Blogs
For those of you who haven't heard the news, the Adams Tract near downtown Carrboro is being bought by the town. Thanks to the hard work of a LOT of people, it sounds like this 27 acre natural area will continue to be fully accessible to residents of town. In addition, the ecological integrity of the site will (hopefully) be preserved at the same time.
Kudos to Carrboro, Chapel Hill, and Orange County for working together to protect this important site near the center of town!
Any ideas about the next big site that needs protection? Should it also be along Bolin Creek or should we focus our efforts in other parts of town?
Rickie
A lot of folks don't seem to want to talk about anything but the Orange County School Board race and it's ugly twin sister, the merger debate. Here's an open thread for those people so they can stop hijacking other topics of interest to the rest of us. Enjoy.
There are a variety of hot topics on the the Chapel Hill Town Council agenda tonight. I won't be there in person, but I'll be watching on TV and will report semi-live on this thread as the meeting is in progress.
A few highlights:
At the Carrboro board meeting tonight, there was a presentation and public comment period concerning the new "Carrboro Senior High School". One of the striking things about the initial plan is that, despite adhering to environmentally sound building design principles, the overall layout of the school still encourages the same kind of sprawl as usual. There was a disconnect between the idea of "green building" and "sustainable" development practices. For instance, the school will be extremely energy efficient and will even catch rainwater to flush toilets, but there will be 420 parking spaces and the current layout of the road system puts the nearest bus stop to the school much further away than most of the parking spaces. In a world where many of our life lessons are learned in high school, it seems like the school board would be interested in designing a school that encouraged students to use public transit or bike to school and that left a small footprint on the landscape.
Durham County is currently vetting its newest comprehensive plan, which is to guide city/county development decisions through 2030. If you don't think this is an Orange County story, take a look at their plans for the borderlands between the county line and I-40, particularly that chunk of space bordered by 54, 40, Old Chapel Hill Road, and the county line: a couple square miles of medium to high density housing where currently there are woods bordering one of the waterfowl impoundments, more commercial development along 54, and much much more!
And remember, the farm that abuts Meadowmont is in Durham County.
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