The list of what downtown needs to thrive ran off the page by the time Chapel Hill residents and downtown business owners had had their say. About 150 participants between the morning and afternoon discussions last Thursday threw in their ideas at public planning sessions sponsored by the Town of Chapel Hill and the Downtown […]

We are basically happy campers, those of us who live in town, or more accurately, 696 of us who responded to a survey conducted by ETC Institute of Olathe (not Google), Kan., and sent to 2,000 households. An additional 91 of us who were not selected to receive the 8-page form in the mail completed […]

Periodically, my husband and I pledge to live healthier lives by swearing off our main vice, salty snacks. Harris Teeter may be having a buy-one-get-one-free special on potato chips, and we’ll virtuously walk past the chip aisle with only a longing, backward glance. And that will work fine, until we throw together a meal that […]

Randy Kabrick, OWASA’s board chair, may have thought that the upside of sitting through four hours of a Town Council meeting before he had to give his report Monday night might work in his favor. Council members might be too worn out to pay much attention. He could run through his PowerPoint slides and be […]

When I was a kid, we sometimes played a game called Hot Potato. Kids would sit in a circle and toss a ball to one another while music played; when the music stopped, the one holding the ball was out, gone, loser. That Hot Potato concept may explain why 140 West Franklin seems to be […]

Taking the long-term view before making short-term fixes yields better decisions and reduces the chances of having to make expensive, time-consuming corrections. Some members of the town’s Sustainable Community Visioning Task Force have taken a stand for looking at the overall needs of the community and how action in one part of town affects the […]