The unfortunate thing about being a weekly publication that goes to press on Tuesday afternoon and distributes Wednesday is that you’re inevitably behind the Election Day 8-ball: You, dear reader, know who won the Raleigh and Durham municipal races, but we don’t. As such, we don’t have anything particularly meaningful to say about the results. […]
Jeffrey C. Billman
Posted inNews
Why is Research Triangle Park building its own mini-city?
Imagine you could design a city from scratch, unencumbered by the entrenched forces that beguile urban planners undertaking revitalization projects—powerful developers, neighborhood NIMBYs, institutionalized poverty, political factions. Imagine you could make this city a transit hub for commuters from your neighboring counties. Imagine you could lure retail, local retail, to this city by having a […]
Posted inNews
Who’s behind this ridiculous full-page ad in the News and Observer?
This morning, the N&O’s print readers awoke to this full-page ad, paid for by a political action committee called Wake Citizens for Good Government, attacking Raleigh City Council member Mary-Ann Baldwin and candidates Matt Tomasulo ((BTW, guys, Matt Tomasulo, not Mike Tomasulo) and Ashton Mae Smith for their support of downtown bars into the ongoing […]
Posted inNews
N.C. lawmakers lust after PAC dollars
Having finally passed a budget (only three months late!), the Legislature would seemingly be content to speed toward a merciful adjournment. Not so. The closing days of the year’s long sessiona very long session indeedproduced a flurry of legislative and political machinations that we’ll be unpacking for weeks to come. Perhaps the most ominous, at […]
Posted inUncategorized
Five ways the North Carolina budget screwed us
We knew it was going to be bad. All summer longas the July 1 budget deadline came and went, with Republican lawmakers negotiating in secretwe knew the end result would do little to restore education funding and less to alleviate the state’s rising unemployment rate. We knew, too, that it would sacrifice necessary investment at […]
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Ahead of N.C. Pride, we recap the year in gay
Last week, Doritos unveiled “Rainbows,” a line of cool-ranch-flavored, rainbow-colored chips, with proceeds benefitting Dan Savage’s It Gets Better Project. Nobody cared, at least beyond a few fringe blogs. Nor was there a great hue and cry on Monday when the Wake County Commission approvedon its consent agenda, NBDthe addition of sexual orientation and gender […]
Posted inHousing
Is Durham’s affordable-housing punt an epic fail?
Last week in this space, we wondered whether the Durham City Council would jump on an affordable housing projectspecifically, city-owned land adjacent to Durham Station on which Self-Help wants to erect 80–100 units for lower-income workersor opt instead for a private mixed-use development, as city staff recommended. (This recommendation, it’s worth noting, came even though […]
Posted inNews
Will the General Assembly wreak havoc on downtowns?
There are lots of issues tied up in Jones Street’s ongoing budget negotiations, now two and a half months behind schedule, with the next deadline, Sept. 18, fast approaching. Some are big, and their ramifications will be felt statewide for decadese.g., Medicaid privatization under the guise of “reform”; a constitutional amendment to reduce and lock […]
Posted inNews
Will Durham finally tackle affordable housing downtown?
The city of Durham, as has been well documented in these pages, has something of an affordable housing problem. This is especially true around downtown, where new luxury condo towers seem to sprout from the ground every other day. As has also been well documented, city leaders have for a while now declared their desire […]
Posted inNews
Assault with a deadly beanbag (and other crimes in downtown Raleigh)
So it’s been an, um, eventful week to own a bar in downtown Raleigh. First we learned that the three Paddy O’Beers co-owners (including Zack Medford, who has become something of a spokesman for the bar crowd) were charged with destruction of city property for unbolting a city-owned bench from the sidewalk and moving it […]
