I walked over to the offices of the Carrboro Citizen this afternoon to see if Kirk and company would make their Mar. 21st D-Day. Fingers were flying as the staff wrestled multiple streams of content onto the Triangle’s newest newspaper.
Bubba told me that they had to have all the magic bottled by 10PM, just 6 minutes from now.
Good luck folks, I look forward to reading your Mar. 21st inaugural edition.
I might even pick up a couple extra to save for posterity, hope they factored that into the first run 😉
Where can you get a copy?
….free in-town home delivery for Carrboro (and the contiguous Northside neighborhood in the big city).
To sign up give us a call at 942-2100 or send an email to delivery at carrboro citizen dot com. We’ll need to know where you live, of course, and where you’d like the paper placed.
A couple of things to note:
• We plan on opening up delivery options throughout our coverage area as demand increases. If your neighborhood is outside the Carrboro limits and you’d like to be included, please let us know.
• Since we’re a free publication, most apartment complexes do not allow delivery. If you’d like a rack in your complex, though, we’re happy to bring one over.
There will be a box at the park and ride. Also, Weaver Street Market and some of the shops and eateries are on the list. I was asked this week if we’d consider adding Southern Village to our delivery area. Like a lot of neighborhoods not in 27510, it’s likely we will open Southern Village up to home delivery if the interest is there.
Carrboro continues to beat lead Chapel Hill in innovation – whether it is Downtown music festivals, freely available Internet access or commitment to hands-on arts. In spite of the long effort by Chapel Hill’s now defunct Technology Board to bring video of public Council, Planning Board, forum, etc. meetings to the accessibility inhibited website, the Town is only now poised to deliver.
Carrboro isn’t waiting on us. From the Chapel Hill News timely ‘blog Orange Chat:
The town of Carrboro asks that viewers keep in mind there may be technical difficulties since it’s a test. Currently, only Microsoft Windows users will be able to watch the live stream.
You can connect to the stream at any time before or during the meeting by visiting the government page of the town of Carrboro’s Web site.
Meiling Arounnarath post Watch a live meeting, but not on the ‘tube’.
Now, longtime readers know I have a problem with using proprietary Microsoft-only technology for public records (Proprietary Public Policy: Chapel Hill Streaming Video Goes Live?) but I’m not worried – Carrboro’s IT staff generally hews to the open source way.
Well, not quite “black gold” or “Texas tea” but it appears that more “refined trouble” is brewing under Lot #5 (MAP).
Chapel Hill’s taxpayers will have to wait for next week’s official lab confirmation but, as of today (Mar. 20th, 2007), initial field tests of some of the nearly 30 core samples show “interesting” signs of contamination.
Hazardous waste remediation involving the fractured geology below the lot could prove to be quite expensive – launching the total taxpayer commitment to just south of the $12.5 million of equity that RAM Development, the Town’s private partner, is contractually obliged to contribute.
Of course, RAM will easily recover their equity and make millions on the deal. The fine folks of Chapel Hill will get an expensive hole in the ground.
Folks started calling on the Council to pull their heads out of the sand and do this environmental assay over a year ago, well before entering final negotiations with RAM Development. Council members Jim Ward and Laurin Easthom, before voting against the Lot #5 proposal,
strongly argued that the
“known unknown” of contamination deserved evaluation before signing the deal.
Unfortunately, caution, that night, was overridden by the zeal for the deal.
Another expensive “known unknown” lurking in the wings has been the cost of digging two stories below Lot #5’s current grade. I work across Church St. and recall the difficulty the developers of my building had with “the ROCK”. “The ROCK” underneath Chapel Hill’s Downtown has been the bane of many a stalwart developer. UNC has spent millions over the last few years tussling with “the ROCK”.
An incidental consequence of the technician’s drilling cores during this current environmental assay is a better understanding of the parking lot’s underlying geology. The optimism the Town showed – expecting to escape the vicissitudes of other Downtown developers – needs to be tempered by the measured reality of the last few days. It appears, again pending a final report, that “the ROCK” on the Franklin St. side of the lot is roughly 10′ below current grade tapering to 20′ on the Rosemary side.
If you live near Downtown, I suggest an early run to the store for ear plugs before blasting begins 😉
