Bull City Rising

Nasher "Shaft" screening, Barkley Hendricks exhibition free through Sunday

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke is wrapping up its many-months long exhibition "Barkley Hendricks: Birth of the Cool," a showing of paintings by the Philadelphia-born artist in what's been the first career retrospective of this post-war creative's work.

The exhibition closes this Sunday, July 13, but if you're an ID-carrying Durham resident, admission to the museum and the exhibition are free (as always, sponsored by the folks over at the Herald-Sun.) It's a good chance to see a great exhibition in its last days, and hey, if you're a Bull City resident who's never been to the Nasher, it's an opportunity to see one of the major new additions to Durham's cultural landscape.

Also, tomorrow night the Nasher is presenting a free screening of the 1971 film "Shaft" at the museum. (The screening is free for all museum patrons; non-Durhamites do have to pay to enter the Nasher.)

This 1971 film by Gordon Parks officially launched the historic Blaxploitation movement. Richard Roundtree is the ultra-cool detective in this groundbreaking film that would spawn two sequels and a big-budget remake in 2000. It’s an action-packed thrill ride through the rough-and-tumble streets of early 1970s New York City and features one of the most recognizable theme songs in movie history (for which Isaac Hayes won a best song Oscar in 1972). Based on the novel by Ernest Tidyman.

Also worth keeping on the radar: the Nasher is gearing up for the opening of "El Greco to Velazquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III" on August 21. Co-sponsored by Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, and showing only in Durham and Boston, the exhibition is being heralded as one of the most significant showings of the European masters' work in the U.S. and one of the singular art exhibitions in the southeast.

(How much traffic's expected for this little showing? Boston's MFA expected a quarter-million visitors during their run of show, while we understand that freshman orientation week planning at Duke has given logisitical consideration to such a major show opening in the midst of the move-in period.)

Exhibition tickets are now available for purchase from the Nasher's web site.

Francesca's Restaurant on Erwin Rd. to close today ahead of apartments' arrival

We've talked here before about the $75 million mixed-use development with nearly 400 apartment units slated for Erwin Rd. between the gargantuan Hock Plaza and Pavilion at Lakeview. Back in the winter, we talked about the displacement of long-time restaurant tenants Subway and Francesca's -- the quick-service Italian eatery not the gelato-and-coffee shop on Ninth -- as an eventual outcome of the redevelopment.

What was once abstract is now concrete, at least for Francesca's -- an establishment that, based on the volume of email traffic we've received here at BCR in the last few days, has a tremendously loyal following among Dukies and hospital staff. Francesca's is set to close this Friday, June 13.

As one long-time customer who wrote in to BCR noted:

This will be a great loss for the Duke campus and community, as so many of the regulars are from Duke. Some are employees and others are patients or visitors to the hospital.  It has become a meeting and gathering place with a homey atmosphere....

Everyone may not know your name (like on Cheers) but Frank (Frankie to most of his customers) knows your name and usually knows what you're going to order and is always willing to prepare special dishes for dietary or any other reason.  There are a few dishes I get all the time and he seems to know which dish I'll order on a given day.

Frankie -- that's Frank Casabianca, to be specific -- confirmed on Thursday that the establishment will close this Thursday, a few weeks before the deadline imposed under the new short-term lease afforded the business as the redevelopment crept forward.

Casabianca noted that this doesn't mark the end of the line for Francesca's, but it may mark the end of its North Carolina presence. The longtime Erwin Rd. fixture is part of a set of such businesses located largely in New Jersey, and the proprietor notes it's likely he and the establishment will relocate back to the Garden State.

If you're a fan of Francesca's, stop in on Friday to wish them adieu before the long trip back up I-95. There may be plenty of new "chain" places on Erwin to frequent, but for many, the most frequent destination of all looks to be closing shop for good.

American Tobacco Starbucks to close June 9

Looks like the report that came across in the comments here yesterday morning was accurate: The Starbucks at American Tobacco is currently scheduled to close June 9.

The ATC coffee shop has been operated by the Compass Group, a provider of on-campus dining services at Duke, which agreed to run the Starbucks as part of its campus restaurant deal, as ARAMARK had before its contract with the university expired.

We've reached out to American Tobacco GM Paul Pope, CBC real estate head Michael Goodmon, and CBC media relations for word as to the future of the space, but there's no word back from the crew yet.

Reportedly the presence of a coffee shop at the ATC has been a hot-button issue over the years for CBC magnate Jim Goodmon, who's reportedly given input in the past to everything from the store's hours of operation to the brief closure during the ARAMARK-Compass transition.

Given the long lines most mornings for coffee, I'd wager to say that a coffee shop can be successful in the space, though perhaps not so much so as to meet the standards of an outside operator who is likely to have little interest in such a one-off business. More as we learn it on this one.

Green Tango set to add third Durham location off Erwin Rd.

We received a heads-up this weekend from the good people at Green Tango, alerting us to their business' news that also ran in Saturday's Business Buzz column over at the H-S. The Durham-based salad restaurant will open its third outlet in September over at Pavilion East at Lakeview, the Duke-adjacent mixed-use center with TGI Friday's, Chipotle, and Dunkin' Donuts. (And a Noodles and Company soon to open.)

In the midst of a hegemony of chain restaurants, it's good to see a local business set up just its third location here in the Bull City. (Green Tango also has locations on Shannon Rd. and in Northgate's food court.) If you're not familiar with them, Green Tango provides quick, fresh salads that make a decent lunch stop.

Given the sometimes out-the-door crowds at Chipotle and the massive employee base just a few hundred feet away at the hospitals and Duke's campus, we'd be surprised if this didn't become a very busy outlet for the Green Tango folks indeed.

A late summer/early fall opening is targeted for the latest Green Tango. If you're just wilting at the idea of waiting for more details, check out the Green Tango blog documenting their construction and opening process.

Duke to move Physician Assistant program just outside downtown

Buried in the Herald-Sun's news briefs today is confirmation of something that's been working its way through the rumor mill for about nine months now: Duke is planning to move its Physician Assistant program (which currently enrolls about 115 students) to the old Blue Cross-Blue Shield building at S. Duke and Morehead.

The building recently began undergoing renovations in advance of the move, which is scheduled for January 2009 according the H-S' business section. (Driving by on S. Duke, you can see that interior walls have been cleared in advance of the renovation of the 32,000 sq. ft. space.)

As of last summer, rumors in the downtown development community were that the program was looking for space in downtown proper, perhaps the second phase of the West Village project. A West Village home could have had an even bigger impact than the arrival of the Art Institute at American Tobacco: PA program students typically come from outside Durham and are here just two years, which would have made them a natural target market as apartment tenants at the West Village complex. (All of which would have added 24 hour live/work/shop/dine residents to the area, helping to stimulate business demand.)

Still, the proximity of 800 S. Duke to downtown should still help create some of that impact on Durham's revitalizing core. The H-S notes that the larger footprint of the old BCBS building will help Duke -- which literally invented the entire practice area in the 1960s -- expand to a larger student body to boot.

"Bending Space" Durham/Georges Rousse doc at Nasher Thu. (6pm, 7:30pm)

"Bending Space," the documentary chronicling the extraordinary volunteer effort that brought Georges Rousse to Durham for a series of art installations in vacant downtown spaces, will receive two free screenings on Thursday night at the Nasher Museum of Art over at Duke.

The one-hour production by Durham filmmakers Kenny Dalsheimer and Penelope Maunsell focuses on Rousse's 2006 visit to the Bull City, a massively successful public art project that was pulled off with volunteer efforts but no public, grant or foundation dollars. Learn more about the film or see clips over at its web site.

Seating is very limited, but there will be two showings (6:00pm and 7:30pm.) There's no admission fee, but tax-deductible donations to help broaden the distribution of the film will be accepted.

It's official: ADF to use DPAC in 2009

This morning's Herald-Sun made it official: The American Dance Festival, entering its 75th season overall and its 31st season in Durham, will in fact begin using the Durham Performing Arts Center in 2009 for the festival, replacing the ungainly Page Auditorium on Duke's campus.

Which brings a collective sigh of relief in the umpteenth chapter of the long and at times "interesting" relationship between ADF and the Bull City, a relationship which has occasionally seen hemming and hawing about the long-term future of the ADF in Durham given questions over event funding, support from the Bull City, and so on.

As recently as March (per this Indy Weekly article), negotiations between the DPAC operations team and ADF weren't complete, and as of last fall there were still active questions as to whether the festival would make use of the theater. Ironic, since ex-Duke prez and former N.C. governor Terry Sanford both lured the ADF to Durham in the 1970s and initially pitched the concept for what morphed into the DPAC in the 1990s as a home for the festival and for the arts more broadly, a story Gary has told well over at Endangered Durham.

Early concepts for the DPAC would have included a smaller black-box theater venue as a sideline designed largely to meet the dance festival's needs, though the predictably protracted negotiations made this a non-starter.

Eccentricities aside, the ADF has become a central part of summers in Durham for three decades, and it's good to see the DPAC will in fact become one venue for the festival. One should expect that the ADF's summer schedule shouldn't slot up too much time that'll be used by Broadway performances and, er, Kenny Rogers concerts.

Durham lowers drought restrictions, just in time for Wed. water forum

Not surprisingly, the City today announced a loosening of the mandatory water restrictions that have been in place since fall in response to drought conditions -- conditions that have lessened given the last month's rains, a series of downpours that have brought Durham's reservoir levels from a low of 11% capacity in December to full-capacity again now.

To the credit of City leaders, the announcement from Patrick Baker did not return the Bull City to a restriction-free environment, something you could sense being requested in many recent Herald-Sun op-eds. After all, the theory goes, if the reservoirs are full and we can't store any more water, why not just go back to a no-restriction world?

More realistically, though, Baker notes that "there's a new normal for the City," given the fact that stream flows have still been uneven and the higher-usage months are pending with the onset of summer. And, after all, there's still an excellent chance the dry weather will persist this summer, too.

The solution? Durham's moved back to Stage III restrictions, which again allow outdoor watering from the public supply, from 5-8 am or 5-8 pm on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Restaurant water is still supposed to be by-request-only, while home car washing is still restricted. Local bloggers should also note that "athletic turf is eligible for special consideration" given the special watering needed "to ensure player safety." (We'll call this the, er, East Campus LAX field rule, no?)

Reminder: Downtown Durham conference tonight at Duke

A reminder: The Duke Real Estate Club's Downtown Durham conference is scheduled for this evening at 7pm at the Levine Science Research Center on Duke's West Campus. Parking is available at the Bryan Center garage off Science Drive; you then need to find you way to the Love Auditorium within the LSRC. (A difficult challenge on Duke's sprawling West Campus -- but hey, any downtown vets who could navigate the mess of pre-renovation city center streets should find this a breeze.)

Dunkin' Donuts opens April 7

The Dunkin' Donuts on Erwin Rd. at the Pavilion East at Lakeview officially opens Monday, April 7 at 5 a.m., according to the Herald-Sun. The paper will also have coupons on BOGO deals, free donuts, and cheap coffee. (Thanks to Monica Chen, the H-S's erstwhile and able local business reporter, for the heads-up.)

Yes, I know this is a slight obsession on my part, but I also know I'm not the only one who's so interested, based on comments others have shared with me. So who's gonna be there for the early-morning grand opening? (Or is that a bridge too far in DD geekiness, like wearing a faux-Starfleet uniform to a comics convention? No, before you ask, I've never done that.)