Yesterday at noon, Chapel Hill's Economic Development Officer Dwight Bassett provided a brief, one-hour presentation outlining some key facts and developments concerning retail, housing, and office space in Chapel Hill. The full presentation can be viewed here.

I attended and live-tweeted the meeting. You can see the play-by-play below.

Rosemary Street in downtown Chapel Hill has a lot of untapped potential and is already a vibrant intersection for students and permanent residents (including long-time residents of the historically African American Northside neighborhood). The Town of Chapel Hill Economic Development Office and the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership have teamed up to create a new process they are calling 'Rosemary Imagined,' which they are promoting as "an innovative community-led process to refine our thinking of how Rosemary Street fits into the development and growth of Downtown Chapel Hill."

Vishaan Chakrabarti - A Country of Cities
April 18 @ 7:00 PM (Reception starts @ 5:30)
G-100 Genomic Sciences Building (campus location - free parking next door)

Downtown Partnership Social Hour
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
5pm to 7pm

Join the Downtown Partnership for a social hour at Cholanad Restaurant. Enjoy free hors d'oeuvres on their new outdoor deck. Drop by and catch up with old friends and make some new ones!  All are invited. 

North Carolina could do a lot more to promote new businesses.  Here's just a quick list.

The Chapel Hill Town Council held a second public hearing tonight on the rezoning and redevelopment of the University Square/123 West Franklin Street complex. UNC Chancellor Thorp made opening remarks about the redevelopment, calling it key for our downtown and detailing the need for more housing, parking, and green space downtown. Chancellor Thorp remained for the entirety of the two-hour discussion, which ended up being a very fortunate thing.

Previously on CityBeautiful21 I talked about Informal Markets -- events that are marked by an agreed-upon time and place to sell and buy goods, but may lack features of a permanent retail establishment.  When I think about the things that the town of Carrboro has going for it, our talent for finding room for Informal Markets is near the top of the list.  When I began researching this post, I was not surprised to find that Carrboro has been finding a place for Informal Markets in the community for over 35 years.

(Cross-posted from my blog at geoffgreen.org)

Meadowmont is a neo-urban neighborhood in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It was designed with a mix of uses and is trumpeted as a walk-friendly community, with sidewalks along both sides of the street and a network of greenway trails. (It was also designed as a station for a light-rail line, but that's a different story.) During the approval process, Meadowmont's developer emphasized its "pedestrian orientation for working and living." So you would hope that the design of the sidewalks, roads and intersections would consistently reflect the importance of access for people traveling on foot.

Alas, you would be wrong.