Bull City Rising

N&O: Joe Bowser to hold Friday presser... at Board of Elections?

2009-07-15T20:24:38-04:00

A week and a half in and it's already a strange election season. One that promises to get just a bit stranger, now. According to the N&O's Jim Wise: Bowser told Bull's Eye this morning he's having his own press conference Friday, and that he will be at the Board of Election office that day — last day to file for the council or mayor's election this fall. That was all he had to say this morning. Well now, isn't that interesting. Wise starts the speculation rolling as to whether Bowser might be intending to file for a local elected office (Bowser lives in Ward 2, for what it's worth.) As it happens, mind you, Bowser couldn't hold both a municipal and county elected office at the same time. The NC Constitution, Article VI carries a prohibition against holding two elected offices simultaneously, and NCGL Chapter 128 doesn't provide for this as an allowed exception to that rule. But of course, there's nothing prohibiting Bowser from running for a second elected position, and resigning the...

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BCR's Daily Fishwrap Report for July 15, 2009

2009-07-15T07:57:04-04:00

The H-S' Monica Chen has a nice feature in today's Herald-Sun on the South Square area, where car dealers have closed, saladier Green Tango pulled out (due in part to lack of redevelopment), and where the University Marketplace mixed-use development on the old Regency Plaza site is still halted due to the economy and credit markets. Many of the folks cited in the story -- including Sitar India Palace's owner, who's left Regency Plaza entirely now pending redevelopment -- cite University Marketplace as the key driver of residential growth and retail space to turn around the area. And it makes the arrival of new-restaurant Eden in the Southcourt building this fall so much more important. See more in the H-S. In other news: Greenfire and the City have been in a dispute over whether the sidewalk outside their Rogers Alley development on Mangum were damaged by the developer's construction efforts or before; Greenfire notes photos showing damage before work began, while the City says heavy...

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

2009-07-14T11:30:00-04:00

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...

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Downtown post office to start closing at 2pm for now -- or, maybe longer?

2009-07-14T09:00:00-04:00

Durham's central post office is going down for a daily siesta each afternoon starting July 20. It's an early closing plan that's supposed to last only until September 6 -- though we've heard rumblings that it may end up being a bit more indefinite than that. For unspecified reasons, the downtown post office will be closing at 2pm daily effective next Monday. Which means counter service for mailing letters, parcels, packages and the like will only be available for about 5 1/2 hours per day downtown. Although officially these are deemed only "special summer hours," BCR's heard some rumblings that they might be continued longer than that. No word as to whether this is due to the US Postal Service's overall travails; the we-deliver-for-you people have lost a staggering $2.3 billion halfway through this fiscal year, versus just a $35 million loss through the first two quarters last year. USPS's has seen what a press release called "an unprecedented decline in mail volume" -- 15%...

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BCR's Daily Fishwrap Report for July 14, 2009

2009-07-14T07:59:48-04:00

Big fishwrap raspberries today to the Herald-Sun, for running the City's Monday press release on recycling changes verbatim and without any new reporting under that new fave byline of the N&O and H-S alike, "From Staff Reports." The City's press release did a good job of trying to reiterate many of the points made in Friday's press release about recycling and solid waste changes. While BCR's supported these changes as a nice improvement of service, there's no question that changing one solid waste pickup day, moving citizens to a biweekly schedule on recycling, swapping out recycling bins and switching bulky yard waste pickup -- all at once -- is a massive undertaking to communicate, probably (with the drought) one of the toughest municipal communications challenges in recent memory. That said, and somewhat understandably, it certainly hasn't been flawless, as evidenced by some of the comments on Saturday's story here and by the traffic on local listservs late last week (including...

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

2009-07-13T21:09:46-04:00

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. It is in that same vein and spirit...

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Clement draws yet another Ward 2 challenger in Sandra Howell

2009-07-13T13:00:00-04:00

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...

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

2009-07-13T10:30:00-04:00

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...

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BCR's Daily Fishwrap Report for July 13, 2009

2009-07-13T07:30:00-04:00

The fishwraps are pretty thin again this morning -- anyone know when Ray Gronberg's getting back from vacation? In local news from today and the weekend: The Indy is reporting that Lewis Cheek -- a former Durham County commissioner who case a key vote last fall on the 751 assemblage's critical watershed boundary in the last meeting of his term (he did not seek re-election) has joined the law firm of K&L Gates' RTP-based land use practice; K&L Gates' practice dominates Durham zoning and property filings before elected boards, and represents the owners of the 751 parcel. (The Indy) The Indy also covered Friday's Durham Crime Cabinet, where a billboard industry lobbyist pressed hard on the public safety elements digital billboards could bring by showing amber alerts and the like on their large, well-lit facades. Howard Clement signaled his support of the measure, as did DPD Chief Lopez. Billboard opponents, however, have complained that they weren't afforded an opportunity to make a...

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Donald Hughes to challenge Cole-McFadden for Ward 1 seat

2009-07-12T21:20:11-04:00

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,...

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