Bull City Rising

Clement picks up a (Darius) Little more competition for Ward 2 seat

And the challengers keep on coming.

Darius Little announced on Facebook that he'll be filing for City Council, making him the fifth entrant (fourth challenger) for the Ward 2 seat held by Howard Clement.

From Darius' candidacy announcement:

For some time now, the Durham City Council has increasingly distanced itself from the ideals of its citizens.

Our groans for knowledge, help and support, have continually been drowned-out by constant excuses from our elected officials -- those whom we have placed in office to work for us, but instead, have fallen victim to the political cancer of complacency.

Our recent Presidential Election demonstrated that people across America are tired of "Politics as Usual." We are no longer going to sit back and allow our public offices, which were created to safeguard the health, morals, safety and general welfare and convenience of the public, to become the feeding ground of personal greed and arrogance, for a select few.

Clement draws yet another Ward 2 challenger in Sandra Howell

Increasingly, the Ward 2 race for City Council is resembling an episode of Sesame Street -- one in which Count von Count plays a big part.

Remember when we here at BCR said on Saturday that at least a fourth challenger would be entering the race to challenge Clement, who's trying to win a re-election bid that would bring him into a fourth decade of service on Council?

Well, Sandra Howell filed for the seat today (H/T to the Indy for breaking the news.) And Howell wasn't the person we were referring to here last week.

Which means, we're looking at five, count 'em, FIVE candidates for the seat.

There's little about Sandra Howell in the public record; it appears she applied to serve on the city/county merger commission in 2000, and has worked as a cosmetologist and DPS substitute teacher. We'll post more as we know it.

For the carefully-cadenced Clement, simply getting out the names of all his lengthening list of challengers may be enough to consume any candidate-debate opening statements, the way things are shaping up.

Sneak peek: Museum of Life & Science set to launch new dinosaur trail

Lost at times in the hubbub and publicity over the aged brontosaurus that stands tall as the remnants of the Museum of Life and Science's original 1960s-vintage dinosaur trail has been the Museum's long-awaited construction project -- the completion of the brand-new, and scientifically up-to-date, new trail being built adjacent to the bear, wolf and lemur exhibits at the Murray Ave. center.

The old trail had a roughly thirty-year run, closing after Hurricane Fran toppled the titans in 1996, by which time the carefully crafted work of Richard Wescott had fallen a bit behind modern paleontological science.

Saturday marked the first chance to preview the exhibit, which opens to the general public on July 25; Museum members got an invitation-only sneak peek, as did members of the local blogger and Twitter communities who'd mentioned the Museum in their writing in the past year. Both groups were well-represented at the exhibits first sneak-peek.

Whether that was visitors' first look animals like the albertosaurus above, or their chance to see us tasty humans and start figurin' out their meal schedule, we're not sure yet.

Donald Hughes to challenge Cole-McFadden for Ward 1 seat

Last week, Howard Clement was getting most of the love (or is it love?) from other candidates, standing for most of the week as the only candidate for this fall's municipal election that had opposition from other candidates; he's expected to have three opponents at least by the week's end.

(Bill Bell did attract a past opponent, Steven Williams, for the mayor's race late last week, although the odds of anyone making a serious dent on Bell seem slim.)

That changes this week, with Donald Hughes set to enter the Ward 1 race against Mayor pro tem Cora Cole-McFadden.

While Hughes is a newcomer to local electoral politics -- he'll turn 22 just a few weeks before the election -- his entry into the Ward 1 race has been one of the most handicapped, and watched, events of this political years.

BCR first heard the rumors of a possible Hughes run late in 2008; the UNC Greensboro graduate worked as an intern for Charlotte/Triad-area Congressman Mel Watt and was en route back to the Bull City, where he attended Eastway Elementary and Hillside High before heading off to Greensboro for college.

And Hughes confirmed in an email this evening that he'll be throwing his hat into the ring this week. A Facebook event invitation indicates that Hughes will hold a rally kicking off his campaign this Wednesday morning at 10:30am.

Bell picks up one challenger; Clement to gain his third

Mayor Bill Bell got a not-unexpected challenger on Friday, with Steven Williams getting into the race.

Williams initially ran against Bell in 2005 but withdraw; the H-S cites family reasons, the N&O cites his residence having been just outside the city limits at the time. The Walltown native and graduate of Hillside High and St. Augustine's College, currently the Americas logistics manager for a high-tech company in the region, cites crime, economc growth and youth as key platform elements.

Williams certified that he'd spend less than $3,000 on the race. Frankly, after sitting City Councilman Thomas Stith couldn't defeat Bell after spending well into the six figures two years ago, it's difficult to imagine circumstances under which hizonner would be vulnerable, save for some muni-pocalyptic event.

Meantime, BCR has learned that the crowded Ward 2 race -- which already features Pastor Sylvester Williams and libertarian Matt Drew challenging the quarter-century-plus tenure of Howard Clement -- will see at least one more challenger.

While as yet unannounced, the fourth entrant in Clement's district comes even as Ward 1's Cora Cole-McFadden and Ward 3's Mike Woodard have attracted no challengers.

Keep an eye out next week for more entrants -- because with one week remaining to file, this race is by no means over.

Biweekly recycling collection, four-day trash pickup starts Monday -- don't fret if you don't have a rollout cart yet

Durham's revised solid waste program starts Monday, bringing with it several big changes:

• Household solid waste will now be collected Monday-Thursday, with former Friday pick-ups moving to Wednesday;
• Recycling moves to every-other-week using a larger (95-gallon) curbside roll cart;
• Yard waste and bulky items should be placed on the curb the same day as solid waste collection, and will be picked up the following day -- the presence of the items on your regular pick-up day triggers next-day collection.

We here at the blog got a bit worried on Friday, since Chez BCR hadn't yet received its new recycling roll-cart -- and we haven't seen many around Trinity Park and other in-town neighborhoods. What to do?

Donald Long, director of Durham's solid waste department, explained in a brief interview Friday that while crews have been working in recent weeks to deliver recycling carts throughout the city, their focus has been on those neighborhoods that are on the "blue week" for pick-up, starting the week of July 13.

"Red week" neighborhoods -- which includes much of central and eastern Durham -- get their first recycling collection the week of July 20, and roll-cart distribution is slated to continue through that week to reach all households. (Click the image at left for a larger version.)

Trinity Park debates PERC chemical intrusion on one-time W. Club Blvd. dry-cleaning site

Wednesday night's Trinity Park Neighborhood Association meeting provided one of the first public forums for discussing the contamination of a one-time dry cleaner located in the old BB&T bank building at W. Club and Watts.

The heavily-attended meeting largely provided a platform for North Carolina's Division of Environmental and Natural Resources (DENR) to try to assuage public fears evinced on listserv debates and a recent Herald-Sun article about the contamination, which has been under review on the site since 2006.

During the meeting, DENR staff and their contractor noted that harmful traces of a dry cleaning chemical had been found around the rear of the building and was migrating less than ten feet a year northward towards Northgate Mall's parking lot, but sought to reassure the public that there were no signs that contamination had spread towards neighboring homes on Dollar and Watts.

While the meeting was largely framed around the science of the contamination of perc (a common dry cleaning chemical), DENR representatives did come under fire from some in attendance over the time elapsed between the start of the state's investigation and the building's closure to a storefront church that had rented it -- and from a representative of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, which criticized the underpinnings of the state's approach on perc cleanup.

Greenfire hitches Woolworth site project to Chicago architect's rising star, wins Historic Comm. approval

A hat tip to the N&O's Jim Wise, who seems to be everywhere these days covering this story or that for the paper's western Triangle newsroom. (Perhaps Jim's discovered Mike Woodard's secret robo-clone machine, allowing a simulacrum of the City Councilman to appear at every civic event in town?)

Jim appears to have been the only man-on-the-scene reporting on yesterday's Historic Preservation Commission meeting, where Greenfire's revised project plan for the old Woolworth site at Corcoran, Main and Parrish Sts. downtown got a unanimous seal of approval from the commission.

One big piece of news: Carl Webb's statement during the hearing that the project is moving forward with possible tenants as the wind behind the developers' back:

Greenfire needs to finish the building in two years, Webb said.

"We have prospective tenants," he said. "That's part of the reason we're trying to move as aggressively as we can. ... We have opportunities sooner than later."

Wise's reporting also reveals the name of the architect who designed the project (a source of much curiosity around the well-received design) -- Robert Bistry.

Bistry, it turns out, is a Chicago-based architect described in one profile as a "talented young architect" formerly with DeStefano & Partners, a major firm in the Windy City. Bistry left the firm earlier this decade to form Built Form Architecture as a founding partner and one of six principals there.

Amtrak station opens with on-time departure

The Bull City's new Amtrak station -- relocated across the tracks from an old modular unit to a spiffy new 10,000 sq. ft. space inside West Village's Walker Warehouse -- opened on time this morning.

And the two-dozen or so passengers heading out to Charlotte on the morning Piedmont train were greeted to a much-upgraded experience from the station days of old... not to mention a number of media and NCDOT types there to check out the first departure. Below: the train pulls away from Durham Station as passengers' family and local media members watch.

It was my first time heading into the station, and there's no denying that the new station is a far more comfortable place to wait for a train than the tired Amshack had been.

Durham's new Amtrak station opens Wednesday

It's a couple of days still until Friday's ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new Amtrak station in West Village's Walker Warehouse, but the facility will get its soft-launch tomorrow in its beautiful and spacious 10,000 sq. ft. digs.

NCDOT has announced the station will open for business tomorrow, Wednesday July 7 at 6:30am. A 7:22am Piedmont train's departure to Charlotte, will be the first passenger train to make use of the new facility. The new station will open a half-hour earlier than the old station.

Passengers who arrive at the old "mobile home-style" station on W. Chapel Hill St. will see their new destination waiting across the tracks at West Village (601 W. Main).

The official ribbon-cutting for the station is set for 2pm Friday.

Update: NBC 17 points out that Durham's station is the fifth-busiest in North Carolina, and that the "waiting room" in the new station will be the state's largest.