Bull City Rising

Durham City Council won’t act on 751 South until pending lawsuits end

The Durham City Council decided early this afternoon to defer a possible utility extension to the controversial proposed 751 South development. 

The council voted to wait until current lawsuits about the Southern Durham project come to a close, which staff estimated could take anywhere from 18 months to three years. The council was motivated at least in part by fear of becoming entangled in litigation itself. 

“It’s clear to me that moving ahead now before the litigation is resolved does raise expectations and anxiety,” council member Mike Woodard said at a special meeting on the subject that was held today.

“I think there’s just way too many questions about this with confusing and uncertain answers about constitutional issues,” he added. “That’s always a red flag for me.” 

“I just don’t understand why we would move forward,” council member Diane Catotti said. “I don’t see the advantage to the city.” 

The decision against extending utilities makes it unclear when Southern Durham Development might be able to start building 751 South, a high-density project that could include 200 residential units, 125,000 square feet of shops and 25,000 square feet of offices by the three-year mark. The project can’t be built to that scale without water and sewer service, and the city of Durham is the entity most likely to provide it. 

A group of Durham residents have sued the county over its controversial decision to rezone the 751 South property. The new zoning permits dense development. 

Opponents of the project say that the property is so close to Jordan Lake that its high-density facilities will harm water quality thanks to unfiltered stormwater runoff. 

Southern Durham Development and its allies, however, assert that the project can be built in such a way that the lake is protected. They also tout the development as being a potential source of 3,000 new jobs. 

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"Bargain Furniture" building to get a Pit below, Underground above?

In one of the opening scenes of the dreadful, horrendous, abysmal, and also badly-acted film "Main Street" -- there's a reason, friends, you haven't seen this straight-to-DVD movie in theaters anywhere -- Amber Tamblyn's character drives her late-80s beater car up in front of the Bargain Furniture building downtown, checking her voicemail.

(If I were Tamblyn, I'd be waiting to hear a message from my agent, apologizing for booking me in a piece-of-crap film.)

The shuttered furniture store makes a perfect backdrop for Main Street's message of Southern discomfort, of old money gone broke and new money gone toxic; it's a symbol of desertion and loss and emptiness.

But no longer, it seems. There's activity downstairs and possibly up for the building, long controlled by Raleigh entrepreneur Greg Hatem and Durham architect and developer John Warasila.

In an ironic turnabout, the American Underground -- the incubator space that's nicely humanized a pit of a basement in the Strickland and Crowe buildings at Am'bacco -- may be expanding to the upper floors of 309 E. Chapel Hill St., while an a Durham location of the Raleigh barbecue restaurant called The Pit may be opening up on the ground floor.

Bigger and better? Expanded CenterFest to feature broader spectrum of attractions, powered by wide-ranging gamut of ambitions

The state’s oldest arts festival will take a hiatus this year in order to reinvent itself. 

The 38th annual CenterFest Arts Festival will be held not in September (as the event Website still erroneously states) but in 2012, officials with the Durham Arts Council and partner organizations announced this morning. 

“We want to reshape it and grow it into something even more exciting that reflects the tremendous creativity going on in Durham today,” Sherry DeVries, the executive director of the council, said at the announcement. 

So what does that mean in practical terms? The expanded event will feature an enlarged name — tentatively, CenterFest: Festival of Arts, Music, Food and Creativity. That reflects what should be a broader palette of attractions. 

“Edible arts” will be among the added features, showcasing the city’s foodie culture as well as local brews and beer gardens and in-state wineries. Organizers also want to add hands-on features such as arts and fine craft demonstrations; more entertainment stages and venues; a Saturday-night “music party”; and “showcases for design, gaming and technology arts.” 

“There’s so many cool, creative things happening in Durham right now,” DeVries said. “We want to incorporate as many of those things as we possibly can in this process.” 

Eat, drink and be bullish: Downtown food scene expansion continues

Downtown Durham is continuing to add its menu of culinary offerings. The expansion is bringing full-fledged restaurants as well as other types of establishments. 

The latest addition to the downtown food scene arrived earlier this month at 405 E. Chapel Hill St. That’s the home of Reliable Cheese, a new fromagerie aimed at lovers of pressed milk curds. 

As owner Patrick Coleff, 34, was getting the store in order before its debut, he talked for a few minutes about his background. The Cleveland native originally had a day job in legal publishing and a night job as a line cook. “I loved what I was doing in the evening, hated with was doing in the day,” he said. 

Coleff decided to become a cheesemonger, which work he pursued for four years in New York City. He and his wife moved to Durham in 2009. 

The shop will stock a relatively small number of products — some 50 varieties of small-producer American and European cheeses, 20 different meats, 20 different wines (selected with assistance from the Wine Authorities) and 20 different beers, including at least one line of locally brewed beverages. 

Coleff, who will be hiring a part-time staffer, is making sandwiches at his shop. “I love deli sandwiches,” he said. “No one around here’s doing them.” 

And customers will be able to take advantage of his dairy expertise. Coleff is excited about exposing Durhamites to a number of new and exotic tastes. “I know a lot about cheese so they don’t have to,” he quipped. 

The shop will provide samples, sells cheese plates and will cut cheese to order. It has opened to at least one positive early notice from the Carpe Durham blog.  

Cleanup crews appear poised to start work on the Liberty Warehouse

Driving by the beseiged Liberty Warehouse this afternoon, I was pleased to see some new signage going up on the building.

Last time someone stuck a sign on the building, it was a "CONDEMNED" sticker in light of roof damage back in May -- damage that led several non-profits paying below-market rates to have to find new digs for their organizations.

Over a contentious few weeks, Greenfire Development faced condemnation proceedings based on leak complaints by at least one tenant; saw (a few weeks later) an actual partial collapse of the roof after a rain storm; found itself in the center of the bulls-eye for public criticism over the building's condition; and pressed back on accusers, noting it has rehabbed and brought many once-dilapidated buildings back to productive use, and saying that the Liberty's collapse was related to other roof problems that weren't apparent from visible inspection.

A demolition-by-neglect hearing set for June, though, was cancelled after Greenfire pledged to restore the building's condition.

Today's signage? Banners from BELFOR Property Restoration, which bills itself "the worldwide leader in disaster recovery and property restoration."

BELFOR -- whose portfolio includes a range of residential and commercial services, including drying and dehumidification, water and storm damage remediation, mold remediation, and environmental services -- has offices in Raleigh, Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Hickory and Wilmington.

BELFOR is the leading global restoration and repair company. We analyze and restore fire, water and storm damage of every kind and on any scale. We enable business and private customers to overcome the consequences of damage quickly, smoothly and cost-effectively. We invest every effort in minimizing business interruptions and getting things back to normal. We draw on more than 35 years of experience, use the latest technical equipment and employ highly qualified people. After all, our assignment is more than just a job: the survival of your assets is at stake.

For Durham, this seems to be a sign that the survival of one of the community's historic assets may be moving at least a bit forward.

Transit plans getting one more public review before board votes this month

It will be years, if ever, before a Triangle Transit train pulls into any station in Durham, Orange or Wake counties. But a plan for investing more than $2 billion in regional rail and bus transit is about to pull out of the station. 

The Durham County mass transportation investment plan could be adopted as soon as this month by leaders of three key groups: the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization, which oversees transportation strategies; Triangle Transit, which operates DATA bus service in Durham as well as regional bus service, and which would likely operate any new rail system; and the Board of County Commissioners. 

The first two organizations will both consider the plan on June 22; county commissioners will hold public hearings on the plan itself and on a referendum for a half-cent sales tax on June 13. Commission action on either or both issues may come on June 27. 

Durham’s share of the plan would amount to about $1.4 billion. A quarter of the project revenue is expected to come from the government of North Carolina, half would likely come from the federal government, and the remainder would be paid by a combination of sources including the half-cent sales tax, vehicle registration increases of $10 and a rental car tax. 

The new levy would not apply to housing, food, medical, utility or gasoline purchases, thus somewhat blunting the regressive nature of the sales tax. 

Residence Inn ready to accommodate Trinity Park residents? Once-contentious negotiations seem near an end

A proposed hotel that once bitterly divided one of Durham’s tonier neighborhoods now seems closer to securing support from residents. 

On Wednesday evening, the Trinity Park Neighborhood Association board and a number of interested residents learned about a deal that a group of members has worked out with developers of the Residence Inn proposed for 1108 W. Main St. between North Buchanan Boulevard and Watts Street. 

While the presentation didn’t put every concern about the project to rest, it did result in a consensus that negotiators have struck an arrangement neighbors can accept. 

“This is such a huge credit to you who have negotiated this,” Laura Gutman, who lives about a block north of the hotel site on Watts, said after the deal was presented. “I mean, this is just night and day in what looks like an outcome. It’s just amazing when you think of ... the agony that the neighborhood went through fruitlessly.” 

She said that the deal “looks like an outcome” because it remains subject to a yet-to-be-scheduled vote by the neighborhood association board -- not to mention ultimate support from elected officials.

The negotiating process involved some give and take by both sides, with the developer agreeing to some big alterations to its initial plans. But as important as the process has been for this one project, it may have even more significance for future projects. 

This result, if it is finalized, will send a signal to other potential developers, said Dan Jewell. He’s a partner in the Coulter Jewell Thomas landscape architecture and planning firm, which dropped out of the Residence Inn project before the negotiations with the neighborhood began. 

“There can be a win-win situation” when developers go to work in Trinity Park, Jewell told others at the board meeting. “Because I’ve been involved in those groups where it’s always just ‘no, no, no,’ and it’s going to be a fight to the end... This is a going to be a great precedent.” 

Comprehensive plan update gets another go-around this afternoon

Durhamites will get a chance to examine and potentially to influence one of the county’s most important planning documents this afternoon. 

The six-year-old Durham Comprehensive Plan is about halfway through its first major revision. In one way or another, the document touches upon nearly every major aspect of life in Durham County. It has 18 chapters covering land use, housing, historic preservation, commerce, conservation and the environment, transportation, recreation, education, capital projects, and public infrastructure and buildings, among other topics. 

Each chapter briefly examines relevant issues, lays out goals and details a few strategies for realizing those goals. These guiding principles often take up relatively little space. The text of the housing chapter, for instance, runs 11 pages, of which about half deal with ensuring that subsidized housing is distributed more or less evenly throughout the county. 

This part of the 18-month revision process is the time for the first of two scheduled rounds of public comments. When the next round comes, in the fall, a draft plan revision should be complete. The process is being led by Laura Woods, a senior planner in the City-County Planning Department who helped create the original plan. 

Greenfire denies that "neglected property maintenance" played role in Liberty Warehouse problems

The day-to-day saga of the Liberty Warehouse continued today with an update from the Triangle Business Journal's Monica Chen, who reported an update on the building's condition that emanated from Greenfire Development head Michael Lemanski.

In the story, published this afternoon at TBJ, a "drainage system" with design issues and accumulated "deterioration" problems described as not visible under ordinary inspection were blamed, though a final analysis is still due in several weeks. And Lemanski tells the paper that the roof collapse had nothing to do with any management issues or failures on the downtown developer's part:

Lemanski had a response to chatter of Greenfire’s management of the buildings that some say contributed to the roof cave-in: “There have been rumors that there have been neglected property maintenance, but that has not been determined to be a cause of the event.”

If that remains the case after the final data is all in, it'd be an important rebuttal to a message that's emanated in the public sphere in recent weeks -- though an explanation that will nonetheless seem to have to overcome public opinion and the perception, at least, of Occam's Razor.

After all, the roof collapse weekend before last came just a few weeks after a portion of the building was condemned by the City for, as The Durham News' Virginia Bridges put it, a "rotted roof and excessive water penetration," with local non-profit Liberty Arts saying that they had to evacuate water from their area at every rainfall.

Coincidence, the late April complaints and partial condemnation, and the May roof collapse?

If it should be the case when all's said and done, with luck like that, might I suggest the folks at Greenfire might want to avoid buying any lottery tickets anytime soon?

Lender-forced property auction marks partial unwinding of one long-held Durham rental property empire

The most-popular item for viewing on the Triangle web site of the LoopNet commercial real estate system last week was the announcement of a lender forced estate auction, noting an early June date when 48 different apartment units in the Bull City will hit the auction block.

The count includes twelve units in three quadplexes on Atka Court, the tiny cul-de-sac near Holloway St. where thirteen year old Shakanah China was killed in a drive-by shooting last week -- the latest violent episode on the street, the N&O noted, where a homicide occurred in 1995, a survived shooting took place in 2009, and where DPD calls for service have reportedly been common.

The Atka Ct. units are swept up in what appears from the LoopNet posting to be a partial unwinding of the real estate empire of Bobby Roberts, the one-time Durham developer who claimed in a much-covered court case in the late 1990s that he had built more than five thousand homes in Durham in a career dating back to the 1950s.

The 79-year-old Roberts died last summer; less than a year later, these forty-eight units are hitting the market.

And like Atka Court, which residents say has long been plagued by shootings, some of these properties are or are adjacent to properties that have seen more than their share of crime problems, a search of news reports suggests.