Duke to take front stage before City Council on street closures, coal transfer site

It's Blue Devil night at the City Council this evening -- though the question is, will Duke find its plans bedeviled in the process?

The big U approaches the dais tonight on two different public hearing matters: the proposed closure of two streets near the Smith Warehouse complex off East Campus, and a proposes street closing near the Durham Freeway to support a coal transfer station site.

The Sumter St. and Maxwell Ave. closings are far and away the more controversial items. The roads buffer the old tobacco warehouses off Buchanan Blvd., which have been converted into arts teaching space and staff office areas for Duke.

Duke has proposed adding over 325 parking spaces in a lot adjacent to what's currently Maxwell Ave., a road that Planning staff reports gets some use as a cut-through access for Campus Dr. service between the campuses. Under the proposed street closings, the roads would cease to be a public right of way.

Some neighborhood groups, including Old West Durham and Burch Avenue's neighborhood associations, have opposed the move, however. Concerns raised include the use of Maxwell as an alternative route for the Burch Ave. neighborhood and the impact of a total of almost 500 parking spaces (including the north side of the warehouse) on local traffic patterns.

(Although neighborhoods like Burch Ave. are now divided from Maxwell by the Durham Freeway, the gravel road connection through to Campus Dr. can provide an opportunity to route around the railroad tracks or to access Duke's campus.)

OWDNA's John Schelp has also been a long-time advocate for better pedestrian connectivity parallel to Main St. between the Ninth St. area and Brightleaf Square, a proposal made in recent years by a team of NC State design students. Don't be surprised to see neighborhood groups use this point as leverage in discussions over the street closure application.

Look for the closure of 75 linear feet of Cooke St. to be less controversial. The staff report notes that the ROW would be distributed to Duke University Medical Center to support a coal transfer station on the site.

Coal is brought in via the railroad spur to campus weekly to power the campus' boiler. We at BCR don't know this for certain, but would suspect that the railroad spur on campus might meet the same fate as the Personal Rapid Transit system that crossed the rail line, and which itself has been closed due to the pending construction of a new patient bed tower between Duke North and Duke South.

In other items, the City Council will:

• Consider further business incentives to small business owners in areas like Angier Ave. that are targeted by the City for local retail and small business investment. Three businesses, including Superlative Fine Foods (whose grocery store plans we've discussed here before) are applying for $7,500 incentives.
• Likely approve on the consent agenda a building assessment of City-owned properties along E. Chapel Hill St. at Five Points. The staff memo notes that these buildings are supposedly in rough shape; the structures have been considered at risk in the Bull City for years, given discussion at one point of tearing the storefronts down to expand the Civic Center. The memo leaves all options, including structure renovation/improvement, sale of the buildings, or their eventual teardown, on the table.
• Likely approve via consent agenda the shifting of most City capital funds from the proposed Northern Athletic Park on Snow Hill Rd. to ballfield renovation work for Rock Quarry Park near the county stadium. The work is needed since rock outcroppings are starting to "protrude through the surface" of two ballfields, closing them to most uses. (Rock protrusions at something called Rock Quarry Park -- whodathunkit?) The staff memo notes that Parks & Rec and Durham Public Schools planned to collaborate on the site plan for a shared park facility at the Snow Hill site, which will also support new DPS facilities. But DPR didn't have enough cash to do a site plan, and "DPS has moved on with its portion of the site planning that both staffs had initially
  hopedcould be done in coordination." So, hey, DPR is going to take its ball and go to another ball field, though leaving enough cash to add field lighting to the Northern Athletic Park project. (That site could eventually be expanded for more DPR uses to boot.)
• Buy more tasers.

Comments

[Todd Twigg]

Why is Duke asking for these streets to be closed if they want to keep these streets open? Paraphrasing Councilman Brown from the Dec 1 City Council meeting, this is the question that should be addressed. How will Duke's plans need to change if they don't get these streets closed? There is plenty or room to put entrances and exits to this lot from both Buchanand and Campus Drive, or even their own street. After the meeting I heard there may be some issue about the width of Maxwell and Sumter being too narrow for these streets to be paved and built up properly within UDO standards. This seems to not make sense since Duke owns all the property on both sides of these streets and could add in from either side however many feet is required for the minimum ROW. Another issue might be a matter of who would be paying for the paving of these gravel streets (Duke or Durham) and how quickly this could be done.

In my mind still, this issue seems to have much more to do with Duke wanting to have even greater control over access across their boundaries. After the meeting on Dec. 1, one Duke official was quick to point out that they already own the portion of Maxwell between Campus Drive and Sumter St. So in effect, Duke Can already "close" or put a card only "gate" on this portion of Maxwell whenever they choose, much like they at any time for Campus Drive (and I believe Anderson Street too - scary!)

Hopefully the Duke officials, supporting city council members, or planning staff can explain why this is a good idea at tonight's meeting.

Here is the letter I read for the Dec.1 meeting:

Dear Mayor and City Council,

Please don't close Maxwell and Sumter Streets. I do not know Duke University’s motivation for closing these streets, but my analysis of this area and my frustrated experience over the last few years trying to open new transportation connections between university and its city, lead me to suspect that this street closure petition has very little to do with any future development, but rather it’s an attempt to further cut-off bike/ped/car access between the university and its surrounding neighbors.

Ask anyone who walks or bikes to Duke’s campus (myself included), they will likely agree that the most difficult and dangerous part of their route is traversing the Duke campus boundary (and likely the most dangerous for Durham’s entire urban development tier). Maxwell street is one of the fastest, flattest, and safest ways for me to get on and off campus. This is the route that I take when I bike from school to city hall, and this is the route I will take to attend tonight’s council meeting.

Maxwell street separates two very large Duke parcels, one 8+ the other 5+ acres. There is plenty of room here for Duke to create massive development without closing these streets. If the location of these streets are problematic for Duke’s future building plans, there is plenty of room to move the streets without closing them.

The connection made by Maxwell and Sumter is the last remaining from the highly inter-connected and historic Brookstown neighborhood. The construction of Campus Drive and then the Durham freeway wiped out this neighborhood and its streets which served to connect downtown to West Durham and Duke. Here’s a link to a map and some description thanks to our newest Indy citizen of the year Gary Kueber
http://endangereddurham.blogspot.com/2006/12/rome-ave-brookstown.html
http://endangereddurham.blogspot.com/2008/04/west-end-graded-school.html
http://endangereddurham.blogspot.com/2008/04/smith-warehouse.html

I believe the requirements of Statute 160A-299 are not satisfied. Closing these streets do not benefit public interest, rather they erode the interconnectedness that makes our transportation network efficient. And though I am not an owner of Duke property, as a student I feel that I will be deprived of reasonable ingress and egress. For example(s):
i) to get from Campus Drive to the studios is Smith Warehouse is currently less than 0.1 mile, compared to 0.8 miles if Maxwell were to be closed.
ii) to get from the Smith Warehouse to Center for Documentary studies is currently 0.3 mile, compared to 1.0 mile if Maxwell and Sumter were to be closed.

Duke University is part of our city, and so like other universities that are located in cities they must allow its citizens to walk/bike/drive to it and through it. Even if it’s Duke’s failed wisdom to wish itself an island, it hurts not just its students and employees but the entire city by creating an unnecessary barrier that disconnects neighborhoods and destabilizes all of us.

Best regards,

Richard Twigg (from Tuscaloosa-Lakewood Neighborhood)

[John Schelp]

Thanks for covering this, Kevin.

Some pre-Council news: Duke's request to close Maxwell Street has been pushed back to January.

Duke said in meetings with the neighborhood that they wouldn't close public access to Maxwell. However, Duke has thus far refused to put this in writing. That's troubling.

Town-gown relations have been getting better with Phail on board.

But, someone in Duke Community Affairs has been handling Maxwell. Frankly, this episode could have been handled better by the university.

Here's hoping for better news from Duke in January.

[RWE]

Just wanted to clarify - unlike Campus Drive, Anderson is a public street and could not be gated.

[Jeremy T]

I really hope that continued community opposition doesn't scuttle the plans for Maxwell. As a cyclist, Maxwell in its current state (that is, poorly maintained gravel with no sidewalks) is virtually useless to me, and Duke's plan looks like a major step up for me and my pedestrian friends.

[Rob]

I agree with Jeremy on that issue. Duke is investing money into making the area nice. They are planning on moving over to the other side of the street and working on the Buchanan Warehouse next. With some 'fixed windows' we can test the broken window theory (actually I saw in Science a few months ago that someone did test it, and it holds up). Maybe the area under the 147 bridge won't remain a trash magnet once Duke cleans up their area some.

Hopefully Duke works it out with the NAs soon. As it stands now, they do have the ped and car access on the site plan, and I imagine that is an investment they won't destroy for at least 30 years.

[Jack]

@Jeremy & Rob

Fwiw, while there will be sidewalks, the road is actually planned to remain gravel.

[Rob]

Jack,
The site plan calls for a paved road.

Rob

[John Schelp]

Couple of things to keep in mind:

* While Duke has said in private meetings with the neighborhood that they will keep Maxwell open to public access... thus far, they've declined to put it in writing. The Planning director suggested adding a note to the Site Plan but Duke has balked -- raising a red flag for the neighborhoods.

* While a street closing/transfer is subject to Council vote (and a public hearing), changing a Site Plan is not. Therefore, neighbors would like to try and make sure that Duke doesn't remove important campus-town pedestrian connections from the Site Plan. The Planning director suggested adding a note about this to the Site Plan but Duke has balked -- again raising a red flag for the neighborhoods.

Phail Wynn's arrival at Duke has been wonderful. He's a good man in a hard job.

Like many large organizations, Duke University has many silos. Officials come and go. University officials change their mind (as they've often done for their Central Campus plans).

We're just trying to reach a comfort level on the Site Plan -- to avoid heartburn in the future.