Move to Cary?

I'm the guy who wrote the letter to the Chapel Hill Weekly in September suggesting that people supporting a Costco in Orange County should consider moving to Cary.   Those who chose to  respond rightly condemned me for the arrogant tone of my writing, but if I read the terms of Orange Politics correctly, we should strive to deal in ideas, not personal attacks.   I care a lot about this place, so sometimes my rhetoric gets away from me.   I apologize for my tone, but not my ideas.   One may argue that it is obnoxious to be anti-growth since I was once a new person here myself some forty years ago.   (And I know something of struggling here as a state employee.  I lived in a house with three room mates for some sixteen years before I was able to buy a home in Carrboro.)  

I agree that I'm being obnoxious, but that doesn't change the fact that it is possible to kill a place with popularity, to so profoundly alter its nature that it is no longer in any meaningful sense the same place.  Sure, it has tarheel sports, the old well, and plenty of beer, but a flawed yet genuinely intertwined community with a common history has been supplanted by an ever-shifting series of audiences comprised of acquaintances with common sources of attention.  That's not, in any meaningful sense, community.  It is the appearance of community.   A real community consists of people who need each other economically, who know each other over time.   Every morning people In CHC leave their neighborhoods and drive to RTP, or elsewhere, taking  with them their focus.  Business is done in big box stores or on the internet.   Indeed, there's not much economic interaction between and among neighbors in our towns because over the past thirty years or so Chapel Hill Carrboro has become primarily an area of upper middle class enclaves.   Northside is in a state of diaspora.   The white working class left years ago.

Diversity?   If we're honest, most of us live here not because it's truly diverse  but rather because it's diverse on our terms.   Anyone serious about genuine diversity is not going to live in a place that is as prosperous as Chapel Hill and Carrboro.  It's not really about Costco, but rather what is to follow.  It is, as is said, the camel's nose under the tent.

There is no doubt, as JCB notes -- did I teach you,James? -- that Chapel Hill and Carrboro can never return to the way it was 30 years ago, no matter how much I wish it might.   I don't think I implied that it would or should.  However, it can get a lot worse.  A lot worse.  And worse means suburbs and strip malls, all based on the automobile.  

I would argue that Chapel Hill Carrboro has hemoraged not because of its good schools -- that's at best debatable -- or even the growth of the university, but rather the building of I40 so close to town. That has been catastrophic.

Diversity in Chapel Hill Carrboro is more stance than reality.    Costco or not, that sad fact will not change.  

 

 

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If you ask me, a community is whatever its residents make it.  I see no objective justification for legally enforcing a specific "feel" or culture or appearance.  It's simply a matter of preference.For what it's worth, personally I'd also have no interest in a Costco around here, but that's just my personal take.  I'm sure there are plenty of people who would benefit by saving time and money if a Costco came to CH/C.  Communities and tastes and realities and demographics evolve.  That's not bad or good, it's just true.

Your answer suggests a misreading of republican democracy, founded to balance concentrated power -- be it royal or corporate in nature -- with that of the relatively less powerful.   Surely you would agree that such decisions as opening a Costco demand an open, honest, and accurate discussion of perceived costs and benefits by all concerned.  Otherwise, such decisions are left to the political class, and outsiders welding raw corporate power.  They have millions of dollars at their disposal, while we have only our ideas, questions, and values more complicated than pleasure, convenience, and low prices.  So much for democracy if such decisions, with their profound and permanent impact -- on people, land, sewage, and trash -- lie beyond the influence of mere citizens.   We're too close to losing honorable, engaged, and independent news media to abandon public debate.   Granted, all communities evolve, but the best do so in terms of place and people rather than abjectly surrender to landscapes dictated by automobiles and remote corporate boardrooms.    We can do better.

Surely you would agree that such decisions as opening a Costco demand an open, honest, and accurate discussion of perceived costs and benefits by all concerned.Yeah I've got nothing against an open discussion at all.  Of course, if the community voiced a preference for allowing the establishment of a local Costco -- or Wal Mart, or strip bar, or whatever -- I'd have no problem whatsoever  acquiescing to that preference.Put another way, if your point is that the people of the community should have a say in what happens, I agree (and, for the record, a community-wide sentiment like that would spell doom for the business in question).  If your point is that zoning laws and other regulations should enforce a specific arbitrary vision, regardless of how the actual people in the community feel, I don't really buy into that.  If the people around us want a Costco, and Coscto wants to build, I don't see any compelling reason to prevent it.

Agreed.   Zoning laws and regulations should reflect the thinking and desires of residents, but only after a thorough, open, and honest consideration of the perceived and identifiable costs and benefits -- within the realm of possibility of course.   I think politicians should a)  listen to all views  b) demonstrate an understanding of these views, and c) explain how and why he or she agrees or disagrees.  And they should boldly take a stand and defend it openly, honestly, and intelligently.   Too often I have observed so-called leaders expressing sympathy with both sides of an issue -- seemingly so as not to offend those ultimately on the losing side -- but then justify their vote with a sound bite.  They at least have the guts to serve and take a position, but the lack of explanation doesn't serve the people well.   I accept that I may be wrong about certain things, and that I often will be on the losing side, but the most irritating thing is when leaders, in effect, say they strongly support a given path because of xy and z, but then vote in a way that condradicts that position with little or no explanation.   If most people in Orange County want a Costco, for example, you're right:  one should be built, and if it bothers me enough I should move away.    But it would be sad indeed if people supported it simply because they hadn't fully considered the ramifications -- particulary if it's because, as I think, our leaders and media didn't fully explore the costs and focused primarily on perceived benefits.   My bias is that virtually every decision, but particulalry economic decisions, present a whole host of generally unacknowledged, largely unseen external costs.   People who support, or oppose, a Costco in Orange County will pay those costs either way the decision is made.   I prefer the inconvenience, expense, and waste necessitated by driving across I40, when I must, to unleashing even more sprawl closer to home.   For Costcos and the like will bring even more developments and even more big box stores.  It won't end with one.   A corporation's economic decisions ignore such matters as affection for place, appropriate scale, and  historical heritage, since maximizing profit is its only critical determinant.  

J.AB   Thank you for a very honest, respectful and thoughtful post.

taken in shaping the future of our town.  Not that we should add a box store, but if we do it should be the right box store, and it should be in the right location.Wal Mart has such a negative history that its right out.  Even Target got involved in the last election cycle to support an anti-worker, anti-gay candidate.  Costco on the other hand, from what I've read does right by its workers, including pay-wise, and  has the highest possible 100% rating from the HRC.Google maps tells me its 1.8 miles from the old abandoned Volvo lot and Walmart.  If we put it there it would be far enough away from downtown so as not to unduly draw people away from there, at least not any more than the Wal Mart right on the border does already.I think having the right store, in the right place, and done in the right way can mitigate the negative effects and increase the positive outcomes as much as possible.  Now does that reach the threshold of being worthwhile?  Hard to say.  Right now I wouldn't consider myself an advocate for or against the Costco proposal, but I'm okay with it if it does happen.

I like your thoughtful, specific comments, and figure it'll all work out about the way you figure.  The Crown site might work, but traffic flow is already awful in that location, and I don't think the powers that be would stop at one Costco.  I doubt that one Costco would reduce taxes significantly, if at all.  It seems to me that most excess capital around here is sucked out and sent elsewhere, some of it returning in the hands of developers trying to make a fast buck, often in the name of greeness.  Governments are left to play cleanup, and they often have their own wasteful, short-view agendas.  Nonetheless,  when I have to visit a big store I usually head to the Hillsborough Walmart , which, given the traffic around No Hope Commons,  takes about the same amount of time from northern CH and Carrboro -- and whatever tax is involved stays in the county.  I'm as implicated as anybody, but I never forget that a healthy community is akin to a biological system with its completeness.  Money circulates among its citizens, value grows.  On the community level, big box stores, as key purveyors of consumerism, are the main place where our lives intersect with, and participate in, the evils of extracting, exhausting and wasting.  Things are taken from one place, never to return, processed in a second and, after a brief period of use in a third, increasingly end up in a fourth community's dump -- or literally downstream.  There's a lot of ruin in there, mostly unobserved by us consumers.  In a healthy community, as on a healthy farm, there's greater balance -- and little to no waste.   Ignoring this fundamental reality of nature constitutes real short-term thinking.   Even the most ardent consumerists must admit that sooner or later things wear out, but they need to understand that it's not merely blue jeans but arable land, mines, seas, and the atmosphere -- and there's no way to go out and purchase new ones.  I think many people, left and right, believe that science and technological advancement will save us, but I think that constitutes, as Wendell Berry writes, the greatest superstition of our time.   I know that changing the consumer ethos of our culture is formidable, but where better to begin this conversation than in a place where educated people are so concentrated?   Or, indeed, is the problem, at heart, one of educated people?   

Lawrence London
Venaura Farm
Chapel Hill, N.C., 27516
http://venaurafarm.blogspot.com
venaurafarm@bellsouth.net
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
lflj@bellsouth.net Put a new Costco out on 15-501 East, Chapel Hill/Durham Blvd.near the interchange with I40. Perfect spot. No need to deprive us of such a great store since we already have a proliferation of Lowes, Home Depot, Walmart and an assortment of major supermarkets (near Chapel Hill, Hillsborough and Pittsboro). I was born in Chapel Hill in 1939 and have been amazed at changes that have occured here since then. We need a mix of good large scale stores and the much smaller, traditional ones, farmers markets and craft markets to preserve the character of this area. The best of both worlds. An alternate location would be at the I40 interchange near Hillsboro but nowhere else (certainly not on Hwy 54 West or 15-501 South).LFLondonVenaura Farm   Sustainably Grown ProduceChapel Hill NC 27516http://orangegrapevine.blogspot.comhttp://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/orangegrapevine

Your response is certainly wise and moderate, the best possibility I can imagine given the options and the seeming inevitability of this sort of "progress." But what is to stop the very thing you fear, the proliferation of these areas -- not merely one store as they always come in clustered sprawls it seems -- along highway 54 west or 15-501 south? I question it in all areas, you support it in a couple of places, and many people (who may well be on their way to somewhere else that has all the stores they've been convinced to desire as our economy promotes store branding to counter the pervasive rootlessness it demands) would be happy with it anywhere so long as it's not in their particular current neighborhood. 54 west and 15-501 would be just fine with them, and then they'll move on and leave us with, in a few years, grid-locked suburban wasteland characteristic of northern New Jersey, northern Virginia, and just about every other metro area it seems. When I complain about traffic, people from such areas laugh -- and often add "you should see what I left. This is nothing." But it's coming, there's no doubt, if we invite it. I remember being in a beautiful New Jersey town some twenty five years ago, along a street of lovely homes, and hearing the loud, unending roar of traffic on a nearby road and suddenly realizing, as if I'd been hit in the head, "This is what East Franklin Street is becoming, will be."  

It's not quite there yet, but it's close.

 

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