Bull City Rising

Casilly/Konhaus residence/gallery/studio featured in NY Times

Both Ellen Casilly and Frank Konhaus are well-known around the Bull City; Ellen as an architect, Frank as what used to almost be a sole-source purveyor of audiovisual at Duke and other schools through Kontek, and together as patrons of the arts here in town.

Most notably that took the form a couple of years ago in their initiative to bring French photographer Georges Rousse to Durham to create art installations in then-empty spaces downtown (one of which, the old Baldwin department store's first floor space, is now the kitchen at Revolution.)  But that patronage of the arts didn't begin or end with Rousse -- and neither has their quest to create the perfect home in Durham.

It's a home that ended up getting featured this week in The New York Times. And it contains, fittingly, an artist-in-residence suite amidst its wooded lot in Duke Forest, a space where Konhaus and Casilly can host visiting creatives in an 800 sq. ft. studio that connects to their residence by a bridge that itself contains an art gallery.

Check out the Times article for more -- and don't miss this elaborate photo slideshow, which shows the beautiful "Cassilhaus" home that took the couple three years to design and a year to build (once the hard-to-find lot the sought was finally found.)

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.

Landlord-tenant bill passes General Assembly, avoids systematic inspections ban; landlords get water submetering

Amidst all the legislation being followed in the General Assembly, one bill that's now passed the state House and Senate has garnered relatively little notice: a new landlord-tenant bill slogged out after deep negotiations between the landlord lobby and groups like the progressive NC Justice Center and ACORN.

Advocates for a systematic rental property inspection program -- the possibility of which had been under threat in early discussions about the bill -- can rest easy. The bill does not include language that would preclude Neighborhood Improvement Services (or similar municipal agencies in other cities) from implementing such a program.

The bill also implements minimum-housing standards, but Durham City already has such standards, so there's no impact there. They will apply in Durham County, however, which previously (according to a BCR source) was not covered by such standards, which require structural integrity, working water and heat, and a rat-free residence, among other basics.

The win for landlords? Water submetering. Landlords will, once the rules phase in and leases roll over, be able to bill back water charges to tenants on properties more than twenty years old.

Old Bull/Noell escape foreclosure proceedings, while N&O tells tale of Blue Devils Partners woes

The weekend brought a fair amount of news on the downtown development front; neither of the key stories in the Herald-Sun or the N&O brought the matter of next steps for American Tobacco's Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse outpost or the future of West Village to a conclusion, but each offered interesting nuggets of news on what's happening downtown.

First, and most importantly: this morning's scheduled auctioning-off of the Old Bull and Noell buildings at American Tobacco is off, the sheriff's office told the H-S' Monica Chen on Friday. The buildings had been slated for auction after contractor Code Electric, which was reportedly owed a six-figure debt for their work on the building, perfected a lien on the structures several weeks back.

All of which has been maddening we suspect to Capitol Broadcasting, which sunk tens of millions into American Tobacco with little real estate experience and delivered a high-quality, successful project, only to see the much more "experienced" national Struever Bros. stumble so badly at the part of ATC sold to them by the Goodmons several years back.

According to Chen's reporting, Downtown Durham Inc. has been working with others to try to find a better outcome than foreclosure for the Noell and Old Bull buildings, with DDI's Bill Kalkhof telling the H-S that "two local companies were interested in taking the two buildings off Struever's hands." One was Durham-based, one was not -- but Capitol Broadcasting apparently wasn't among the two developers.

Durham INC honors neighborhood hero award winners

It was a full house in Rigsbee Hall downtown last Thursday night, as the Inter-Neighborhood Council celebrated two years' worth of Neighborhood Hero awards -- and had a celebration of its own history to boot.

Besides the thirty-eight Durhamites nominated by their fellow neighbors for the INC's honor, the INC celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary at the bash, which moved to the Rigsbee St. downtown event space after a number of years at the Washington Duke Inn.

BOCC vice-chair Ellen Reckhow and Mayor pro tem Cora Cole-McFadden presented the INC with proclamations from their respective bodies commemorating the anniversary of INC, which has through its history provided one approach to galvanizing and supporting neighborhood issues.

City manager Tom Bonfield was the night's guest of honor and participated in the distribution of awards. Bill Anderson emceed the event again this year.

East Durham named one of America's "best old-house neighborhoods" by This Old House

More kudos for the Bull City -- and this time, they come east of downtown.

This Old House magazine has named 51 neighborhoods in the US and Canada as their "Best Old-House Neighborhoods," awarding the honor based on "architectural diversity, craftsmanship of the homes, and the preservation momentum in the area as well as neighborhood amenities including walkability, safety and community."

East Durham was the winner for North Carolina and a choice in the fixer-upper category, with the magazine noting the availability of bungalows for under $30,000 and two-story Victorians under $70,000 -- all in close proximity to RTP, and with the state's generous historic tax credit available.

City completes cleanup of beleaguered Juniper St. site

It was just a few short months ago that Public Works director Katie Kalb was getting grilled, with residents of PAC1 in East Durham turning up the heat while their voices sizzled with complaints over a city street paving dump site that had been set up on a vacant lot across from the Albright community garden.

The PAC1 Coffee with Council session this year gave residents a chance to bring up the matter, and they seemed to relish the opportunity, with Council members Cole-McFadden and Clement turning icy cold in their remonstrances to the administration for the dusty eyesore's ongoing presence near a playground.

All of that changed this weekend with a celebration event on Juniper St. The only things getting grilled were hamburgers; the relish was for the hot dogs (mustard, too); and buns were being snacked on, not seared.

James Scott Farrin law firm may fill out Diamond View II, sez N&O

The next time Wool E. Bull's flips over that deathtrap Road Runner car puttering around the outfield -- or the first time some enterprising "Carts in the Park" frisbee player trips over an in-ground Bose outdoor speaker -- the first sight they look at when they gaze skyward might prompt them to think of that ubiquitous message in the TV promos:

"Have you been injured?"

Yes, the local personal injury law firm James Scott Farrin is eyeing downtown Durham's Diamond View II, according to this morning's report from the N&O's enterprising real estate writer Jack Hagel:

[The firm] is close to a deal that would put it in at least 50,000 square feet at Diamond View II, beyond the outfield of the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. That's at least 25 percent more than the space it leases at Imperial Center, off Interstate 40. The firm is expected to move out of most of its Imperial offices later this year or early next....

Farrin has a few years left on its lease at Imperial. But because few other companies are growing, landlords are offering more perks to plug holes in their buildings.

As part of the Farrin deal, Diamond View owner Capitol Broadcasting is offering a few months of free rent. And Capitol is expected to cover some of Farrin's rent at Imperial until a tenant can be found to sublease the space. And Farrin may get its name on the building, facing the hundreds of thousands of fans who visit the ballpark each year.

West Durham neighbors unite over opposition to new Erwin/Cornwallis high school site

Walking in to Forest View Elementary last night, one might have thought one was entering, say, a Honda and Volvo owner's convention; and from the peaceful, often-aged faces inside, perhaps a Duke Nicholas School seminar on the economics of water rights.

Instead, it was a group girding for battle against a range of potential opponents.

First and foremost: Durham Public Schools, against which the one hundred and fifty or so Durhamites* (see end of article) present at the meeting were preparing to do battle. The crowd seemed universally opposed to a school in the bucolic forested lands west of 15-501, raising arguments from traffic impact to the encouragement of sprawl to traffic to -- wait for it -- runoff heading toward Jordan Lake.

But Duke also sized up as a possible opponent, with a significant portion of the meeting devoted to scuttlebutt as to why the university was -- according to organizers -- considering selling a portion of Duke Forest to the local school system for a high school.

Even a former DPS school board chair, Katherine Myers, raised her opposition to the site, calling out bluntly the one elephant in the room no one else wanted to: issues of school reassignment, and about why some schools are more popular than others.

Bottom line, she noted: schools like Jordan and Riverside are big because they're good, and they're good because they're big -- and they may need to get bigger.

"The fact of the matter is, if you add up all the capacity at all the traditional high schools in Durham County, and add up the current enrollment, the schools are underutilized," Myers said. "But we know nobody is going to be reassigned to Hillside and to Southern, two of the lowest-performing high schools in the entire state."

"And so we have to build... old school thought is, we build a brand new school, and we harvest kids out of Jordan and Riverside, the same way we harvested kids out of Northern and Jordan twentysome years ago. And we know how difficult that was. We know what happened," Myers continued.