Goodbyes and good bets

Yet another pizza shop closed last month. Camos Bros. in The Courtyard turned off its ovens in June. The proprietors also own Fuhgettaboudit pizzerias in Raleigh and Cary; the owners are working through some debt issues.

The closing marks the back-to-back demise of pizzerias in that hidden enclave of The Courtyard. L’incontro closed less than a year ago in that same spot after only a few months in business. Once The Courtyard expands to include student rentals, a pizza shop that can’t advertise on the street will have a better chance of making a go of it.

Also in The Courtyard, Crepes Veronique closed in April, as did Bonne Soiree. The owner of Crepes Veronique hopes to reopen at another location in the future.

Down the street, The Chocolate Door has the distinction of being the only chocolate shop in town now that Chocolaterie Stam closed in April after moving to East 54 last fall.

But the Great Recession hasn’t quelled the optimism of several new businesses in town.

At University Mall, the Red Bowl Asian Café opened in the spot once occupied by Bear Rock Café. The Red Bowl menu draws from Asian cuisines of China, Thailand, Vietnam and Japan. Opt for eat-in or take-out. Holders of a UNC OneCard receive a 10 percent discount.

Also at U-Mall, Skate Hard opened at the end of April. The store sells all sorts of skateboard equipment, apparel and accessories. The owner is interested in sponsoring talented skateboarders or roller derby participants. Drop off a video at the store to show your prowess.

Toots & Magoo relocated from downtown Franklin Street to University Mall, a location that provides room to display, salon style, the works of artists the gallery owner represents. Aware of the business opportunity provided by the number of Chapel Hill residents of an age to downsize in retirement, Toots & Magoo sells antiques on consignment.

The Meat House opened in May in the spot that was once home to Applebee’s on East Franklin Street. Despite its name, the store sells everything for a gourmet meal, from appetizers and breads to wine and cheese and desserts. And, of course, meat, everything from rattlesnake and alligator to ostrich and venison, not locally harvested.
– Nancy Oates

by on July 6, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Business, Downtown Chapel Hill
Posted by Nancy Oates on July 6, 2011

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2011/07/06/goodbyes-and-good-bets/

To hope or to plan?

Those of us who watched a fireworks display last night did so on some other taxpayer’s dime. The experience gave us a chance to feel, for 20 minutes or so, like the Orange County taxpayers who want to use our new and improved library for free.

Much as I love fireworks, I understand when the town manager, under pressure to create a budget that does not raise taxes, decides that preserving a community-building event is a lower priority than saving a job. The $37,000 the town would spend on the annual fireworks display is the equivalent of an annual salary for your average town laborer.

What I have a harder time understanding is comments from town council members like the quote from Penny Rich in a local newspaper. “We’re in such a tight budget year because we don’t want to raise taxes,” the newspaper quoted her as saying about canceling the fireworks. All true, of course, but ironic coming from someone who voted for the library expansion that will add about $1 million to its annual operating expenses, in addition to the $14 million in construction costs and the debt service on borrowing that amount.

The library expansion will result in a tax hike once it opens next year, as Laurin Easthom pointed out during last week’s council meeting. No one argued with her matter-of-fact comment.

Rich told the newspaper that she hopes the fireworks will be back next year. But hope is not a method. We expect our town leaders to think through their decisions, weigh the ramifications and plan accordingly.
— Nancy Oates

by on July 5, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Budget
Posted by Nancy Oates on July 5, 2011

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2011/07/05/to-hope-or-to-plan/

Supreme Court on VOE

The Supreme Court struck down a portion of Arizona’s Voter Owned Election law on Monday. North Carolina is one of four other states that have a provision similar to what the nation’s highest court deemed unconstitutional. But town attorney Ralph Karpinos said the ruling won’t affect Chapel Hill’s VOE program.

The ruling did not invalidate using public funds for campaigns; instead it focused on “trigger” mechanisms that give a publicly funded campaign a fresh infusion of cash once a privately funded campaign exceeds a certain fundraising threshold. The mechanism violated the free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment by punishing privately funded candidates for raising money above a set level, thus inhibiting their full expression.

Publicly funded candidates ostensibly must abide by spending limits, and the trigger mechanisms placed de facto spending limits on privately funded candidates, too.

Though as we found out during the 2009 Chapel Hill mayoral race, publicly financed campaigns enjoy loopholes. PACs spending money on behalf of a candidate does not count toward the publicly funded campaign’s spending limits. Mark Kleinschmidt said he did not know ahead of time that Cam Hill’s Chapel Hill Caucus was sending out a last-minute mailing slamming his main competitor in the tightly contested race, but Kleinschmidt didn’t repudiate the underhanded move.

The information meeting at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, July 6, will still take place at Town Hall, Karpinos said. He’ll be on hand to answer questions. He said that the ruling would not affect Chapel Hill’s “rescue funds,” which provide a one-time extra cash infusion to publicly funded candidates once a privately funded candidate reaches 140 percent of the public spending limits.

***
Council appointed Will Raymond to the board of OWASA at Monday’s meeting. Raymond has served tirelessly on a number of town commissions and advisory boards over the years. OWASA will benefit from Will Raymond’s attention to detail and thorough knowledge of how town government works.

Anita Badrock completes her term on the Personnel Appeals Committee this week, only to take on a new appointment to the town’s Community Policing Advisory Committee. She also serves on the Comprehensive Plan Initiating Committee. A former human resources professional, she now works as Community Home Trust’s operations manager.

***
Former council member Cam Hill won the contract to renovate the Edward Kidder Graham house on Battle and Hooper lanes. The house is privately owned, but receives some Historic Preservation tax credits toward the renovation. At the time the house was purchased, for $875,000 in October 2010, renovation costs were estimated to be about $700,000. The owner hired local talent in Hill: He can walk to work from his home on East Rosemary Street that UNC gave him (along with a lumpsum of cash) about a decade ago in exchange for his house on Cameron Avenue and Merritt Mill Road that the university turned into a parking lot.
– Nancy Oates

by on June 30, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Courts
Posted by Nancy Oates on June 30, 2011

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2011/06/30/supreme-court-on-voe/

Reverse charges

Words I never thought I’d hear a lawyer utter: “Vagueness is your friend.”

That sentiment came from Sally Greene during Monday night’s final council meeting of the fiscal year during the discussion on whether to charge Orange County residents who live outside of Chapel Hill for a library card. At the May 25 meeting, the council was united in charging out-of-towners for a card. But once the county commissioners saw that council was serious about reducing Chapel Hill taxpayers’ subsidy of out-of-town users, the county kicked in another $90,000 to what it would contribute to the town.

Laurin Easthom and Matt Czajkowski weren’t buying it, especially given that the money came with strings attached, in the form of an interoperability agreement. If the county is going to up its contribution, it wants to share in the upgrades Chapel Hill is making to the town library. The vague document the county wanted the town manager and mayor to sign didn’t have specifics on what form the sharing would take, how much say the county would have over those decisions, how much this would cost and how much of that expense the town would have to pay.

That’s when Greene became a proponent of vagueness. Some county commissioners had button-holed some town council members (but not Easthom) to sell them on the county’s offer. Greene said she had been assured that the county would pay the money even if the town didn’t sign the interoperability agreement, and the town would have 18 months to come up with an agreement, due in November 2012. Town manager Roger Stancil clarified that the county would pay for only 6 months without a signed agreement. Nevertheless, Greene and other council members were willing to take the money and talk.

Czajkowski, who, having worked business deals in his life, has a better grasp of strategy, pointed out that caving for $90,000 (the difference between the $250,000 the county has paid for years and the $342,986 it offered for 2011-12) would make it all the harder to take a believable stance charging for cards next year if an agreement could not be worked out. He also noted that the county gets a very good deal by paying $90,000 to relieve itself of providing high-quality library services for county residents and to avoid the wrath of county residents who would have to pay for library cards.

Perhaps the elation of a 10-week break from council meetings messed with Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt’s analytical thinking. He said that the county had agreed to pay 30 percent of its library budget to the town by 2015, so the town would get more money in future years. But the agreement has a loophole: If the county reduces its library budget, it reverts to paying the $250,000 it has paid for years. And why shouldn’t it reduce its budget? By next year, Chapel Hill will have a state-of-the-art library (complete with coffee shop and gift shop) that the town will let county residents use for free, and the town may pay to share those resources with the county.
– Nancy Oates

by on June 29, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Library
Posted by Nancy Oates on June 29, 2011

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2011/06/29/reverse-charges/

Season finale

The Town Council season finale airs tonight, beginning at 7. Among the topics up for discussion is whether and how much to charge for library cards.

Last month, council preliminarily rejected Orange County’s contribution to the library and, instead, left open the option of charging out-of-town users for library cards. At present, about 1,400 out-of-county users buy a card for $60 a year. An additional 11,200 of the library cardholders live in Orange County but outside of Chapel Hill. Conservatively, families would buy only one card per household once they had to pay for a card, and assuming an average of 2.5 members per household, the potential market is 4,480 households.

Every one of those households purchasing a card at $60 would yield $268,800 annually, still shy of the $340,000 the county indicated it would pay in the coming year but more than the $250,000 the county said it would pay if it had a bad financial year. If every one of the existing out-of-town cardholders bought a card, the revenue would total $672,000. A little more than half of existing cardholders would have to buy a card to equal the county’s expected contribution, and about a third of existing cardholders would have to purchase a card to equal the county’s $250,000 fall-back contribution.

At its May 25 meeting, council bandied about numbers for what to charge, ranging from $60 to $100 or more annually. Council requested a sliding scale to accommodate low-income users wanting to check out materials. Reports submitted by town manager Roger Stancil and town library director Kathleen Thompson indicate that a sliding scale would not be feasible, given the strain it would put on library personnel who would have to enforce the new rules and verify who would qualify.

Stancil’s recommends the town charge $60 and forgo the sliding scale, in hopes that other entities would help low-income out-of-towners afford cards. Given the value many people place on reading, asking charities and the general public to donate a card to poor families might succeed. The Town of Carrboro might subsidize card purchases for low-income families, and schools might hold fundraisers for card subsidies.

If the town had the capability of issuing monthly cards or accepting monthly payments, that could solve the sliding scale dilemma. A family that could not come up with $60 all at once might very well have an extra $5 a month.

Stancil and Thompson recommend waiting until Jan. 1, 2012, to charge for cards. Orange County will pro-rate its $340,000 annual contribution until Chapel Hill begins charging for cards. Thompson is pessimistic about the number of out-of-towners who will buy a card, counting on no more than 20 percent of potential buyers.

The memos do not state a reason for the pessimism. Given how hard library supporters lobbied for the expansion, clearly they would expect higher sales. Designating the coffee shop and gift shop for members only might stimulate card sales.
– Nancy Oates

by on June 27, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Library
Posted by Nancy Oates on June 27, 2011

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2011/06/27/season-finale/

Cost of living

A light bulb went on when I read Ed Harrison’s comment implying that Carol Ann Zinn was wrong in her assessment that $400,000 was moderate-priced housing in Chapel Hill. Sally Greene had asked Zinn at Monday night’s public hearing what her moderately priced condos would cost. Zinn did not put a dollar figure to it as they wouldn’t be built for 4 to 5 years, even if approved that night. Gene Pease asked what moderately priced housing costs today, and Zinn told him about $400,000.

According to the Chapel Hill Board of Realtors’ website, the 2011 year-to-date average sales price of a home in Chapel Hill is $391,395. That includes new homes and resales. New homes always sell at a higher price than comparable “used” homes. Zinn knows real estate, as she has been building what people want to buy in Chapel Hill for more than 30 years.

The realization that some members of Town Council don’t know how much it costs to own a home in Chapel Hill today sheds light on why they have made some decisions that don’t seem to be in touch with how most of us live.

Over the 15 years I’ve lived here, I’ve watched the Manhattanization of Chapel Hill. As Matt Czajkowski pointed out Monday night, when you restrict supply of a desirable asset, the price goes up. In Chapel Hill, the price of housing has gone up in recent years, which increases our property tax bill.

This is why some voters (not just me) rail at the council’s decisions to restrict housing supply even more. Council members perhaps bought their homes more than a decade ago when housing prices weren’t so high, and they are employed or supported by spouses who can comfortably afford the high property tax bills – high because they’re based on the county’s market-value house valuations, not so much because of the $1.69 per $100 of assessed value.

Ironically, the first two-and-a-half hours of Monday night’s meeting were devoted to comments from Northside residents who are being pushed out of their neighborhood due to high property taxes and the redevelopment that comes with small homes in desirable locations. Bill Strom, when he slunk out of town in 2009, bought an apartment on a street in Manhattan that 15 years ago was lined with tenements occupied by low-income residents. Then developers came in, bought them out, and resold them to the wealthy for renovation. Low-income residents were pushed farther away from the city center.

Over the past decade, Chapel Hill housing prices have reduced the diversity we used to value in town. Everyone below the upper-middle-class struggles to make ends meet these days in Chapel Hill. A building moratorium won’t prevent home prices from rising. That’s clear from Carrboro’s mill house neighborhoods, which on a price-per-square-foot basis are the most expensive housing in the area. And restricting multifamily housing in areas the council has target for dense growth makes no sense at all.
– Nancy Oates

by on June 22, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Housing
Posted by Nancy Oates on June 22, 2011

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2011/06/22/cost-of-living/

Council dumbs down smart growth

One in the morning, and Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt appeared stunned by a one-vote majority of his Town Council colleagues that sounded the death knell to Aydan Court.

All nine members of council showed up last night for what turned out to be six hours’ worth of information covering two development matters, the proposed moratorium on building in the Northside and Pine Knolls neighborhoods, and the smart-growth plan for a 6-acre parcel owned by Carol Ann Zinn along N.C. 54.

Expert witnesses made presentations addressing the environmental concerns of Penny Rich, Ed Harrison, Jim Ward and Donna Bell; town staff and all advisory boards recommended approving the multifamily, smart-growth plan; affordable housing proponents argued for the multifamily option, which would put more than $1 million toward furthering affordable housing in Chapel Hill; commerce professionals and smart-growth advocates made a case for Zinn’s multifamily project. But in the end, Rich, Harrison, Ward and Bell, joined by Sally Greene, voted to reflect how they “feel.”

The vote was truly baffling. A lawyer reminded council that they are to consider only the testimony of expert witnesses, not lay people, when evaluating the project’s impact. Yet five council members blatantly admitted their decision was based on emotion. Rich (has she ever approved a proposal by a serious business woman? Think Zinn, Traci Davenport, Laurie Paolicelli and Anita Badrock) brushed aside the state-of-the-art stormwater management system, saying stormwater “still bugs me,” though she cited no specific concerns. Bell said she “feels” like council had to “fight too hard” to get the changes Zinn made. Ward said he “regrets” going against staff and advisory board recommendations, but couldn’t approve a project he felt might make Little Creek’s contraction worse. Greene admitted fatigue prevented her from articulating why she was against the project. Harrison was peeved that the applicant and supporters took more floor time than those opposing the project. Kleinschmidt reminded him that the applicant has the burden of convincing council to make an exception, so would need more floor time.

Ironically, some Meadowmont residents opposed Aydan Court, underscoring some council members’ “feeling” that now that they’ve bought homes in Chapel Hill while it was still affordable, they can vote down projects that would create a toehold for middle-income families to live in town.

So Zinn is free to build a single-family subdivision. And as Rich callously pointed out, what Zinn builds “is on her, not me.”
– Nancy Oates

by on June 21, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted by NancyDon on June 21, 2011

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2011/06/21/council-dumbs-down-smart-growth/

Aydan Court: Who holds the cards?

Tonight’s Town Council meeting will be the closest event Chapel Hill has to the World Series of Poker. The Aydan Court special use permit application returns for another round; expect players to see, raise, call and maybe even bluff.

Zinn Design Build owns a 6-acre parcel off N.C. 54 in Durham County, just behind UNC’s Paul Rizzo Center in Meadowmont. With current zoning, Carol Ann Zinn could build 17 single-family houses on it without seeking council’s approval. Instead, Zinn, who has been successfully developing and building award-winning homes and communities in Chapel Hill for more than 30 years, came up with a multifamily concept that fits with the high-density development along mass transit routes that the council has been advocating for years. For the past two years, Zinn has been reworking the design based on feedback from council.

The land abuts a Waterfowl Impoundment area, and some council members – Ed Harrison, Jim Ward, Penny Rich and Donna Bell – don’t want to see any development on the parcel, so at the council meeting on May 25, they spoke out against the SUP. Gene Pease, Matt Czajkowski, Laurin Easthom and Mark Kleinschmidt favored approval, understanding that if the rezoning were denied, Zinn could build the single-family subdivision without any input from council. Sally Greene was away on a family emergency.

Layered on top of all this is Zinn’s proposal to designate the payment-in-lieu of affordable units to Habitat for Humanity, not the Community Home Trust. Council members and those who work in the affordable housing field agree that they’d rather have payment-in-lieu instead of more affordable units.

If none of the eight council members has a change of heart, Greene becomes the tie-breaker. If she sides with the deniers, Zinn could build her single-family houses. But would she? The high-end home market is slow these days, though less so in Chapel Hill than elsewhere in the Triangle. And Zinn makes no secret of her conviction that the town needs more moderately priced homes (as the condos in her SUP application would be).

Would she put off building until the end of the year, when the real estate market might change, as perhaps would the make-up of the council after the election? Or would she give up trying to make the council happy and build the subdivision the ordinance allows? After all, she’s taken significant grief from council for years, including in 2009 when then-Mayor Kevin Foy lit into her for deigning to build on land that has been zoned for residential construction. Will she build affordable units instead of making payment-in-lieu?

Will the council give up all chance of having some say in what is build? Or will it vote to continue to work with Zinn to shape development?

Will some philanthropist come through with an offer to pay Zinn for her time and expenditures to date, then arm the property with conservation restrictions?
Tune in tonight for what might be the final round.
– Nancy Oates

by on June 20, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted by Nancy Oates on June 20, 2011

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2011/06/20/aydan-court-who-holds-the-cards/

Last call at 523

If you want to have your wedding at the former Chapel Hill Museum building, you’ve got until June 30. Come July 1, the town will close the above-ground portion of 523 E. Franklin St. An engineering report convinced town manager Roger Stancil to close the street-level section of the building rather than find money for extensive repairs in a tight budget year. Evidently the money the town stood to make by renting out the space for private catered functions wouldn’t go far enough to warrant making the repairs.

At the May 23 meeting, Penny Rich, a caterer, argued vociferously for alcohol to be served at that site without a separate permit. She said the venue would be more attractive to caterers if the caterer did not have to apply for a permit each time. Presumably, Rich would not be accepting catering gigs there, given the Ethics Policy the council adopted in March. But the space would provide one more venue for others in her profession to make money.

Rich said the town could command rent of up to $100 an hour for the space if alcohol were permitted, as opposed to the $30 to $50 an hour for space without permission to consume alcohol.

Rich said a police officer must be present at all catered functions where alcohol is served. She implied that would prevent people from drinking too much and driving. At the events I attended at the former museum building when alcohol was served, I didn’t see any police officers. Perhaps they were working plainclothes. Police officers can detain people for cause, but if an inebriated person slipped out undetected and caused harm, would the town be liable? Would the town have to pay for the police officer’s time on duty at the event? Can private citizens or businesses hire on-duty police officers to cover events, or would these be off-duty police? What is the town’s liability then?

Once the top of the 523 building closes, the town has a chance to rethink its somewhat spontaneous decision to allow alcohol on its property. In the meantime, though, the Historical Society will remain open in the lower level. Maybe the understated nonprofit could benefit by hosting regular happy-hour fundraisers. Cheers!
– Nancy Oates

by on June 16, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Museum
Posted by Nancy Oates on June 16, 2011

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2011/06/16/last-call-at-523/

Card charge

The library figured prominently in the budget discussion at Monday night’s Town Council meeting. You may recall that Sally Greene was away on a family emergency the night council rejected the county’s contribution and approved charging for cards. She clearly disagreed with the council’s move, and she voted for the budget Monday night only on the condition that charging for cards was not set in stone.

Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt assured her it wasn’t. Since the council’s vote, the county reached out to him and said it might pony up more money than the $500,000 by 2015 that it intimated previously. Kleinschmidt reminded the county of the $1 million figure that had come up in earlier talks with the county but cautioned that he wasn’t sure the council was willing to accept even that amount. Autonomy can be heady, and Jim Ward, for one, wasn’t interested in taking any money from the county with interoperability strings attached.

The other surprise announcement came from the Friends of the Library, which offered a one-time gift of $200,000 from the Cornelia Spencer Love Fund to make up the expected shortfall in the first year of selling cards.

Town manager Roger Stancil’s budget stipulated that cards to Orange County out-of-towners would cost $60 per household, just as it does for households in all other counties. Matt Czajkowski made a case for raising the price to $100. Ward backed him on it. An editorial in the Durham Herald that Ed Harrison had circulated to his colleagues on the dais said that town residents pay $44 apiece for library services. Costing it out, an in-town family of four pays twice what a comparable out-of-town family would pay to use the library. A family pass to a municipal pool costs about $400 for an in-town resident and about $600 for an out-of-town family. By that comparison, $100 for unlimited dips into the library would be just as refreshing and would not seem excessive to many families. Remember that the town has agreed to some sort of sliding scale for low-income users.

Council ultimately approved the budget with the card fee set at $60, with the understanding that the council could choose to raise the fee or do away with it altogether, depending on what happens in the next chapter.
– Nancy Oates

by on June 15, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Library
Posted by Nancy Oates on June 15, 2011

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2011/06/15/card-charge/

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