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 Town of Carrboro is holding a forum for the discussion of the Carrboro Downtown Transportation Study. This is a great chance for folks to hear about different options that the Town is looking at. Possibilities include limiting cars on Weaver Street, installing roundabouts on Main Street, bigger sidewalks and more on-street parking. Come check it out Thursday Dec. 2 at 6:30 at the Century Center.
Here's the invite on the Town website (www.townofcarrboro.com):
Please plan to attend a community forum on the draft Carrboro Downtown Transportation Study, to be held on Thursday, December 2 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in Century Hall of the Carrboro Century Center, located at the corner of Greensboro and Weaver streets in downtown Carrboro.
Recently the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has been working on rolling out what could be the largest public wireless network in the USA. That momentum was interrupted when Pennsylvania house bill 30, a.k.a. the "Verizon Bill," was introduced to the Pennsylvania legislature in Harrisburg.
Simply, Verizon doesn't want competition from the Wireless Philadelphia Initiative on providing wireless internet access. The key part of Verizon's argument is that the City of Philadelphia would be charging the citizens to construct the wireless network, pay for its long term maintenance, and supposedly for access to the wireless network itself. Verizon claims it would not charge citizens for the CREATION of a wireless network. But it is clear they would have to charge for ACCESS to the network once this future private network was constructed.
This month there was (is?) a very thoughtful piece of activism in downtown Chapel Hill. With "Seven Windows, Seven Doors" local artist-activists painted silouettes on the boarded up openings on the old bus station. Soon the bus station will be demolished to make room for a luxury hotel.
This unique act combined art, protest, and history in an effective and touching message. The pictures are combined with words expressing the experiences of people who passed through the bus station in past decades. "I left here hoping to escape..." "I was discriminated against here..." "I enforced the law here..." "I looked away here..." "I won on a full house here..."
Here's is Sally Greene's photo gallery and her blog post about it. Also, here is an interview with Matt Robinson (one of the creators) by Brian Russell of AudioActivism.org.
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