Economy & Downtown

The Herald Sun reports today that the Town Council will officially hear from it's downtown consultant tonight on their downtown market study. It's not surprising that the consultant advocates a further reliance on retail of home furnishings, movie theaters, etc. But it's disappointing to hear that they feel there is no need for new owner-occupied units downtown and no grocery store.

Unfortunately, despite it's progressive reputation, Chapel Hill is still not the walkable community that Carrboro and even parts of Durham are, partially due to the lack of diverse housing options downtown and the lack of a small grocery within the downtown. I'd be interested in hearing more about why the downtown market study did not feel that condos and a market were feasible, especially considering the successful trend towards this in other towns and cities throughout the country. Meeting = Monday (tonight) at 7pm at the town hall.

,Well, it always amused me that the first thing the town/gown/merchant committee took up, while thinking about how to organize the effort to create a nonprofit downtown development entity, was whether to drop the downtown special tax. Oh, so that's the problem! Forget about the empty storefronts and buildings kept empty by landlords who have driven up rents beyond what's reasonable on Franklin Street, and who won't countenance the idea that the market has changed, that with the explosion of retail space in the Triangle, the rents they enjoyed in the 1990s (adjusted for inflation) are no longer fair market rents. No no! It's a levy of 6.2 cents per $100 that's killing commerce downtown!