Thursday, February 2, 2012
Liberty Warehouse repairs unfinished; city could set new conditions, deadline next week
- file photo by D.L. Anderson
- In 2008, actors used a portion of the Liberty Warehouse as a rehearsal space.
Durham’s planning department held a public meeting Thursday to determine whether Greenfire Development, which owns more than 25 properties downtown, neglected its historic Liberty Warehouse property on Rigsbee Avenue. Part of the roof over one of the two adjoining warehouses at 611 and 613 Rigsbee Avenue collapsed in heavy rains last May, displacing several artists and art nonprofits. (See a map on all Greenfire Development properties)
The incident also generated questions about the management of Greenfire’s historic properties, and whether the local company was on track with its large-scale redevelopment plans for downtown; They include the renovation of the former SunTrust building into a boutique hotel, the redevelopment of an adjacent Main Street site that used to house a Woolworth’s store, and a newly announced venture to build 88 apartments on an acre just north of the American Tobacco campus.
If Durham’s planning officials find that Greenfire didn’t do enough to maintain its historic property (called demolition by neglect, see p. 85 of the Unified Development Ordinance) and the company fails to meet future deadlines for repairs, it could be subject to civil fines of $500 a day and other legal action. Planning Director Steve Medlin said he expects to make a decision by the end of next week. If he does find Greenfire neglected the property, he’ll set a final deadline for the repairs. The city would take civil action only if the company misses those new deadlines, Medlin said. The goal isn’t to fine Greenfire, he said—it’s just to get the building fixed.
Greenfire has had seven months to repair damage inside the former tobacco auction warehouses from what city inspectors determined to be longtime leaks resulting in water damage and wood rot. After the collapse and subsequent inspections, the city condemned the building and two organizations central to the area’s arts community, including The Scrap Exchange and a portion of the operations for the Liberty Arts bronze-casting foundry were forced to relocate.
Medlin began his “demolition by neglect” investigation soon after the collapse, but suspended it and allowed the company to make the necessary repairs by the end of January. Now that the repairs still aren’t complete, Medlin said he had to resume the investigation.
“To my knowledge they did not do any repairs to the portion of the building where the roof collapsed,” Medlin said, adding that, as of last month when he entered the building, there was still a tarp covering the roof breach in the building at 611 Rigsbee Ave.
Greenfire has so far spent $105,000 to stabilize the building and has committed another $20,000 for more repairs, said Managing Partner Paul Smith. But there’s still that hole, covered by a tarp. Economically, it doesn’t make sense to replace the roof at a cost of more than $1 million when the company has long-term plans to totally redevelop the site, Smith said.
Erskine Bowles announced today that he won’t run for governor.
The former UNC-system president who served as chief of staff in the Clinton Administration and twice ran for U.S. Senate and said there are other ways besides serving in Raleigh to make a difference.
Bowles’s name recognition and status as a successful investment banker and co-chairman of a President Obama’s bipartisan budget deficit commission made him an obvious choice for the position once Gov. Bev Perdue made her announcement last week that she won’t seek a second term.
In a poll released earlier this week, Public Policy Polling found Bowles as the most likely Democrat to defeat Republican hopeful Pat McCrory, a former Charlotte mayor who Perdue beat in 2008.
N.C. House Rep. Bill Faison, D-Caswell, Orange, and Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton are the only two candidates to jump in the raise so far, though a gaggle of contenders were waiting to see what Bowles would do before making their intentions known.
Dalton released a statement offering his respect and admiration for Bowles.
“We’ve worked together throughout the years on many issues and he’s a true public servant,” it reads. “I feel confident he will remain an influential voice in state and national policy.”
The N.C. Department of Public Instruction released reports today on school discipline and high school dropouts. The rate of dropouts decreased statewide and in Durham, Orange, Wake and Chatham counties. The rate increased slightly in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools.
Statewide, the numbers of suspensions and expulsions of students decreased, as well, according to a statement from N.C. DPI.
Hackney won't seek re-election; clears path for Insko
N.C. House Minority Leader Joe Hackney announced his retirement this morning, opting not to wage a re-election campaign against long-time colleague Rep. Verla Insko, D-Orange.
The two veteran legislators were drawn into the same district, the 56th, by the Republican-produced new maps last year.
Hackney has served 16 terms, 32 years, in the General Assembly representing the 54th district, which includes Orange, Chatham and Moore counties. He was elected Speaker of the House in 2007 following Jim Black’s removal. He severed as president of the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Can school districts truly affect which charter schools are approved?
Most public school officials won't be shy if you ask them how a charter school impacts their local budgets. For every student who is eligible to enroll in a traditional public school but chooses to attend a charter, the student's home school system must send the charter a chunk of money. In short, the money follows the student through the public system.
At a meeting of the State Board of Education (SBE) this morning in Raleigh, one state official likened the payments to alimony—painful in many cases, but necessary by law. In a district such as Durham County, with eight charter schools, the pass-through money totals more than $10 million a year, according to a recent statement from Durham Superintendent Eric Becoats. Durham has the highest market share of charter schools in the state, Becoats wrote. (PDF)
But will that stop the SBE from approving any more charters in Durham? It's hard to say.
On Wednesday and Thursday, the SBE is scheduled to consider nine applications for new charter schools to open this fall. Board members will merely discuss this week, and take a final vote in the beginning of March.
The board reviewed impact statements that school districts provided on the nine pending applications, said Joel Medley, director of the state's Office of Charter Schools. But moving forward, board members agreed, they need more specific policies on what data the impact statements should include, and how the impact statements would figure into their decisions.
Reports from local school districts are varied and inconsistent—if the districts even send one—that there's really no standard for the weight they should carry as SBE members consider a charter application. The board discussed identifying specific questions that school districts should answer. Chairman Bill Harrison said the board needs to discuss how the board should weigh the impact on traditional public schools without creating inroads or barriers for either side.
Say, for instance, a school district gets to a point where half its students are enrolled in a charter school, Harrison said. "Is that [school district] going to provide an efficient education for the children who are remaining? It could be debatable, but probably not," he said. But, the state also can't definitively say that once a school district loses half its students, the charter can't expand any more, he said.
"I think we need to frame this conversation," Harrison said. "It's an important time in the history of public education in North Carolina ... and it’s my preference and my desire that we strengthen the opportunities for all kids."
The N.C. Department of Public Instruction is expecting to receive 50 to 70 more applications for new or expanded charter schools in April, Medley said. Expecting the slew, the SBE needs to work quickly on setting some more specific parameters, board members agreed.
"We don't know where this is going, but we do know this is time sensitive," said board member Wayne McDevitt, of Marshall.
Look for this topic to come up again when the state board begins its monthly meeting Wednesday at 10 a.m. and stretches to Thursday. Look for coverage on Staff Writer Bob Geary's blog, Citizen.
Chapel Hill’s now infamous Yates raid won’t be subject to an independent investigation, the Town Council decided Monday in a 7-1 vote with Councilwoman Laurin Easthom dissenting in frustration.
Instead town officials will gather first-hand accounts via its website, seek specialized training for officers confronting political protesters and answer the questions posed by the council-appointed Community Policing Advisory Committee, which will take up the issue again at its Feb. 8 meeting.
Last week CPAC petitioned the Town Council to ask for funding for an independent investigator. Chairman Ron Bogle, a retired judge, said that the Yates incident was a special case that required outside eyes for a full and fair analysis that his volunteer committee lacked both the expertise and time to achieve.
The Town Council referred the petition to staff and to themselves and directed Town Manager Roger Stancil to provide a cost estimate and an outline of what an independent review would entail.
Stancil conferred with Town Attorney Ralph Karpinos, and both men deemed that because an investigator could not compel witnesses to speak that route likely would not provide the answers that the community is seeking.
Instead, Stancil offered this alternative.
That drew the ire of Alex Kotch, who along with former U.S. Senate candidate and Chapel Hill resident Jim Neal has been rallying support for an independent investigation.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Orange County talks trash, next steps when landfill closes in 2013
The Orange County Board of Commissioners are committed to closing the local landfill, a burden that the Rogers Road-Eubanks community has been saddled with for 40 years now, in June 2013.
But, at last night’s Assembly of Governments meeting, leaders from the three Orange municipalities who dump garbage there as part of an interlocal agreement said they want to work together but differ on how to move forward. They have just 17 months to decide.
Chapel Hill is hiring a consultant, hopefully next month, to study its options and wants to consider keeping trash local and converting it to energy.
Carrboro is balking at the cost, both in dollars and in pollution, of the county’s plan to transport waste to Durham’s transfer station and then onto a landfill in Virginia. The Board of Alderman unanimously supports studying the feasibility of building a waste transfer station in Chapel Hill near the northwest intersection of N.C. Hwy 86 and I-40.
Hillsborough is OK with whatever everyone else decides so long as it doesn’t cost significantly more than what is being done now.
All want to offer remediation for Rogers-Eubanks and agreed to form a task force to work on creating a lasting community center for the neighborhood and on providing the water and sewer connections for neighbors that were promised when the site was built in 1972.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
The Chapel Hill Town Council voted Monday night to continue discussing the next steps to take in the investigation of the recent police raid on squatters in the vacant Yates Motor Company building, but there was little enthusiasm for an advisory group’s proposal to hire an independent investigator.
The Community Policing Advisory Council (CPAC) had recommended that an independent investigator could provide more factual evidence about the Nov. 13 incident. The CPAC and some residents had expressed concern about possible biases in a report about the incident filed by Town Manager Roger Stancil.
Ronald Bogle, chairman of CPAC, said he left the meeting “confused about the exact intentions of this council.” He also expressed concern about the role and expectations of the recently created CPAC, a volunteer board. Bogle told the Town Council he would “respect any decision you make” about pursuing an independent investigation.
Friday, January 20, 2012
An attorney for plaintiffs in the civil lawsuit over the controversial 751 South development filed a notice in court Friday that they'll appeal a judge's ruling in favor of Durham County and the developers.
Property owners near the land to be developed, including the Chancellor's Ridge Homeowners Association, sued the county in 2010 over the county's decision to rezone the proposed site of the development. The 167 acres along N.C. 751 in the southwestern part of Durham County is in the watershed of Jordan Lake, a source of drinking water for several communities in the region. Neighbors and other opponents say they don't want to see such a dense development near the lake, arguing it will cause further environmental harm and traffic jams on N.C. 751.
Earlier this month, Superior Court Judge Henry Hight dismissed the lawsuit at the request of the defendant, Durham County, and Southern Durham Development, which had intervened in the case as an interested party.
It's unclear whether the appeal could cause additional hearings before the case heads to the N.C. Court of Appeals.
In related news, Southern Durham Development has not responded to a request from the Indy for information on $142,000 in overdue property taxes the company owes to Durham County. According to the county's online billing system, the taxes had not been paid as of Friday afternoon.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Durham County property taxes were due Jan. 5, but more than a few property owners haven't gotten around to paying them, including Southern Durham Development.
SDD owns at least 170 acres of land in South Durham where the company is looking to build its controversial 751 South development. According to tax records on the Durham County government website, the company owes $142,000 for five parcels.
The company just won a major victory in civil court last week, when a visiting judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by opponents to the project who filed a protest petition against the rezoning of the land to build a large new community, which could encompass 1,300 residences, plus retail and offices.
But it's unclear why the tax bill is unpaid. A call to the county's tax office last week confirmed that information online is up-to-date, and according to a customer service representative, interest is included in the online tax calculations, although it's not shown separately.
We contacted a couple representatives of SDD after hours Wednesday night, but weren't able to reach anyone just yet. Updates to be posted once we hear back.
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