Bull City Rising

Rue Cler adds Saturday hours on April 7

Stopped by Rue Cler with the wife this morning (a tasty warm blueberry muffin for me, a scrumptious chocolate chip scone for her) and was pleased to see that this great new addition to the downtown dining scene is adding Saturday hours, effective April 7.  The bakery-cafe will now be open 8am-3pm on Saturdays, and by popular demand, brunch will be available beginning at 11am as well.

The timing makes a ton of sense, given the re-opening that very day of the Durham Farmer's Market for the season in its new home on Foster St. in the heart of Durham Central Park. Not too hard to imagine the Farmer's Market patron stopping by for a cup of coffee or fresh baked goods before hitting the market, or dropping in for brunch after.

If you haven't stopped in to Rue Cler, be it the bakery-cafe or the terrific restaurant for lunch or dinner, you're missing out.  Check out this N&O review for a smattering.

TTA Rail & Cherokee talk at Endangered Durham

The Triangle Transit Authority has signed a long-expected land use development agreement with Cherokee Investment Partners, formalizing the arrangement TTA first suggested in 2006.  As discussed last month on BCR, TTA holds the keys to a parcel at the Chapel Hill St./Duke St. intersection that's a key to more coherent development connecting West Village/Brightleaf with American Tobacco (especially once the ripe-for-redevelopment NC Mutual Life and Durham Police Department parcels are considered.)

Gary over at Endangered Durham has done a great job analzying this topic now and in the past, so if you're interested in learning more, check out his Wednesday post on the subject.

New Farmer's Market set to open April 7

Construction work has been continuing on the Farmer's Market pavilion in Durham Central Park; the open-air structure itself was completed in 2006, and work crews have been busily at work adding a facility to contain bathrooms and a "multipurpose room" on the western corner of the L-shaped market.  The opening date is set to open on April 7.

This will be a great step forward for the already popular Farmer's Market, which has to date used a Morris St. parking lot owned by Measurement, Inc.  According to the project web site, the new pavilion is "a joint project of SEEDS, the Durham Farmer's Market, and Durham Central Park," with fundraising and construction management assistance donated by Self-Help.

Here's a look at some of the ongoing work.  Bikers and walkers will happily note that the fencing that took a chunk out of the Downtown Trail for most of a year is now removed, reconnecting this segment of the North-South Greenway.

Fowler's to re-open as upscale grocer, again

The Herald-Sun broke the news this morning (yes, they still occasionally break news) that Fowler's, the now-shuttered grocery and coffee bar at Peabody Place on Duke Street, will be re-opening as -- a new upscale grocer, under the ownership of Jennings Brody, a broker with Wythe-Will Distrbuting (a gourmet food/confections) distributor and formerly general manager of Chapel Hill's Foster's Market.

Some nuggets from the Herald-Sun article: the new grocery (name forthcoming) will feature beer and fine wines and will have a coffee bar and on-site bakery.  No butcher at the new location, though, but "prepared foods to go" will be offered, and the H-S reports there will be "a cooking school on site."

With the re-opening of the Studebaker Building as a home for the ad agency Oglivy and other tenants, and the forthcoming arrival of West Village post-renovation as a home for office workers and residents, here's hoping Fowler's II (actually, technically, Fowler's III) succeeds and thrives.  The Blue Devil Partners team working on West Village have talked about the interest in a gourmet grocery returning to Brightleaf, so this should be a positive development for them, to say the least.

It must be noted that BCR previously reported a rather oblique rumor in this space that included a hint of jazz.  (Check the masthead -- gossip's in scope.)  Reportedly at least one group had been looking at the space for a bar/restaurant with a jazz theme and live music performances, which could have been a great fit for the interior architecture there.  Looks like that fell through or didn't proceed past the concept phase.

Quote of the day: Durham loves itself

The Chronicle had an interesting article today about the "Durham Love Yourself" t-shirts, including some quotes from Duke students and local notables alike.

I really loved a quote from Tim Tyson, the author of Blood Done Sign My Name and a visiting faculty member at Duke.  Really sums up the Bull City, doesn't it?

Rest assured, beyond the tidy, gated communities of the mind, where nervous people tend to think their tidy, gated, little thoughts, Durham does love itself.  But the real, big-hearted city of Durham loves itself in the way your sister loves you-she loves you unconditionally, with all her heart, but she knows you're not perfect.

Congratulations, Grandpa Bell!

In case you've ever wondered why cities need to keep a Mayor pro tem in the back pocket, last night's City Council meeting demonstrated why.  At the tail end of Chief Chalmers' update on crime in Durham in the waning months of the year, Durham Mayor Bill Bell excused himself from the meeting, announcing to the gathered Council that his daughter had just given birth and he needed to make his way to the hospital.  Congratulations to the Bells and here's hoping mother and child are doing well.

N&O/Durham News covers Greenfire

A heads-up in case you didn't see it: Saturday's edition of The Durham News, the N&O's weekly Durham supplement, had a feature story on Greenfire Development's swallowing-up of wide swaths of downtown properties.  The three articles are worth a read: check out this main article and its companion, along with a sidebar on other developers in downtown.

The article demonstrates what a bargain downtown Durham properties were when Greenfire got started a couple of years ago -- they were able to buy properties at a per-square-foot cost ($24/sf) that only slightly higher than the going annual rate for leasing market-performing Class A real estate in parts of the Triangle.  (Which shows you, if downtown Durham hits its mark and Greenfire performs well, what the rewards are.)

Still, the articles bring us no closer to a real answer on exactly what Greenfire's up to, a subject of an earlier post here at BCR.  Not a criticism of the N&O, which did a fine job with the series -- just a reminder that, until Greenfire releases their master plan this spring, we won't really know exactly what's up with downtown.

Monday's City Council meeting: The crystal ball sez...

So Monday night's City Council meeting is filled with some relatively routine business items, with the notable addition of an update from outgoing Durham police chief Steve Chalmers on the 2006 fourth-quarter crime statistics.

Let me go out on a limb here and make some wild and crazy predictions about what we'll learn:

• City Councilman Thomas Stith will find a way to make disparaging comments about the crime statistics, no matter what they are.  (E.g., "It is an embarassment to this fine city that crime has risen this quarter," or alternatively, "It is an embarassment to this fine city that crime has only decreased by such a small percentage this quarter.")  Kind of tough to run for mayor if things are going well, you know.
• Patrick Baker will be questioned about the state of the search for a new police chief by at least two members of the Council.
• Chalmers will be criticized, directly or indirectly, over last year's tiff with the Sheriff's office and county government over a fingerprinting program -- and may be asked further about his time and committment to the job given his "lame duck" status.
• Someone -- and I don't know who, but someone -- will question (and/or be questioned about) the poor showing (make that no-showing) of senior city and police two weeks ago.
• The mayor will talk about at least two out of the three following topics: (1) the importance of programs to get youth out of gangs and into productive after-school programs, (2) his initiative to reduce blight in some of Durham's urban neighborhoods, and (3) the scholarly, outside-consultant-based study of why youth join gangs.  At least two of these will be criticized by at least one council member as an ineffective use of city dollars.

See?  You don't even need to attend to know who's going to be trying to get a zinger in when they're quoted in the next day's Herald-Sun.  Unless, of course, you're actually interested in what's happening with crime in the Bull City as opposed to trying to score political points. Why on earth would anyone on the City Council want to do that?