Talk about your humble pie. I’ve long joined the throngs dissing Cary for its Stepford wives design standard ordinances and over-regulation of how development should look. Then I made a field trip to Waverly Place, a shopping center at the intersection of Kildaire Farm and Tryon roads. I realized that at least in this redevelopment project, Cary got it right in a way that Chapel Hill has yet to do.

Waverly Place was a typical shopping center for its time when it opened in 1988 on 31 acres of a topographically challenging site. Its neighbors included a hospital, a few office buildings and some neighborhoods of comfortably upscale homes. But it sat below street level and, due to Cary’s aversion to signs, its stores had difficulty attracting customers who didn’t already know what was there.

By 2007, its owners at the time, Zapolski & Rudd, having deemed Waverly Place an underperforming asset, wrangled approval from the town to demolish the back half and re-imagine the design. The approved plan added another 200,000 square feet of office space, a hotel and 200 residential units to existing retail, increasing the total square footage by 50%. The developer agreed to pay for the roadwork to mitigate the extra traffic the redeveloped site would generate.

But the Recession crashed down before the plan could be built. RP Realty Partners bought the site in 2008 for $17.3 million and began a more modest but innovative renovation. RP focused on creating a community gathering space with several pockets of open space, reserving an acre in the center for a playground and water feature for children, a decorative fountain and performance space and room for an audience. Rather than one vast parking lot, the shopping center uses pocket parking lots separated by shrubbery (not view-blocking trees that create a traffic hazard in Chapel Hill’s University Place) that generate multiple points of entry.

In December of last year, RP sold Waverly Place to Northwood Investors for $66.2 million.

In the past year, Northwood has concentrated on “re-tenanting” by attracting some upscale chain stores. But many local businesses remain, including a wine store, independent restaurants, a warren of single-chair hair salons for independent stylists, and national chains that sell useful items such as cupcakes.

The community gathering place seems key to attracting customers and averting community opposition to the redevelopment. Nearby residents can walk to the open-air concerts hosted at Waverly Place and let their kids climb and splash in the play areas. Those who live farther away can drive and park and buy coffee and lunch. Cary residents have their planning board and town council to thank.

Think what we in Chapel Hill might have had if our town staff and elected officials had put the public first in approving the form-based code used in Ephesus-Fordham and subsequently applied to The Edge, not to mention what Obey Creek could have become.
– Nancy Oates

Let’s say you live in Phoenix Place, near the intersection of Rogers Road and Purefoy, and you wanted to ride Chapel Hill’s prepaid buses into town. Maybe you don’t have a car or you embrace the walkable community ideal we hear Town Council members and developers talk about. Because bus service along Rogers Road is so infrequent, the best place to catch a bus is at the Park-and-Ride lot on Eubanks Road. So you set off walking that 2-mile journey.

A few dozen people last Saturday afternoon learned firsthand what that trek feels like. Here’s my summary: It is long, tiring and hot under the cloudless Carolina blue sky with few trees offering shade. (Note to Mayor Kleinschmidt who favored buildings over trees along the path from the Southern Village hotel to the market center: Trees may not be as engaging as buildings, but they are a welcome, cooling presence for people on foot.)

We walked along Eubanks to Rogers Road, then Purefoy. None of those roads has a shoulder. We had the benefit of a sheriff’s escort, which allowed us to walk in the road instead of through the tall grass, likely chigger-infested, bordering the tarmac. And we had the company of dozens of interesting people to chat with to pass the time. Even so, it’s not a walk you would do for fun.

Back at the Rogers Road community center, we huddled in the shade of the protective overhangs and listened to Jim Ward, council liaison to the Public Transit Committee, predict what changes in transit service might be possible. Because a new bus costs about a half-million dollars, driver not included, service would have to be increased with existing equipment and personnel. He said the Rogers Road route loop could be shortened so that buses would come by more frequently. Route changes usually are made at the start of fall and spring semester. The Chapel Hill Transit Partners will meet on Aug. 25 and take up the matter.

This being an election year, the hikers included council members and hopefuls. Lee Storrow, council liaison to the Affordable Housing and Justice In Action committees, walked the entire way (as did Ward). Ed Harrison, not up for re-election but a liaison to the Public Transit Committee and a Triangle Transit Authority board of trustees member, spoke at the start of the march. He was unable to walk, but his wife took his place.

I was among the new candidates for Town Council who hiked, as was Jessica Anderson and David Schwartz, and mayoral candidate Pam Hemminger. School board candidates Margaret Samuels and Rani Dasi went the distance as well.

As this is an election year, I urge community members and organizations to bring your issues to the fore. You will leverage your power for change and hold council and town staff accountable to turn theory into action.
– Nancy Oates

While on vacation last week, I spent quite a bit of time on mini-golf courses, where I had ample opportunity to observe how parents and grandparents dealt with children who could not putt a ball into a hole if their life depended on it. Time after time, adults would use their own club or their foot to guide a child’s ball closer to the cup, or record only half the number of strokes, then exclaim what a talented golfer the child was. Not once did I see a parent instruct a youngster on how to hit the ball or let the kids swing away without keeping score. The kids probably left the course with puffed-up self-esteem but no better at the game than when they started.

It’s hard to teach exuberant kids how to play a game that takes patience and discipline. But those adults missed teachable moments by opting for immediate gratification rather than putting in the time and effort to foster traits that would be useful throughout life.

In thinking about the town’s fiscal status, I wondered whether Roger Stancil or anyone on the current Town Council had been taught to play mini-golf as a kid.

The town is living pretty much hand-to-mouth in paying its bills through the General Fund. As Matt Czajkowski pointed out repeatedly, the town has no money socked away to put toward long-term obligations, such as what we have promised retired municipal employees for health-care and retirement benefits.

Many towns the size of Chapel Hill have in reserve enough to meet as much as 70% of their long-term obligations. Why have we fallen so short?

The town’s debt service — what it costs to borrow the money we have been loaned — is 13%, which means 13 cents of every dollar the town brings in goes to cover the cost of borrowing money. The rule of good governance is to keep debt service no more than 10%, and the state average is 6%. To reduce our debt service percentage, we would have to hold the payment constant — not borrow any additional money — and grow revenue at the same time, or cut costs to live within a scaled-back budget until the debt is paid down.

But where to cut? Transit, parking, public housing and stormwater are operating at a deficit. And Stancil wants the town to borrow more money for a new police station and some fire stations.

That looming fiscal implosion may be fueling Town Council’s panic to approve every development proposed, without considering that those with substantial residential components cost the town money. Most recently, the town manager has proposed giving away the town-owned parking lot at 415 W. Franklin St. to a developer who would erect a 5-story commercial building with 15 affordable rentals on the top floor.

Didn’t council learn from the sale of the museum, which sold for twice its appraised value once council opened up bidding? I appreciate the town putting forth a vision of how to use the land. But the town could get the same building and twice the revenue by using the Special Use Permit process.

Immediate gratification? Or patience and discipline? Which will council choose?
– Nancy Oates

Red flags went up for me when I got the email about a meeting to introduce an initiative called “Neighborhood Character Standards.” Not so much because of its title that evoked right-wing conservative ideology, and not because of anything in the standards themselves. What caught my attention was that the email, in a chipper tone, asked for community input, but the public comment was barely a week away. The quick turnaround time and the scheduling during one of the most popular vacation weeks in this college town created an aura of sneakiness, and my gut reaction was, “What now?”

After rattled residents contacted town staff and at least one council member, Megan Wooley (now Megan Wooley Ousdahl, due to recent nuptials), provided an explanation for the timing. She wanted the Historic District Commission to review the standards at its August meeting and make recommendations. What it didn’t say was why the rush to push this through? My skepticism prompted me to wonder whether a commissioner likely to raise questions would be on vacation then.

At the urging of council member Ed Harrison, staff scheduled a second public comment session on Aug. 31; however, the HDC will already have made its recommendation then.

The character standards launch an initiative that sets out how a property in a historic district can be rebuilt should it be damaged or destroyed. To my knowledge, the last time a property was torn down in the Franklin-Rosemary Historic District was the Dey House at the corner of Rosemary and Hillsborough streets in 2006.

The standards state that any structure torn down can be rebuilt to the maximum allowable size in the district. That means any small house could be replaced with a house equal to the largest house in the neighborhood. The document specifies architectural details such as porches and building height. While perhaps well-meaning, the plan holds the potential for destroying the unique architecture of those history-rich homes.

The plan may solve a problem, but town staff have not told us what it is. There may be some looming threat that the plan would thwart. But again, staff have not told us what.

The execution emits a furtiveness that always, in my experience, requires we pause to look more closely.
— Nancy Oates