Bull City Rising

End of week roundup

Time to wrap up the work week with a few tidbits of news and notes from the Bull City:

• Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse and the City will hold a public update meeting on the status of the Durham Athletic Park renovation project, this Wednesday Mar. 28 at 6pm in the City Council chambers.
• The N&O has good coverage of last night's Ninth Street Plan discussion with neighborhood residents and business owners.
• For its part, the Herald-Sun has a well-reported (if depressing) article confirming that the NCDOT is not planning to replace Durham's depressing "AmShack" train station with a new facility in West Village, confirming previous indications.
• One week Two weeks until the new Farmer's Market pavilion opens at Durham Central Park!  The market will be open Saturday, April 7 from 8am to noon, with a dedication ceremony happening at 10am. More information (beware the 5MB PDF file!)

"Duke Studio Condos" -- at a standstill?

Looks like something is definitely up with Frank Wittenberg's plan for the Duke Studio Condos.  As noted here back in December, this started out as the latest re-development play seeing Wittenberg -- the developer of the 35%-vacant Durham Centre tower downtown and the Duke Tower Condos at Trinity and Duke -- turning an old hotel near the American Tobacco Campus into condominiums.

At the time, I raised the concern that this was the kind of uncreative re-use that didn't advance the Bull City one bit, since once the old hotel is sold off as condos, we're stuck with a downtown eyesore for at least a generation or more.  (Interestingly, an acquaintance who stopped by to look at the project claimed that the monthly utilities and homeowners' association fee topped out at a whopping $400 per month.)

Flash forward to Wednesday afternoon: the sign on Duke St. advertising the project is covered with a blue tarp... the web site for the project is down... and there's a sign on the door to the building asking anyone with questions about condo sales to call "DB Durham LLC" by way of The Berman Group in Coconut Grove, Fla.

So what's the future of this project?  The kind person answering the phones at the Duke Tower Condo office stated that Wittenberg Properties was no longer involved in the project and that they weren't sure what would happen with it.  On the other hand, a staff member at The Berman Group in Florida stated that the office was currently closed because they were in negotiations for the property's sale.  When asked if that meant Wittenberg was out of the picture, the staff member responded that no, they were working with Wittenberg to buy the project and move this forward as a condo effort.  No word on whether others are in the picture.

Looks like we have to wait in order to see how this one plays out.   I hate to speculate without knowing all the details, but if I wanted to hazard a guess: According to Jack Hagel's November 2006 article in the N&O on the Duke Studio Condos project, a group called MAMC Durham actually bought the old Crown Park Hotel in foreclosure for $4.3 million in summer 2006.  Looks like MAMC is controlled by The Berman Group, which lists on its web site a division called "Mortgage Asset Management Corporation (MAMC)" which specializes in short-term, real estate-secured loans. 

Note the short-term part of this.  Wittenberg took a long time selling the Duke Tower condos; one could speculate -- and again, this is just a guess -- that Wittenberg and Berman were expecting a quick sale of these condos and the financial deal here to acquire the hotel was set up with this in mind.  (For the record, Berman/MAMC isn't kidding about short-term financing, which runs much pricier than long-term dollars; they list a $1.6m financing they closed in August 2006 for a property acquisition in Durham, perhaps the property in question, at a whopping 14.5% interest rate.) If the developer borrowed funds at a short-term rate expecting a quick sell-out, or at least enough of a sell-out as to get some more stable financing, it's pretty easy to imagine such a deal going south if the numbers didn't match projections.

Until we hear more from the developer or the financier in the press or elsewhere, this is all just guesswork. Given the shut-down web site and the dark lobby, though, it's at least clear that -- at least for the moment -- this project certainly isn't moving forward.

First J-school lesson: Read your competitors

Now, I want to love the Herald-Sun, I really do.  And I love Business Buzz on Wednesdays, which is usually a fine recap of retail news in the Bull City.  (Sue Stock at the N&O does a good job, too, but I get the sense sometimes that McClatchy doesn't reimburse their Raleigh reporters for car mileage into Durham County, or something.)

But the ending to this morning's column was cringeworthy, not buzzworthy:

Flying high: We don't know why, but Cardinal State Bank sure caught investors' fancy on Tuesday with the Durham bank's stock jumping $2.05 or 17.4 percent to $13.85.

That's close to its 52-week high of $13.99. There were no announcements out of the bank on Tuesday.

Hmmm, what a puzzler.  Too bad that the Triangle Business Journal figured this one out already.  In an article that was filed last Friday and posted to the web on Monday.

"Durham bank launches search for buyer
Triangle Business Journal - March 16, 2007
by Lee Weisbecker

DURHAM - Managers of Cardinal State Bank have retained an advisory firm to help put the $189 million community bank on the sale block.

The Orr Group, based in Winston-Salem, will identify potential buyers for the five-office operation, which has been facing stiffer competition on its home turf of Durham from both regional contenders and local startups."

(Imminent sale of a company being, of course, a major reason for a surge in stock price of same.)

Now, I'm not in the best position to throw stones. After all, I've had my own inauspicious bouts with journalism, like the time Sewell Chan out-reported me (without even a share of the byline to boot) on the dousing of a dormitory when we were both campus cub reporters, helping me realize that daily newsing might not be a career I had the chops to pull off.  And I've mis-scooped here on BCR more often than that kid behind the counter at the Patterson Place Cold Stone Creamery, who constantly tries to earn a big tip by throwing ice cream in the air and trying to catch it in the "Gotta Have It" cup.  (Lesson learned there: dark-colored polo shirts show off more dairy dirt.)

But, c'mon. If there was one thing I learned in my stint in the newsroom, it was that you read your competitors daily.  And that was in the pre-Web days, when thirty newspapers a day would pour into our newsroom and people actually had to get their fingers dirty with ink to digest them. With news media streaming through the series of tubes that is the Internets these days, there's no reason not to pick this stuff up.  'Course, the TBJ article does note that the full article is for "paid print subscribers ONLY" -- maybe the Pickett Road Press Corps didn't re-up?

I come here not to bury the H-S, but to plead for more and better coverage for the area. It's terrific that our city has coverage from two daily papers (with a tip to Reyn Bowman's point that it does, sometimes, mean we read twice the bad news about Durham than we do about one-paper-town Raleigh.)  But some days, it's almost as though some guys from Paducah came into the Bull City, bought up the paper and fired all their best reporters on the same day.

Oh, wait. They did.

Ninth Street Plan draft on City web site

The Durham City-County Planning Department has released a draft of the Ninth Street Plan on its web site.  Although originally ordered in response to the TTA regional rail plan that would (could?) add a station at the corner of Ninth/Erwin and Main Streets, the Plan still provides a useful instrument to address concerns that development pressures could impact the beloved historic feel and streetscape of the old shopping district -- particularly given the huge (developable) open space between Ninth Street and the Wachovia tower.

Among the suggestions in the plan, which emerged out of a series of neighborhood meetings that culminated in a public design charette in the fall of 2006:

• Add a form-based code to control building height and setbacks in order to maintain the scale and feel of Ninth Street
• Create a local historic district for Ninth Street, creating protections against that could help preserve "the historic character of buildings" against external modification or teardown
• Re-route US 70 Business from Hillsborough/Ninth Sts. to Main Street, and resolve the challenges at the Hillsborough/Ninth St. intersection (removing the stub road between Markham Ave and Vin Rouge -- who knew it was called Safeway St., anyway?)
• An eight-story limit on new "tower" buildings in the zone, with buildings in commercial blocks (a la today's Ninth Street district - see image at right) limited to four stories

A neighborhood meeting on the plan is scheduled for Thursday, March 22 at 6pm at the Asbury United Methodist Church (Clarendon & Markham).

Study: Art Pope loves cars, a lot

Sorry for focusing on roads for two days in a row at BCR, but the wingnuts made me do it. Yes, our good friends over at Raleigh's uber-conservative John Locke Foundation have released a new study on transportation and roadways in North Carolina. The JLF is funded by the Pope family, whose background in running crummy retailers like Rose's is clearly high qualification for expertise on public policy.  Incidentally, Durham's very own City Councilman Thomas Stith is a VP for one of Pope's other think-tanks (shocking, I know).

Personally, I prefer to call the JLF the Thomas Hobbes Foundation instead -- since life in the way they picture it would certainly be more likely to be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," as the philosopher wrote in The Leviathan.  Plus, a close reading of Locke's Second Treatise on Government shows the philosopher makes lots of non-conservative statements, such as why it's in every citizen's benefit to give up their right of mortal self-defense to a government in common.  But, I digress.

Anyway, on Monday the JLF/THF's favorite transportation researcher, UNC-Charlotte's David Hartgen, has looked at the state's metro areas and has reached the shocking -- shocking! -- conclusion that we need to spend more money on roads and less on transit.  Wow, we've never heard this from Hartgen before.  Wait, this is what he writes every year.  In any case, it's worth taking a look at Hartgen's analysis of the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro MPO 2030 transportation plan, then comparing his brief with the actual MPO's plan itself.  Some lowlights, er, highlights:

Why we need traffic calming, exhibit #1,132

The subject of traffic calming is a big one to the good folks who live in Durham's urban neighborhoods.  From Watts-Hillandale on the west to the residents of East Durham who must contend with Alston, Avondale and Holloway, there's too many cars, frequently traveling too quickly, on the streets in the Bull City's core.

So consider this another example of the craziness that is the Durham traffic scene.  It looks like WTVD, the Triangle's ABC affiliate and a Durham-based station to boot, gets it -- for better or, in this case, decidedly for worse.

Yes, this image came from WTVD's morning newscast last week, where "Snapper" Steve Forgy was giving an update on Bull City traffic, with green-and-white animations on the major thoroughfares for commuters. On the Raleigh version of this picture (not shown), you see what you'd expect -- 440, 540, and 40, plus commercial thoroughfares like US 70/Glenwood Ave.

In Durham?  You have I-85, US 70... and the Roxboro/Mangum Street pair, just on the left side of Forgy's arm.  Roxboro/Mangum, of course, were definitely not designed to be major arteries or connectors for a retail district, but which instead feature single-family homes, a B&B, community housing for TROSA, and the like.  Oh, and pedestrians playing Frogger in traffic to make it to the very popular Duke Park.

In case you missed it, Barry Ragin did a great treatment of urban neighborhood traffic issues at his blog this weekend, including a great discussion on Durham's new Pace Car program.

Greetings from North Durham!

BCR tends to focus on Durham's core -- from downtown/American Tobacco/Brightleaf, to the neighborhoods ringing the urban center, to the occasional development question over at Duke.  There's actually been quite a few dribs and drabs of development news on the northern side in the last couple weeks that deserve some coverage, too.  Here's a summary of some of the recent news:

Loehmann's Plaza renovations: Up at Hillandale Rd. and I-85,  has been a bit quieter lately with the loss of several long-time tenants, including big & tall store Vickers Clothiers and, well, Loehmann's itself.  Sue Stock, the well-connected retail reporter over at the N&O, reported last week that Loehmann's Plaza will be renovated and renamed Croasdaile Crossings.  The nature of the renovation will depend on the nature of retail interest that Glenwood Development sees, but may include new outparcels for restaurants or banks.  Given the lack of shopping serving the Hillandale/Cole Mill corridor, I wouldn't be surprised to see some positive developments come out of this.

One more hole for Loehmann's: Sal's Pizza & Italian, a popular local eatery in the plaza, is supposed to move across the street into the old Shoney's restaurant.  It'll be nice not to have that restaurant vacant so close to 85.  Sal's new name will be "Pomodoro Italian Kitchen and Pizzeria."

Welcome (?) Wal-Mart: The planned Wal-Mart Supercenter in the Glenn School Road/East Club Boulevard area is expected to get under construction in the next few months, again per Stock's column. The so-called "Glenn View Station" will be developed by Aiken, S.C.-based WRS Realty, a self-described "corporation created to pursue real estate investment strategies," where strategies appears to translate entirely to "building Wal-Marts."  This developer put together Roxboro's Wal-Mart Supercenter, apparently.  Based on the downscale design of the sign for another WRS-developed Wal-Mart (seen at right), I wouldn't expect this project to win any architectural awards...

Here's the rough area we're talking about as shown in Google Maps.  Note the proximity of this location to the Starlite Drive-In.  If history is any guide, the Wal-Mart plaza's arrival will likely cause a sharp increase in the value of the Starlite property (which includes acres of undeveloped land), which coupled with Starlite owner Bob Graves' untimely passing this past week, is another reason to be pessimistic about the drive-in's future.

Northern Shopping: The Durham News has reported two new shopping center developments that could impact the north end of the Bull City in the coming years.  First, Charlotte developer Crosland, which is just starting to get a foothold in the Triangle with projects that include the Southpoint Village apartments across from the namesake mall, intends to build a retail-oriented center called "West Point Village" at North Roxboro and Infinity Roads (map).  A couple of miles further north on Roxboro Rd. (map), another retail center named Treyburn Commons is planned with a grocery store and other strip businesses.  Both projects will require local government approval before they proceed.

Groceries and Grandes: Further south, the Harris Teeter at Guess Rd. and Horton Rd. is (still) scheduled to be replaced with a new H.T. across the street at the site of the old Willowdaile movie theater.  I say "still" because this has been reported in the papers every three months or so for about, oh, two years now.  Apparently, construction is supposed to start "any day now" on the new store.  Meanwhile, the Kroger near Costco at North Pointe has almost finished its long-ongoing (and overdue) renovation, which has added an external window for the SunTrust branch, expanded wine, organic, and olive-bar services, and much-improved lighting.

Starbucks continues to expand in the Bull City, and both of these grocery destinations are key parts of the picture.  Not that we necessarily need more SBUX -- Broad Street Cafe continues to be the best place for a cup of joe in Durham, not to mention one of the best places to hang out and catch up with friends.  Still, a Starbucks has opened at the renovated North Pointe Kroger for those who can't live without pithy sayings on their coffee cups.  Interestingly, the papers have had more mixed information about Starbucks.  Initial reports were that the new Harris Teeter would have a Starbucks within it; however, Equity One reported to Sue Stock that the old Burger King in HT's current strip center would become a Starbucks this summer (similar to the new location coming on NC 55 just south of I-40, also thanks to an outparcel conversion).

Wherever it ends up, I'm curious what impact a Starbucks that way will have on the old Dunkin' Donuts location, which has survived the apparent franchise-fight with Dunkin' corporate to sell non-branded coffee and ice cream along with trucked-in Krispy Kreme donuts.

Nothing on Northgate: I'd love to be able to say that all of this retail expansion in North Durham has meant good news for Northgate, but no.  Northgate management has been chatty as usual about the forthcoming arrival of local retailer Ultimate Comics and teen-couture Charlotte Russe, but nary a word about the January closure of the mall's Ann Taylor.  Or the fact that the newly-added outdoor shopping spaces in the old Belk's wing is still without any tenants (save for the theater and ice cream shop) and shows no signs of up-fit.  Office Depot has opened at Northgate's strip center, though the choice of an office supply store to replace OfficeMax hardly qualifies as what Northgate's marketing director claimed last year was a mall-driven decision to seek out a more "exciting" retail concept for that space.  More thoughts coming here soon on Northgate's challenges and chances.