A couple excellent student driven articles on Northside appeared this week.
Carrboro Commons’ Megan Gassaway published this article which reviews the history of the Northside community through long time resident Ms. Keith Edwards eyes.
Too often local media focuses narrowly on the business of carving up the community rather than providing a broader context – injecting the human dimension into the story – which better informs the wider community on why folks living in Northside mourn its passing.
Reese News,UNC School of Journalism & Mass Communication’s Digital Newsroom, leverages the power of the multimedia ‘net to give voice to 10 community members’ concerns in their story The struggle for a neighborhood.
It’s no secret that Northside isn’t the neighborhood it used to be.
The change is visible in the increased diversity of its residents and the ten-story high-end condominiums that tower across from the traditionally working class neighborhood, where massive duplexes are replacing single-family homes. Change is also evident in the growing tension and frustration of residents in a neighborhood plagued by the effects of gentrification.
The pressure for development is taking its toll on the historically black neighborhood, and the town is struggling to balance the need to grow with the needs of neighborhoods like Northside.
Since 2010, the town has been working with the Raleigh-based consultant KlingStubbins to develop a Downtown Framework and Action Plan, which could revise and redevelop parts of downtown Chapel Hill and the surrounding areas.
The downtown proposal could have significant effects on Northside. In its current draft, the framework suggests building new road connections and parking decks in areas where homes currently stand. It also underscores certain areas of Northside as prime for redevelopment.
Well done folks!
Want a bit of additional perspective on the development pressures facing Northside?
IndyWeek reporter (and former Daily Tar Heel editor) Joe Schwartz put together another excellent overview last June (2010): Greenbridge: A new chapter in a tense history .
Greenbridge, as reported by the Chapel Hill News, faces its first foreclosure hearing next Tuesday. This Sunday they promise a further exploration of not only Greenbridge’s problems but other Downtown developments putting pressure on Northside, Cameron Ave. and Pine Knolls neighborhoods.
Change is going to happen. The question is how the whole of our community can benefit from that change. Articles like these help create a broader perspective, one that has been missing so far, in the discussions over development policy Downtown.
It is critical that the nearby neighborhoods play a vital role in determining their own fates. Until their voices are heard and their neighborhoods are treated like living, breathing communities rather than convenient parcels of land for future development, our development policy is as broken as Greenbridge’s financing.
Unlike snobaristas, in my experience Carrboro’s current Town Manager Steve Stewart has consistently provided professional service with a friendly and personalized touch.
Tuesday Steve announced he was moving on. Hired in 2003, he helped add resiliency and flexibility to Carrboro’s management structure – the qualities the fast growing Paris of the Piedmont needed to survive and position it to thrive in today’s economic environment.
While Steve and I haven’t always agreed on Carrboro policy, he showed me abundant courtesy (even when he realized I was a Chapel Hill interloper), was quick to respond to my queries and was always willing to talk a bit of shop when I ran into around town (most recently before Carrboro’s 100th Anniversary kick-off party).
Steve plans to hang around after the transition – so I hope he’ll pipe up occasionally and continue to provide a bit of practical wisdom for both our communities.
Thanks Steve, best of luck in your new endeavors.
Coverage from the Chapel Hill News, Carrboro Citizen and WCHL1360 with more on Steve’s recent announcement.
I haven’t been a big coffee drinker since my days on the engineering mezzanine at Northern Telecom (I never met a bunch of folks that could guzzle joe like Northern’s engineers).
The last decade, though, I easily go a month without drinking some form of coffee; a double bang cappuccino with extra foamy milk being my current favorite.
Chapel Hill/Carrboro/Hillsborough are blessed with an abundance of decent cafes serving the best in fair-trade brews. When it comes to choosing a place to get my occasional cupped lightning, the three key differentiators, at least for me, are price, quality and service.
Price, with the exception of 3-Cups , is roughly the same between the locally-owned and operated places I’m willing to go.
Quality varies but having grown up on road warrior jitter juice I’m willing to tolerate a broad spectrum of results. As long as the raw bean comes from socially just source, is not priced out-of-line with its ingestability, is reasonably hot and is prepared somewhat hygienically, down it goes.
Which leaves level of service.
Coffee, though I know some folks feel differently, is a discretionary purchase. While I sometimes need, like many of us, an energy boost, I’m not so dependent a draught of “rocket fuel” that I’m willing to forgo courtesy at the cash register.
When I belly up to the bar, I’m happy to get the most minimal of attention and courtesy – a short grunt of acknowledgement and a reasonably fast turn around is all I’m looking for.
I’m not willing to settle for near contempt.
As the local market for good coffee has grown, so, it appears has the spread of boorish baristas.
Look guys, I’m not going to apologize for not seeming hip enough, not slangily ordering the trendiest drink or not paying slavish attention to your choice of clothes/music/politics – I’m here for a simple drink delivered as professionally as possible.
Which is why I most often go to Timberlyne’s Cup o’Joe, Carrboro’s Looking Glass, Estes/Franklin’s Carribou Cafe and University Mall’s Southern Season’s Weathervane.
From all of these (plus Lex’s 3-Cups), I have reliably received top tier courteous service from clean and well-kept breweries at a price point that my family is comfortable paying.
There is a reason I don’t go to Driade, Open Eye or a handful of other highly touted caffeine distribution centers anymore.
When I’m shelling out 2+ bucks for cooked bean shards soaked in hot water, I don’t relish the risk of having even one brutish encounter.
When it happens, again and again, I always wonder why owner/operators are willing to put up with such behavior. Are they so disconnected from their business they don’t realize that its harder to acquire a new customer than cultivate and retain a loyal customer?
To be clear, in my experience even the worst of the bunch have employees that care, that deliver the level of quality and service I’m looking for.
But why play the odds, sometimes quite long, that a you will stumble on one of the happy few?
Maybe there is a natural evolution to coffee joints: care and attention slowly giving way to complacency and antagonism followed by a fall only buffered by new customers ignorance, cushioned only by previous credibility before a slide into inevitable failure.
Or maybe there is a cycle of birth and rebirth – even the worst returning from the ashes to the heights they once enjoyed.
Whatever the trajectory, I have no doubt that the rise and tolerance of the snobarista signals the end of the ride.
