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 Chapel
Hill-Carrboro Holiday Parade is scheduled for Saturday, December
12, 2009 from 10:00 a.m. until approximately 12:00 noon. Presented
by the Chapel Hill Jaycees, the parade this
year promises to be a celebration of our community spirit.
We encourage
all entries to have a holiday theme and awards will be given for Best
of Parade, Most Original, Best Holiday Theme, Most Creative, Best Scout
Troop. Our winners put a lot of thought and creativity in their entries
and that is what makes this holiday parade so special!
Location:
Franklin Street/Main Street
I recently saw Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy give an interesting speech on the problem that everyone seems to think that Chapel Hill was just perfect right about the time they got there. Kevin is not the first person to have observed this, and he won’t be the last, but I thought it might be interesting to share this item I stumbled across while researching an unrelated topic. R. L. Gray wrote an essay on Chapel Hill in the News & Observer (reprinted in
NC Journal of Law, Vol 1, pp 516-518, 1904):
"Let the man have been tarred with the University stick and he will tell you along with his after-dinner cigar that he has a notion of some day building a house at Chapel Hill – and there remaining to the end of the chapter in the one place where he believes he can obtain a large and perfect peace. There men cling to the town and its surroundings with a memory that is both tenacious and jealous of details.
Since the Chapel Hill News regularly posts FIVE pro-Czajowski letters to every ONE pro-Kleinschmidt letter, I thought maybe they just weren't getting enough, so I submitted one this week. I guess lack of Kleinschmidt letters isn't the issue, as this wasn't published and the ratio was 9 to 2 for Czajowski. I post here because there's no editorial board to stop me!!
"This is a local event,” Mayor Kevin Foy said in an official Town video. “If you can walk to Halloween, you’re invited. If you can’t, don’t come.”
Wow. Watch the Youtube clip. Lame.
(3 min 15 sec) CUE CREEPY MUSIC and Watch Mayor KEVIN FOY DISAPPEAR INTO A MISTY FOG CLOUD. REALLY? Really Chapel Hill? You can't make this Homegrown Halloween initiative "cool" with special effects or rationalization. Limiting the growth of events like Halloween hurts the "Brand" of our Town and ultimately has a negative effect on our Local Economy.
I am a graduate student in the UNC Planning Department (and the School of Law). My Site Planning class tonight had guest lecturer Bruce Ballentine to talk about Glen Lennox. About an hour into the lecture, a classmate of mine asked if Glen Lennox is an issue in the current municipal election. In the discourse about his take on the municipal election that followed, Mr. Ballentine called several of the candidates "anti-growth, anti-business, anti-University, and anti-downtown." He spared "three of the mayoral candidates" and DeHart, Pease, and Pohlman by name. He portrayed the muncipal elections in a biased manner, one that I felt was purposefully misleading. Regardless, it was an inapprorpriate forum for his stump speech.
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