Last week a school in Chapel Hill caught on fire. If you don’t have children at Seawell Elementary School, you might not have even noticed. Not because it wasn’t a big deal (it was), but because we’ve all grown used to similar incidents in the Chapel Hill Carrboro City School System and Orange County Schools […]
Posted inGuide, Outdoors, Things to do with kids
The Switchback Gear Collective: A growing lending library of outdoor gear
In July 2022, eight students in the UNC Gillings School of Public Health’s MPH program started a non-profit to ensure that the outdoors would be accessible, inclusive, safe, and affordable for all people. Two years later, the Switchback Gear Collective is planning on launching a lending library where you can check out camping gear as […]
Posted inChapel Hill, From the archives
Chapel Hill first commemorated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in 1970.
Tomorrow, Chapel Hill, and the nation, marks Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a federal holiday that was first celebrated on January 20, 1986, three years after veto-proof majorities of the United State Congress passed legislation commemorating the civil rights leader. But proposals to pass a federal holiday to honor King had been under discussion for […]
Posted inBike and Walk, Transportation, Vision Zero
First person: My experience from being hit in a crosswalk on MLK Jr. Blvd.
In March 2021, Ari Farber was hit in a marked crosswalk by a person driving a car on MLK Jr. Blvd. Farber was doing everything right: he activated the flashing lights and he waited for them to activate before proceeding into the crosswalk. He made it across several lanes when a distracted driver hit him […]
Posted inOrange County, Zoning
When it comes to land use, Orange County is the elephant in the room. What should its future be?
If you live in southern Orange County, you can be forgiven for thinking the county is small. It’s easy to slip over into Chatham or Durham County to buy clothing, or just to get groceries. But Orange County is large. Its 401 square miles are larger than the land areas of New York City and […]
Posted inBike and Walk, Carrboro, Connectivity, Greenway
New greenway red herrings from Friends of Bolin Creek
A new blog post and “alerts” from Friends of Bolin Creek and Keep Bolin Wild (which claim to be separate organizations but share the same web server) are wildly misleading regarding a standard regulatory review of the Town of Carrboro’s Bolin Creek Greenway concept plan. They say the town hasn’t done its due diligence and […]