
{"id":18245,"date":"2011-05-19T12:04:39","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T16:04:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=18245"},"modified":"2011-05-25T19:08:31","modified_gmt":"2011-05-25T23:08:31","slug":"big-city-by-kirk-ross","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2011\/05\/19\/big-city-by-kirk-ross\/","title":{"rendered":"BIG CITY"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Kirk Ross<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Imagineering downtown<br \/>\n<\/strong>There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot to dwell on in the Chapel Hill Town Council\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s approval of IFC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new Community House.<\/p>\n<p>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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s shelter.<\/p>\n<p>With the town\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00e2\u20ac\u2122cause, well, you know they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to do it anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Some kidding aside, that piece of property should have a future \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 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.<\/p>\n<p>Like all of the town\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the cramped surface parking lot known affectionately as Parking Lot 2.<\/p>\n<p>Redeveloped together, these two town-owned properties have the potential to change the dynamics of the downtown. <\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>So, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dare to dream about doing something like the Wallace Deck on a much, much better spot \u00e2\u20ac\u201c on that underutilized surface lot at the intersection of Rosemary and Columbia streets \u00e2\u20ac\u201c already one of the most visible and accessible spots in downtown.<\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not hard to imagine a bright future for the place \u00e2\u20ac\u201c some parking levels underneath and concentrated near the old NationsBank side, with commercial space and a transit hub. On top, a green roof \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a true downtown green space \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and one of those hippie grocery stores everyone seems to like so much.<\/p>\n<p>And that old municipal building across the intersection? A great place for the new\/old Chapel Hill Museum and Cultural Center.<\/p>\n<p>And everyone lived happily ever after.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Revenue suggestion<br \/>\n<\/strong>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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a nice sunny day with a bunch of soccer teams at play on the Southern Community Park fields.<\/p>\n<p>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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help wonder when that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to start.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Radishes<br \/>\n<\/strong>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Tis the season. A tour through the Carrboro Farmers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Market last weekend could easily have been titled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Cavalcade of Radishes.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Imagineering downtown; Revenue suggestion; Radishes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18245"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18387,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18245\/revisions\/18387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}