If you’re having trouble keeping up with Durham’s plans for an events center/theater downtown, you’re not the only one. After last Wednesday’s meeting at City Hall, it seemed as though the city had dropped the idea of building a large venue designed for national touring acts in favor of a venue that would be dedicated […]
Fiona Morgan
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Home builders win the prize for lobbying
As cars roared down Six Forks Road in North Raleigh last Tuesday morning, about a dozen college students stood at the corner in 80-degree-and-climbing heat, holding signs in front of the office of the North Carolina Home Builders Association. Beside them was a makeshift set of scales with a heavy money bag outweighing a cardboard […]
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Unexpected merger of views
“Tax me, please!” That could be the rallying cry for parents in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school district, where a district tax generates an extra $1,167 for each student, in addition to the $2,556 per pupil doled out by the Board of County Commissioners. But up in the rural part of Orange County, where farmers and […]
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Durham snubbed Clear Channel alternative
Set aside for a moment the question of whether a $42 million, 4,000-seat theater is what downtown Durham needs now. Other questions about the proposed American Center for the Performing Arts remain: Why is Durham considering only one proposal? Why is Clear Channel the only operator in the running? And would this theater provide the […]
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Council tries to silence theater opponents
More than 50 people waited for four hours at the Durham City Council meeting to express their concerns about a proposal to build a $42 million, 4,000-seat performing arts theater downtown. The council’s decision was whether to extend negotiations between the city and a development group for another four months. Dozens of people signed up […]
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Paper mommies and friendly lawsuits
One mother takes the children to day care. The other picks them up, gives them a snack, and starts dinner. Toy dinosaurs crowd the living room table. The younger child draws with sidewalk chalk on the front porch in the early evening, looking up at his parents with big brown eyes. The older one rides […]
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A center for the arts, but are arts at the center?
Downtown Durham is perpetually on the verge of becoming a thriving cultural and commercial center, and city boosters from all walks of life are working to move downtown development along. But one big development proposal is drawing criticism from artists and residents and confronting the city with a decision about what Durham culture needs to […]
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The Supreme Court isnt the only battleground for Roe v. Wade
You would think that a proposal to issue pro-life license plates would be obviously, patently unconstitutional. You’d be right: Courts across the nation have said so. But that hasn’t stopped conservatives in the North Carolina General Assembly from introducing the same bill year after year. “It didn’t go anywhere last time,” says Paige Johnson, director […]
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Get ready for the 3rd wave
As more than a million people moved slowly en masse toward the Washington Monument, Nina Sorokin, a 19-year-old freshman at Durham Technical Community College, found herself swept up in the crowd. “When I first got off the Metro, it was like a river,” she recalls. “I would try to cross it and it just dragged […]
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in shortcakes
It’s strawberry season, and school’s almost out. To celebrate, Durham’s Central Park School for Children will host a strawberry festival from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, May 8, in Central Park. Homemade strawberry shortcakes with ice cream are $5, freshly dipped chocolate strawberries are $1. There’s live music, sing-alongs and lots of activities–a craft […]