Club Nova remain the focus in the next mural. This could be a wonderful opportunity to reaffirm our place in the community, especially in what has become some of the worst times for community mental health."
- newsobserver.com |Orange Chat - Carrboro mural update
At the May 7th Town Council meeting, Roger Stancil proposed a 1.9% tax increase for the next fiscal year.
This seemed like a pretty good figure, considering other local governments were asking for more. Durham County has a proposed 3.9% tax hike, Wake County is looking at a 3.6% proposed increase, Carrboro has a proposed 2.9% increase. Orange County is proposing a 3.7% increase, and many folks would like for it to be more.
At a Council meeting two weeks later, Mayor Pro Tem Bill Strom pointed out:
"We're getting remarkably close to being able to get to a no-tax-increase budget," said Strom. "I would like to see a flat budget."
He asked for staff to come back with a proposed budget that would not raise taxes.
Last night, that proposal received unanimous support from the entire Council.
I recently learned from the Weaver St. Newsletter that they plan on moving their bread and pastry bakery, kitchen, and offices to Hillsborough. This seems like a big loss for Carrboro. The Chapel Hill News printed the following letter I wrote and I set up the blog OurWeave.blogspot.com to discuss the move.
The scheduled move of Weaver Street Market's "food production facilities" and offices to Hillsborough will result in a loss of around 80 jobs for Carrboro and have a detrimental effect on the town and the environment.
The environment impacts are the most obvious: 80 workers driving 24 miles each workday equals around 2,000 miles a day. That is a lot of carbon emission, and it doesn't include the added distribution miles of having a non-centrally located "production and office facility."
Ran into Bob Avery, the Town's IT Director, on Franklin St. today. Turns out he's surveying Downtown with an eye towards deploying a small pilot program of free Internet hot spots in the near future. The pilot would use Clearwire as the high-speed wireless backhaul. The only resources needed are power and location.
I cautioned Bob not to limit his planning to publicly owned infrastructure like the old Townhall. Over the last four years I've spoken with more than a few Downtown business and building owners willing to provide a small chunk of space and the minimal juice for access point deployments. BrianR and I have explored using solar-powered, weather-hardened rigs, strategically meshed to cover a wide area. If the Town used this environmentally sound and quite economical approach, the only remaining requirement is a decent position to throw signal.
Randee Haven-O'Donnell and I have a guest column in today's Chapel Hill News on Carrboro's efforts to actualize sustainability through locally-based economic development. Our approach is based largely on the thinking of Michael Shuman, author of "The Small-Mart Revolution," who served as a resource during the Board of Aldermen retreat back in January.
To read the column, go here. You can also read and comment on the N&O's OrangeChat.
Let me add to what is in the column that many of the ideas are not new to our area. Some of our most heralded economic success stories -- Weaver Street Market, Carrboro's Revolving Loan Fund, the Farmer's Market, Piedmont Biofuels -- are along the lines of the local living economy model. The recent Culture Shock initiative is also very much along these lines.
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