It’s hard to believe that another year is almost in the books. 

The year 2023 has seen day-to-day life return to mostly normal for many of us as we’ve become better armed against the COVID-19 pandemic with widespread vaccine availability. The majority of Triangle residents are back to their daily routines of work, school, and play. Restaurants are fully open again—those that haven’t closed permanently, anyway—as are music venues and theaters. And our parks and greenways are still as busy as ever: opting to spend time outside is a message we seem to have taken to heart during those many, many months of quarantine. 

Still, it’s been a tumultuous year, both at home and abroad, and the pandemic has changed our Triangle towns in ways we’re just beginning to understand. 

The cost of living in the Triangle has soared as both residents and businesses face displacement due to rising rents. Office spaces are grappling with high vacancy rates, and our downtowns are struggling to recapture their pre-pandemic vibrancy. Local leaders are torn, as ever, over questions of growth
and development. 

We’ve captured many of these dynamics in our coverage this year, including the turbulence on the Durham City Council, Triangle residents’ struggles to find and maintain housing, and the decisions that Triangle cities faced when it came to housing, policing, and more. We believe that the INDY’s coverage made tangible differences in our communities and helped inform voters when they went to the polls this fall to vote in our local elections—both Durham and Chapel Hill will have new mayors and some new members of their governing councils. 

Next year brings national and statewide elections as well as the municipal election for the state’s capital city. There’s a lot of work to do, and certainly a lot to look forward to, but before we bring 2023 to a close, take a look back with us at some of the INDY’s memorable, impactful reporting from the past year. 

Discouragement at the Durham Food Hall

Early last year, the INDY published a sprawling report on some of the issues that many vendors—mainly small, locally owned businesses—were having at Durham’s new food hall. The food hall, according to its founder Adair Mueller, was created to give just these types of small businesses their start in a space with lower overhead and costs on rent. But instead of making things easier for the vendors, their complaints ran the gamut from poor upkeep and an allegedly hostile work environment to financial and legal troubles. Several vendors exited the food hall, not because they were growing and expanding but because they were fed up. Following the INDY’s reporting, the food hall effected a change in leadership. 

Durham Council Comes to a Resolution on SCAD

When SCAD—Simplifying Choices for Affordable Development—was set to go before the Durham City Council earlier this year, many community members had deep concerns about the massive series of text changes that the document, if passed, would make to Durham’s development code. Ostensibly a joint proposal between the Raleigh developer Jim Anthony and Habitat for Humanity of Durham, it soon became clear that SCAD wasn’t exactly what it seemed. Durham Habitat, in fact, hadn’t authorized its sponsorship of SCAD and the organization went to great lengths to distance itself from the proposal. Durham’s council continually punted on voting for the set of text amendments, and at a meeting in August, the applicant, Anthony, asked the council to delay a vote on SCAD until after the city’s municipal election. When SCAD came back before the council in November, members were finally ready to vote on a version of the proposal that excluded some of the more controversial, and potentially damaging, text amendments. In the 4-3 vote, Durham got ADUs by right and the elimination of parking minimums; it didn’t get the proposed PATH program that would keep affordable housing affordable for a paltry five years. What the council didn’t adopt in SCAD it will likely address in the upcoming rewrite of Durham’s Unified Development Ordinance in the council’s next term. And the city could (and would be wise to) reevaluate an option that entitles the wealthy to make massive changes to municipal rules in a process that is, as our reporting shed light on, decidedly undemocratic.

Durham’s Tumultuous City Council 

Following a contentious work session in March that saw allegations of impropriety aired against council member Monique Holsey-Hyman, news station WRAL captured audio of council member DeDreana Freeman screaming profanities at fellow council member Mark-Anthony Middleton, apparently in defense of Holsey-Hyman. But there was more to the incident than just words, as the INDY reported. Then, in July, it surfaced that Durham’s mayor, Elaine O’Neal, plus Freeman and Holsey-Hyman, directed the city attorney to take formal action against users of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia who had written unflattering but true things about the council members on their Wikipedia pages. In September, Holsey-Hyman was cleared of the allegations against her by a local developer that prompted the March screaming match and fistfight, but the damage had been done; she lost her bid for election to a full term on the council. Meanwhile, with O’Neal declining to run again, Freeman placed a distant third in the city’s mayoral primary.

Grosvenor Gardens Residents Reach a Compromise with New Landlord

This summer, the INDY reported on a new Raleigh and Wake County fund aimed at preserving affordable housing in the capital city and the rest of the county. Mission-driven affordable housing developer CASA was one of the first groups to use the fund in its 2021 purchase of the historic Grosvenor Gardens property on Hillsborough Street for $12 million. Grosvenor Gardens has provided affordable housing to tenants for decades, but to make the numbers work, CASA had to raise rent on tenants by 30 to 50 percent. Panicked residents scrambled to find the extra money to make rent or, in some cases, find new housing likely to be located outside of the Triangle. But in September, Raleigh’s City Council intervened, authorizing funding to CASA to help address the gap. The city gave $68,000 to the nonprofit, money that prevented a rent increase for 22 people living in Grosvenor Gardens who make less than $39,700. 

High Hopes for Durham’s Next City Council

After a tumultuous two years that saw multiple scandals and bitter acrimony at the dais and elsewhere (see above), many Durham voters breathed a sigh of relief on election night with the election of a new mayor, two newcomers, and one incumbent who all seem well suited to getting on with city business minus the interpersonal drama. In the run-up to the municipal election, the INDY published a four-part series that put some of that council drama into context and expounded on two key issues—community safety and housing—that were key to this year’s election results, no matter how much they’d been overshadowed. The series left readers asking themselves what they want to see in Durham’s new council, which will have some heavy decisions ahead, not the least of which is whether to raise taxes on residents in order to bring pay to city workers in line with living wage levels following a recent sanitation workers’ strike. The newly elected (and reelected) council members—Mayor Leonardo Williams and at-large members Javiera Caballero, Nate Baker, and Carl Rist—were all endorsed by the INDY. This deeply reported politics series no doubt helped weary, yet hopeful, voters make up their minds at the polls.

Chapel Hill Elects a Pro-growth Council 

Come election season, it was a familiar story in Chapel Hill: a CHALT-supported, development-skeptical slate of candidates was up against a more growth-friendly slate in the mayor’s race and for several seats on the town council. High-profile development proposals, such as the West Franklin Street Longfellow life sciences project that the council approved last month, clashed with the interests of beloved small businesses, such as the Purple Bowl, that were and are facing displacement (the Purple Bowl has since secured new digs on Franklin Street). The INDY captured these dynamics and more in several stories leading up to the Chapel Hill municipal election, even when it looked like that election was very close, with mayoral candidates (and town council members) Adam Searing and Jess Anderson polling neck and neck at one point. In the end, progress won the day—Anderson was elected mayor, and pro-growth candidates picked up three of four seats on the town council. 

Henderson Atwater is Released from Jail 

In November, the INDY published a deep-dive report on the case of Henderson Atwater, a 47-year-old Holly Springs man who had been jailed for nearly three years on charges related to a series of air gun shootings in various areas of Wake County. An August trial in Atwater’s case resulted in a hung jury, but despite the mistrial, as well as scant evidence against Atwater and notable police incompetence, Wake County district attorney Lorrin Freeman says her office intends to try Atwater again on more than 30 charges connected to the non-fatal air gun shootings. Part of the reason Atwater had been in jail for so long was that his bond was set at $1.5 million. At a November bond reduction hearing, Atwater’s lawyers were able to persuade a Wake judge to reduce the bond to $100,000. Atwater’s family paid the bond, and Atwater was recently released from jail. Still, Atwater endured a number of personal hardships while he was incarcerated, including the death of his son and mother, his fiancée’s battle with cancer, and his own struggle with insulin-resistant diabetes. While Atwater’s case will likely go to trial again, his attorneys are confident that, next time, armed with more evidence and time to prepare, they’ll be able to make the case to a jury to acquit their client.  

Follow Editor-in-Chief Jane Porter on Twitter or send an email to [email protected].

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