Kevin Foy

UPDATE: UNC is buying University Square and Granville Towers.

Anyone want to guess what this is about?

Representatives from UNC-Chapel Hill and the Town of Chapel Hill will hold a joint news conference at 1 p.m. today to announce details about a major real estate acquisition. The event will be held at the Chapel Hill Town Hall.

The news will have "significant positive implications" for the future of the downtown Chapel Hill business district, UNC officials said this morning.

I was pretty shocked to read today that Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy has written a memo to the Town Council proposing that they should end the Horace Williams Citizen's Committee (old web site, new web site). Just a few months ago, I helped to draft a plan for how the HWCC would proceed in the next year or two to study some of the issues surrounding Carolina North and to make recommendations on them to the Town Council.

In all of the discussion of Ken Broun's new committee to advise UNC's leaders, it has always been made clear that the HWCC would still exist to advise Chapel Hill's leaders. I have not seen any change in situation that would mean we don't need this service any longer. This decision would be a major reversal and it deserves more explanation than the Mayor has given.