By Kirk Ross
Imagineering downtown
There’s a lot to dwell on in the Chapel Hill Town Council’s approval of IFC’s new Community House.
One big decision coming down the road is the future of the old municipal building. The first step is giving it a name other than the old municipal building or the former men’s shelter.
With the town’s masterstroke of renaming the old library/former history museum building 523 E. Franklin St. in mind, let me be the first to suggest it be grandly rechristened as 100 West Rosemary – ’cause, well, you know they’re going to do it anyway.
Some kidding aside, that piece of property should have a future – something useful and integral to the vitality of downtown. It should not just be a place to ease some of the overcrowding at Chapel Hill Town Hall or the police station or parks and rec, or whatever else is bubbling up during brainstorming sessions.
Like all of the town’s older properties, the old municipal building needs a lot of work and ongoing TLC. Like the old library, there will probably be some suggestions that the town sell the property, given that it sits on prime real estate downtown. That might make some sense except that diagonally across the street is probably the most underutilized parcel of downtown land in the state — the cramped surface parking lot known affectionately as Parking Lot 2.
Redeveloped together, these two town-owned properties have the potential to change the dynamics of the downtown.
I remember Professor Howes noting the great underutilization of Lot 2 as my classmates and I in his introductory to planning class walked the downtown and contemplated its future. Howes was mayor at the time, so that assessment carried some weight.
Not long before I took the class, the town had rejected a large condominium and parking deck project called Rosemary Square and opted to build the Wallace Deck in its place, with the idea of the roof becoming a public gathering space.
With the exception of a surge of use in its early years and the recent summer movie series, band concerts and other events, the deck never really took off as a public square. Putting Kidzu on top of it was a smart move in seeing that it finally gets the year-round utilization planners hoped for.
Aside from the novel use of concrete for groundcover and benches, the Wallace Deck is a little out of the action for most folks to be drawn to it.
So, let’s dare to dream about doing something like the Wallace Deck on a much, much better spot – on that underutilized surface lot at the intersection of Rosemary and Columbia streets – already one of the most visible and accessible spots in downtown.
It’s not hard to imagine a bright future for the place – some parking levels underneath and concentrated near the old NationsBank side, with commercial space and a transit hub. On top, a green roof – a true downtown green space – and one of those hippie grocery stores everyone seems to like so much.
And that old municipal building across the intersection? A great place for the new/old Chapel Hill Museum and Cultural Center.
And everyone lived happily ever after.
Revenue suggestion
With Chapel Hill Town Manager Roger Stancil eager for the council to consider new sources of revenue, let me suggest dropping a parking-enforcement officer off near the dog park parking lot when it’s a nice sunny day with a bunch of soccer teams at play on the Southern Community Park fields.
When they designed the park, town officials swore up and down they would enforce prohibitions against on-street parking. Driving by the chaos the other day, I couldn’t help wonder when that’s going to start.
Radishes
One thing that was in easy reach at a recent art opening was a couple of large serving trays with radishes and butter on bread.
’Tis the season. A tour through the Carrboro Farmers’ Market last weekend could easily have been titled “Cavalcade of Radishes.†It’s one of the more colorful times at the market, with plenty of types and shapes on display. The spring onions are in too. Feel free to offer me a mint.