Downtown Durham gets new video love in new promo piece

Downtown Durham Inc. has commissioned a new video short that looks at downtown Durham; the video, available via YouTube (and embedded here below) does a nice job of profiling downtown residents, business leaders and stakeholders. And in the process, it's a good introduction to the urban core of the Bull City for what seems to be an intended audience of recruited businesses and possible new residents.

ABC 11 here in town produced the video for the non-profit, and from the production values to some of the shots that feature downtown's transformation, it's a top-notch effort. And one worth a view even if you're a habitual downtown visitor:

The video is also available at FindYourCool.net, DDI's video blog site.

Comments

[Wesley Hyatt]

Now this is the downtown Durham I know and love, fun, funky and upbeat, not the distorted version too often manufactured by our mainstream media. Kudos to ABC 11 on a beautiful job on the production, particularly the cinematography - and I would say that even if they were not a client. This is the sort of message we need to get out to people living outside the Triangle - let's have more of it, please

[aburtch]

A very well done video! Good production values, great mix of people and the message comes across loud and clear. Durham is a great place to live.

[Anonymous]

This is a great video for downtown Durham. I think it’s great too that it is coming from ABC 11, awesome that they are promoting their hometown. One thing catch my eye though at around 0:51 into the video. There is a picture of Main St packed with people and the picture seems to be very dated. It just caught my eye with all the new awesome footage in the video, again though amazing job.

[patrick]

I'm probably gooing to get flamed for this but.....other than a standard stock convention and visitor's bureau video I'm not sure I see the huge impression here. After living here for a year now, and living the previous decade in a major US city I find this video supports my overall impression of Durham and that there's a lot of self-involvement and back-patting for what passes as adequacy. And you know, that may be just me because I've seen and done a lot of this before living in a major city before. Ok, great so you have nice rebuilt apartments in old buildings, there are some quality restaurants to be sure. Great. Actually I'm pretty impressed with the skatepark? I grew up in Raleigh skateboarding and it was a crime 20 years ago. Nice to see that.

The thing is, I like Durham. I really do. My quality of life is a lot better in many ways. At the same time, downtown is still a ghost town after 5pm and really a ghost town after midnight on the weekends. And try to do some shopping or brunch on a Sunday morning? Forget it. Everything is closed for the most part until after church hours. There's little to no foot traffic, even during the work day. I work in downtown. If you do, walk out your office and count how many people you see in a 20 second span of time on the street not in a car. I bet it would be less than 10. There's no convenience stores that are open late that I know of in the downtown core. Most of all, there's still so much vacancy and yet Durham signs off on projects like 751 in the middle of no where. It seems like Durham as a whole is happy to do just enough, and then tout how great and unique the city is, when I don't think the city is that much more unique than its considerable counter parts of Raleigh, Winston Salem or Greensboro. I like living here, but the whole hip cool part of Durham is a bit overstated.

The question to Durham, is will you stay on this path or will complacency with perceived 'downtown cool' be just enough?

[Bull City Rising]

@Patrick: Not flameworthy at all. As someone who works downtown, I often see something similar to what you're describing.

I guess the difference to me is, I see things evolving and changing, too. Last night, for instance -- quite contrary to my post on downtown parking last week -- I had a hard time finding a space within the Loop for the election results and party at Blue Coffee. When I parked over on the east side of Parrish, there was a ton of foot traffic coming out of Dos Perros and down to the DPAC.

I don't expect downtown Durham will ever be Charlotte or reminiscent of cities like Boston where I've lived in the past. My hope would be we end up with a retail and restaurant cluster more akin to Asheville, with interesting things happening and a liveliness that is supported by an economic engine -- tourism in the case of AVL; universities, students and local residents for downtown.

When I first started working in downtown four years ago, there was just about nada out there. Blue Coffee and the W. Main sandwich shop (I still miss it) were it. Rue Cler, Revolution, Toast, Dos Perros have all come sense; Beyu soft-opens next month.

What we need now are small street-level retailers to fill in the gaps, and other draws to get people in and walking around, day or night.

Asheville took a couple of decades to get there. We're just getting started. And I think, and hope, we're on the right track.

[Scandi]

Pretty nicely done, but you'd think they could have thought up a snazzier title than "Downtown Durham Promotional Video"....

[Jeremy]

Loaded, overly used keyword: Authentic.

[Ross Grady]

I thought it was pretty funny to hear Scott Harmon say "Durham is so *real*" while the camera panned past that faux-weathered "Downtown Find Your Cool" sign painted on the back of 115 W Main.

I dunno, it seems obvious who the target audience was, and I suppose it hit the important points for them. And it's always nice to see my friends on Teh Internets.

[TSQ75]

Are there Zombies in the video? ; )

[Wally Town]

@anon

re: :51 you're right.

It appears to be a shot from an old Centerfest (remember--when it was in the center of town and good, not in a parking lot).

Raylass is now Teasers. I don't recall the Raylass signage from when Power Company/42nd Street, so it must be a very old shot. Centerfest started in 1973 and 42nd Street opened in 1980 (?), for some context of the shot. Weird.

[Freddie]

I like the video! Very positive...What people have to realize though is that Durham is still taking shape...It is still on the verge of revitalization, and this is still the beginning! I think what makes Duram what it is is not just the character of all the local businesses, but the people...It's really what makes Durham great...and again, even though Durham has evolved quite a bit in the past couple years, this is still the beginning...

[Ross Grady]

One other quibble: WTF is up with the cyclist running the red light at around 1:35? Come to Durham, home of scofflaws on wheels?

[Gary]

I agree with Patrick, I'm not seeing any real standout piece in the video. Other than Matthew Coppedge's hair, of course.

[Retro-Grouch]

How do we get stuff downtown that is not merely restaurants, bars or concert venues so that downtown become more than merely an eating and drinking destination?

As someone who works downtown and lives nearby I have 3 suggestions...

FInd the money to move forward with the plans to "fix the loop". Entrepeneurs of retail establishments, independent and chain-based, are simply not going to open up business in the inner downtown area if they are hard to get to. The multitude of one-way roads and the loop make it incredibly difficult to navigate to and throughout this area no matter your mode of transportation (foot, bike, car, bus)

Until this problem is addressed, we are not going to see shopping and retail downtown. (parking is not a problem, interconnectivity and ease in getting around is).

Until our city and county leaders develop the backbone and effective tools to drop a meat cleaver and draw some hard lines on our sprawl problem, crazy illogical things like creating a fake downtown at Southpoint and plopping multi-use centers in the middle of nowhere will continue to dominate over restoring mixed use to the inner city areas and having things like clothing stores, bookstores, sporting goods stores, shoe stores, a grocery store, a post office that doesn't close at 2pm, etc.

At the absolute least if we are going to continue to allow sprawl, then bring on substantial impact fees so the sprawl problem doesn't drain city and county revenues and we can do pro-active things. (and actually implement the various plans we spend money on that never seem to receive substantial focus or priority on seeing realized)

Getting some sort of shuttle/trolley circulator type bus system to move between NC Central, Duke, Ninth Street, and downtown would certainly seem to help and would be a clear indicator to entrepeneurs that we are serious about bringing peole to where we claim to want to see retail.

[aburtch]

Just a quick note to those who are disappointed with the "stock" nature of the video. Remember that good videos cost BIG money. The kind of money no one has right now. So for a decent promotional piece (and I would argue that is actually a very good one given the circumstances) to come out at this time is an accomplishment. I'm not familiar with the details, but I wouldn't be surprised if the piece was done pro-bono.

[Wally Town]

I'm sure that it was done pro-bono by our hometown station (the one that usually likes to disassociate itself from us). Still, one would think that WTVD's archives might contain ample footage to show a downtown street crowd from this century (maybe from during downtown's streetscape completion grand reopening?).

Perhaps the fact that WTVD appears to have used 25-year-old Centerfest footage, rather than something more current, reflects its commitment to downtown/Durham during the last quarter century.

Hopefully WTVD is (re)finding its cool.