Economy & Downtown

After a grueling 90-minute discussion and approval of the downtown redevelopment project on Lot 5, the Chapel Hill Town Council addressed UNC's 3rd request to modify their overarching campus development plan. The Council approved most of the modification at a previous meeting, but held up a portion related to the Carolina Inn to address fiscal equity issued raised by Councilmember Cam Hill. (See tonight's agenda.)

There was discussion of whether guests staying at the Carolina Inn to are subject to the Town's hotel occupancy tax. Apparently guests are not charged if they are on University business. Councilmember Mark Kleinschmidt asked if this includes UNC sporting events, and Vice Chancellor Carolyn Efland replied that their official opinion is that such guests would not be paying the tax. Kleinschmidt said this should grab the headlines tomorrow rather than the Lot 5 approval.

Yesterday, at our day-long retreat, the Board of Aldermen worked through several dozen possible next steps for our economic development strategy and chose three to refer to staff and three to refer to itself.

Staff will be looking into:

-A leakage analysis of the Carrboro economy. Leakage analysis looks at what goods and services are being purchased in Carrboro from non-local sources and develops strategies to develop local alternatives. Although discussion of leakage locally typically focuses on retail sales, our consultant Michael Shuman points out that significant leakage occurs in such areas as food, energy, financial services, absentee landlords, and transportation. Leakage analysis is foundational to related initiates that, Shuman recommends, could include fostering entrepreneurship, building business support networks, mobilizing demand (what he calls “think local first” campaigns), and better systems for making equity available to locally owned small business. (Shuman’s powerpoint presentation developed for Carrboro should be available on the town web site soon)