Greenbridge
So remember last year when I said that the people threatening violence against Greenbridge were doing more harm than good? They made a bomb threat against the building while it was under construction. Did it make Greenbridge better or cheaper or more accessible? Did it help the developers better serve the community? Did it help the community combat the rising cost of living in Chapel Hill? No, but it probably served to make a small group of activists feel better about themselves.
Yesterday, a group of anarchists entered the lobby of Greenbridge intent on destruction. The group of over 30 demonstrators were armed with an anvil, and proceeded to do major damage to the floor, a glass table, and several pieces of artwork. Eight people were arrested Several people were detained, and three were held on felony inciting a riot charges until they were released from the Orange County Jail on a total of $8,000 bond.*
So I was catching up on the Chapel Hill News yesterday and I noticed some eery similarity in two stories about new downtown developments in both Carrboro and Chapel Hill. In one article, questions are raised about how the developers of Greenbridge qualified for the gigantic loan that they are currently unable to repay. It should surprise no-one to learn that the 15% of the condos that were mandated to be affordable by the Town sold first. It turns out that when the bank looked at pre-sales to determine demand, they counted the number, rather than the value, of the units. In fact, the News goes so far as to ask whether the affordable housing policy itself is somehow at fault for Greenbidge's current financial problems. I think that's a stretch, but it does make you think twice about the process by which banks decide to make commercial loans. (Housing bubble anyone?)
In another story, the News talks about the recently restarted mixed-use project at 300 East Main Street in Carrboro, which will bring 5 stories of retail, housing offices, a hotel, and parking to the current run-down strip mall that houses the ArtsCenter and the Cat's Cradle. (VisArt, RIP.) One key element that helped Main Street Partners to secure their financing for this was the Town of Carrboro agreeing to lease a large number of parking spaces for the first few years after construction.
This morning, the west end of downtown Chapel Hill was immobilized when someone called in a bomb threat against the rising Greenbridge development. I understand that some people have issues with tall buildings in Chapel Hill, although I don't especially. But I do share the concerns that many have about the gentrification of Northside. However, the fact is that Greenbridge didn't create either of those problems, and stopping it isn't going to help solve them either.
I recently saw Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy give an interesting speech on the problem that everyone seems to think that Chapel Hill was just perfect right about the time they got there. Kevin is not the first person to have observed this, and he won’t be the last, but I thought it might be interesting to share this item I stumbled across while researching an unrelated topic. R. L. Gray wrote an essay on Chapel Hill in the News & Observer (reprinted in
NC Journal of Law, Vol 1, pp 516-518, 1904):
"Let the man have been tarred with the University stick and he will tell you along with his after-dinner cigar that he has a notion of some day building a house at Chapel Hill – and there remaining to the end of the chapter in the one place where he believes he can obtain a large and perfect peace. There men cling to the town and its surroundings with a memory that is both tenacious and jealous of details.
Recently I’ve been thinking about Barack Obama, Henry Louis Gates, Van Jones, and Greenbridge.
When tension around race comes up, our society has a really difficult time differentiating between individual incidents of incivility and patterns of bias. South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson thinks that an apology for his single act of disrespect is enough. But others see his “You Lie” comment towards the President to be part of a larger racial pattern questioning Obama’s authority. Henry Louis Gates saw being arrested in his own home in the light of a larger pattern of racial profiling. The police officer who arrested him thought he was just arresting a guy who threatened his authority.
Closer to home, Greenbridge and its developers continue to come under criticism for gentrifying Northside, and some attacks this summer called the Greenbridge developers racist. UNC-NOW and other Greenbridge critics see this project as a part of the larger pattern of African-American displacement in Chapel Hill. Not surprisingly, Greenbridge’s developers say they’re just one project impacting the neighborhood, and one that came relatively late to the gentrification party at that.
Receuved via e-mail:
"Why Stories Matter: An evening of performance and discussion about development and gentrification in Chapel Hill-Carrboro."
>
> Tuesday, Nov 11
> 8:00 PM
> Bingham 103
Join us as we watch sections of a promotional DVD put together by Greenbridge developers during their plans to build ten story building adjacent to Northside. We will watch the film in sections, with group discussion and performances by Spoken Word artists and others in between.
-Come out and learn how Chapel Hill and the University are caught up in the globalizing force of development, and the discourse that produces certain understandings of progress and progressive.
-Come out and see the amazing power of performance as an intervention in oppressive discourses and practices.
-Come out and help us think about how the stories we tell about ourselves and others have material and real impacts on humans and communities, how contested definitions of sustainability and community come out of different histories.
Greenbridge is a $50 million mixed-use project going up on the Graham, Rosemary and Merritt Mill Road block of Chapel Hill, bordering the Northside neighborhood, one of the few historically African-American communities in Chapel Hill. The building will be 10 stories high, more than three times as tall as any surrounding building. As the group started working on their application for a Special Use Permit from the Town Council for their project, they produced a "documentary" of the history of the community, weaving stories of elderly residents in the area and their vision of "sustainability" in the LEED certified building.
Northside, one of Chapel Hill's most historic neighborhoods, has been a community of African American families for more than a hundred years. It was an active site of Civil Rights activism, a pioneer in public education for African-Americans in the South, and a place known for vital church communities. In the 90s there was a community push to clean up the neighborhood, which also made it more lucrative for development. Now student renters and bigger developments like Greenbridge threaten to price out people on fixed income, long-term residents and keep out families from moving to the area.
Date:
Tuesday, November 11, 2008 - 2:00pm
From the Internationalist announcement list:
LET'S DISCUSS (yell/laugh/cry/protest about) GREENBRIDGE.
A Greenbridge video screening
Sunday, April 13 @3pm
Greenbridge recently produced a documentary on their future vision of
the of Rosemary and Graham street corner.
At first glance, the Greenbridge development embodies progress for
Chapel Hill. The building will utilize some of the newest green
technologies available ie. solar, wind, and geothermal to provide
energy for the building and thereby lessen its carbon footprint. But
in our haste to combat the forces of Global Warming, we may have
overlooked some details, such as marginalizing the surrounding
Northside community.
Come out and join us as we watch the video and enter in open
discussion about what community means to us (taking into account race,
class and ideological differences.)
Date:
Sunday, April 13, 2008 - 11:00am
Location:
Internationalist Books, 405 W Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516
Tonight the Chapel Hill Town Council will hold public hearings on Greenbridge and University Village, will review some concept plans which I know nothing about, and then will hear a petition from the Planning Board about the process for updating the Comprehensive Plan... about which I have something to say. (Here's tonight's Council agenda.)Greenbridge is the radical plan for what I think would be the tallest building in Orange County - though I doubt that height record will stand for long. We have discussed this proposal here on OP. There are many complex issues involved, but I think most people's opinions on it comes down to two things:1. Whether you are invested in a transit-friendly future Chapel Hill that allows for some growth but no sprawl, and2.
It's disappointing to see the Chapel Hill News this week stoking our fears of skyscrapers instead of adding some new ideas or perspectives to the critical dialog about the nature of growth downtown.I am so tired about hearing people simply exclaim over the number of stories a building has without discussing its design, infrastructure, relationship to other buildings to the street and to the sidewalk, impact on transportation, or public service features. It's not that height doesn't matter, but it's meaningless in isolation. You can have an ugly 3-story building or a beautiful 10-story building. We need to move past this one-dimensional focus on height into a more sophisticated vision for the future of Chapel Hill. I am hoping that the upcoming revision of Chapel Hill's Comprehensive Plan will be one venue for this discussion.
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