Sometimes Durham -- especially downtown Durham -- finds its own new-found success creates its own unimagined problems.
Take trash and recycling bins, for instance.
Ten years ago, few might have worried about where those were situated or how they worked... and the idea of worrying about whether carts would get in the way of pedestrians or, heaven forbid, sidewalk cafés would have been kind of putting the -- no pun intended -- cart before the redevelopment horse.
Yet as downtown's gotten slightly more hopping in recent years. And downtown Durham's Partners Against Crime - District 5 (PAC5) on Thursday will review a plan meant to corral up solid waste into fixed deposit stations instead of just taking it to the curb.
Mind you, it's not just meant to address roll carts getting in the way on sidewalks and the edges of roads.
Plastic bags on the sidewalks, for instance, are "hard to handle safely, create more odors, attract more vermin, and look worse than the carts," note PAC5's Scott Harmon and Downtown Durham Inc.'s Melissa Muir in their write-up of the proposal, which comes after about three years of concern and one year of more intensive study and discussion among stakeholders.
Another plus: stations will have the ability to be secured and locked to prevent rummaging-through or its similarly troubling cousin, illegal dumping.
As proposed, each property within the Downtown Loop -- save a few larger, exempt properties like the Marriott/Convention Center, shown with hatch-marks on the map above -- will get assigned to one of several existing or new dumpster or roll-cart depots, based on quasi-block areas.
Most residential and commercial properties will end up with a waste station within one block's walk of their building. Collection would take place from the designated sites as much as three times a week based on demand.
Thoughts? Concerns? Ideas? The plan will get an airing at Thursday's PAC5 meeting (5:30pm, Blue Coffee on Corcoran St.) Although downtowners have been following this one closely for some time, it'll be the last public information session before the plans heads up to the city manager and City Council for discussion and approval.
It sounds good to me. Walking a block to drop the trash off is standard in lots of places, and for good reason.
Posted by: Rob | November 19, 2009 at 08:13 AM
I'd like to see the report incorporate concerns for sidewalk/roadway pedestrian and vehicular safety. Couldn't hurt, could it? Besides, it'd be nice to get such things (a focus on pedestrians) on the Council's radar from time to time.
Posted by: Sunny Daye | November 19, 2009 at 08:44 AM