BCR's Daily Fishwrap Report for October 6, 2009

City Council Greenlights Rolling Hills Planning: The City Council voted last night to allocate another $355k to a planning effort to redevelop Rolling Hills, which the City spent millions to buy back from homeowners. The main opponents (not surprisingly) were the Hesters, developers who led the last charge to fix the languishing Hayti site -- and whose work, through a nonprofit they led, ended in City foreclosure in '03. The planning effort involves McCormack Baron Salazar, a national leader in urban mixed-income in-fill development; the City is applying for Federal stimulus dollars to boost the effort. (Herald-Sun, N&O)

State AG Office Accepts DPD-OT Case: NC Attorney General Roy Cooper's office is taking over the review of whether criminal charges are appropriate in the DPD's overtime mess. Durham DA Tracey Cline notes that her office works closely with the DPD, and to prevent any perceived conflict of interest, an outside review was warranted. (Herald-Sun)

Duke Park Bathhouse Records Up in Flames (Safely): Yesterday's hubbub over old City records stored in the bathhouse at Duke Park has gone up in smoke -- literally, with the Fire Dept. burning them at their training center. A H-S article on the matter finds city manager Tom Bonfield calling longstanding complaints over the park's parking lot being used for City storage (causing vehicles to back up in the 'hood) "well founded," and wants to see ways to provide restrooms in parks; he's also asked General Services head Joel Reitzer for thoughts on getting residents involved in their called-for rehab of the structure. (Herald-Sun)

Cree to Expand Employment: LED lighting company Cree, which employs 1,500 in Durham among its 3,500 FTEs worldwide, will see its CEO and NC Gov. Bev Perdue announce what the N&O's calling a new green jobs initiative at a press conference on Thursday. Cree's been continuing to expand despite the recession due to demand for their low-energy LED lighting. (N&O)

MLK Jr. Pkwy. Site for New School?: A 33 acre site across from the Kroger on MLK Jr. Pkwy. is under evaluation as a new elementary school location, though BOCC members raised some worries about traffic/safety, rock outcroppings that could require blasting. Heck, BOCCer Joe Bowser even raised concerns about runoff pollution given the site's proximity to a creek. A public hearing's set for October, though Commissioner Ellen Reckhow called for a site review by City/County Planning. (N&O)

DPS Sets Elementary Education Plan: School board members last night heard the District's "comprehensive plan" for elementary school programming and education, one which continues with Carl Harris' philosophy of a data-driven approach that relies on student test scores as a key benchmark, and where standard curricula are used heavily throughout the district, as the H-S' Matt Milliken notes. (Herald-Sun)

Air Quality Better This Summer: If you breathed easier this summer in the RDU, you can thank the recession, better auto emissions testing, and state-mandated coal plant emissions reductions, plus mild weather, the N&O says. All of those factors are credited by the paper with the state having the fewest "Code Orange" ozone days on record since the early 1970s, with levels one-sixth to one-eleventh those in the last couple of years. (N&O)

PocketGear Goes Samsung: Inspired by Apple's iPhone and its successful App Store for downloadable applications, more cell phone vendors are getting in the download store biz -- and that's great news for Motricity spin-out PocketGear. The downtown Durham smartphones app company, which now employs thirty at American Tobacco, has been tapped to run Samsung Mobile's online app store. It has a similar deal with AT&T among other vendors, sez the N&O. (N&O)

Comments

[Todd P]

It seems that DPS just can't win with their site selection process. Either they pick a site on 2 lane roads (Snow Hill Rd, Erwin Rd) and get complaints that the new school will cause too much traffic, or they pick a site on a 4 lane road (MLK) and get complaints that there IS too much traffic.