Last Wednesday’s Chapel Hill Town Council meeting featured a real humdinger of a presentation from Rod Stevens and Jen Keesmaat. First, some background: Stevens and Keesmaat are both planners; Stevens, of Bainbridge Island, Washington, wrote the 2021 Housing Report that said we need more housing, and Keesmaat, formerly Toronto’s chief planner, is currently leading our […]
Chapel Hill
Posted inChapel Hill
Chapel Hill’s getting ready to make it hugely easier to build “missing middle” housing!
Ok, now THIS is a big deal. Chapel Hill is getting ready to make it hugely easier to build “missing middle” housing. What is missing middle housing? It’s all the housing between single-family homes and big multi-family apartments like: Duplexes Triplexes, and Cottage apartments. For years, like many other communities, most land in Chapel Hill […]
Posted inParks and Rec
We’re getting a park on the American Legion land. Why are people fighting it?
Imagine your town council proposes a 20+ acre new park and also much needed missing middle housing for municipal workers in your community. Oh yeah, and also some shops like the ones they have next to that amazing downtown park in Blowing Rock, NC. And, get this, the new park will be within easy walking […]
Posted in828 MLK
Update on coal ash: There’s a lot of misinformation circulating
We are dismayed that misinformation continues to spread about coal ash and the 828 MLK site in Chapel Hill. You can read our previous deep dive on this project if you’d like to know more about what’s happened so far, what the town has decided, and why the counterarguments circulating about the redevelopment don’t stand […]
Posted inChapel Hill Town Council
Five things we want to see Town Councils tackle this term
It’s the start of the Town Council cycle for Chapel Hill and Carrboro, which means we’re once again planning to keep you informed about issues involving civic life in both of our towns. We also have opinions about what the Town Councils should tackle this term. Here are five ideas we plan to track: Connecting […]
Posted inChapel Hill
Three Reasons to Extend the Libba Cotten Bikeway to UNC (And Three Ways You Can Help)
Yesterday, NEXT Chapel Hill-Carrboro launched a campaign to ask the Town of Chapel Hill to extend the Libba Cotten Bikeway, which runs along a rail line between Chapel Hill and Carrboro, to UNC’s campus along Cameron Avenue. (Full disclosure: I am a member of NEXT, and pitched the idea of focusing on this issue). More […]