Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger spoke with 97.9 The Hill’s Brighton McConnell on Thursday, June 16th. This is a transcript of her discussion of non-profit partnerships, the recent town council meeting and more. Listen to the full interview here.
Brighton McConnell: We’re talking Town of Chapel Hill and joining me on the phone is Mayor Pam Hemminger to do just that. How are you, Mayor Pam?
Pam Hemminger: I am good, but hot. I want people to be careful because you never know.
McConnell: It has been that kind of week, hasn’t it?
Hemminger: Yes! Well, I just came back from the Chamber’s BEA awards, the business awards. It was such a wonderful event celebrating all the great work going on in our community. Businesses helping community members, businesses helping each other. I just wanted to applaud everyone, all the finalists, all the winners, and all the businesses. It was really, truly a wonderful, inspiring event. And just so proud of this community for stepping up to help other people.
McConnell: Yeah, we were talking last week when you were out with Dwight Bassett and hearing all the updates on how businesses are doing in Chapel Hill, learning more about how the ReVive and Recovery Plan is going between the town and local businesses and it being summer, which we know is important, being a time where our businesses still see a lot of foot traffic. That also dovetails pretty well with the news from the town of several nonprofits getting some pretty important support from the town too, right? More than half a million dollars are being sent out to 40 different nonprofits in town.
Hemminger: Yeah. We’re very pleased to be able to partner with so many incredible nonprofits. It stretches the dollars further, which helps more people. And we’re really, really pleased to be able to keep increasing. I wanted to do that when I came into office, we’ve inched along, but now we put it on our regular upbeat and we really, really can help more people. And especially since COVID, as we were reminded today, there are still so many people who are financially trying to dig their way out of COVID, and even though the job market’s good, people have debts to pay and everything’s gotten so expensive. So it’s just taking a lot longer to recover for a lot of folks.
McConnell: Well we are coming off of the heels of what seems like a pretty intensive town council meeting last night — it was very development heavy. In terms of concept plan reviews and talking about some hearings for some projects, where do you want to start, Pam?
Hemminger: We’ll start with the simpler ones first. At the last couple of meetings we have had development projects either trying to finish up or figure out whether they continue on or not because they know we’re taking a break for the summer. And so you see those pile up as, as the spring weighs on and that’s the last date. So we did approve the special use permit for the Fifth Third Bank, which is replacing the Hardee’s in front of Wegmans. They will be adding some more greenery and landscaping there and more visibility around that curve, which will be great. we approved the rezoning for Gimghoul Castle so they could add more restrooms because it wasn’t zoned properly. We felt bad they had to go through the whole process for that, but it went very smoothly and then we moved forward with two concept plans as developers try to see if the council’s interested in what they have to propose.
The first one was over there in what we call the Gateway area, but it was south of the intersection of Old Chapel Hill Boulevard and Pope Road. And it was very out-of-the-box thinking, which the council appreciated, with some housing but still the same kinds of concerns with traffic and affordability. But there were some offerings of some different kinds of pulling together. So we were intrigued and we talked about e-bikes. It was really a different kind of concept review. We do want them to coordinate together though with the rest of the partials that are under development consideration. We’d like it to be considered an area versus just four separate developments, and they were amenable to that as well. They’ll be working with our staff to help figure this out and maybe working with our consultants. We’re not sure we’re going to pick up a pilot project with our consultants to work on this visioning exploration of what kind of town we want to be.
McConnell: Yeah, and for some helpful context here, both concept plans were for developments that are in the Durham County part of Chapel Hill. So it’s technically in Durham County, but obviously still within town lines. We have talked about housing near downtown or housing more in Chapel Hill proper, but is that section of Chapel Hill facing kind of the same challenges in the town council’s minds when it comes to seeking development there or trying to figure out how development does connect with everything in that area?
Hemminger: That’s a good way to put it. We’re seeing the pressures of growth and we learned from the data that’s been being gathered by the other consultant working with us for information for our transit-oriented development for our federal grant on the bus, rapid transit, and all these acronyms I could throw at you here verifying that we don’t have enough housing for the people who work in Chapel Hill and the prices are just going to be squeezed even further if we don’t do something about that. Affordability is a nationwide crisis so we’re trying to figure out how we do that because we want diversity of housing in our community. We don’t want to be just the expensive bedroom community to the rest of the Triangle. So we’re going to be working with these consultants to help us figure out how we get those outcomes and where we’re trying to go and we’ll have public engagement around all of this to try to figure out what happens.
People are always saying, why do you keep building more apartments? Well, we’re not building, developers are, some were already approved, and yes, they’re filling up. I mean, they’re filling up all over the Triangle for outrageous rents that we’ve never seen the likes of before. And people are moving here. We’re the third hottest job market in the United States. And so it’s really an interesting dynamic that we’ve never really seen. These pressures of growth are forcing us to make decisions sooner and more rapidly than we’d like to make and we want to take that step back and say, how does it fit together? How do we get those connected communities? How do we keep our green spaces? How do we provide amenities for the people that are already here and the people that are coming and how do we not have such traffic woes? How do we make sure it is transit-oriented development or multimodal capable and those kinds of things?
McConnell: It sounds like those discussions are continuing with a rare Tuesday meeting of the town council next week. Is that correct?
Hemminger: That is correct. That will be the kickoff for the visioning, with a complete council. We’ve hired two Jennifers, Jennifer Keesmaat and Jennifer Hurley, to help lead this initiative. And we’re going to be talking about the path forward and how this will all work and the timeline and the public outreach part that will happen in the fall. It’ll be a great meeting as we try to figure out how we work together to move forward and how the visioning process will play out to get the best results. Before, we have always asked people, what do you want? And now we’re going to be able to say, if this is the outcome you want, these will be the tradeoffs. And do you want this kind of outcome or this kind of outcome instead of the sky’s the limit? What are the realities involved right now? So we’re going to be able to put out questions like that so people can make some informed choices and let us get that feedback to see what our community says.
McConnell: We’ve got so many different Juneteenth celebrations happening around our community, including right here in Chapel Hill. What are some of the events happening over the weekend for the holiday that you want to highlight, Pam? I know that the Town of Chapel Hill is indeed hosting one Sunday at the Hargrave Center.
Hemminger: And we’re partnering with Carrboro to do that, we’re very excited. The event begins at 2:00 p.m. and it’ll last till 6:00 p.m., there’ll be live performances and food trucks, kids’ activities, and everyone is welcome to come. We’re very pleased that people want to celebrate this important historical event. Tomorrow there’ll be a special court session to posthumously vacate the 1947 convictions of four Freedom Riders who participated in the journey of reconciliation. It’s going to be at the historic courthouse in Hillsborough. It is open to the public and we’re very pleased to be doing this. And then coincidentally on Monday, we are having a celebration to dedicate our transit facility to Howard and Lillian Lee. It’ll become the Howard and Lillian Lee Transit Operation Center in honor of their contributions to starting the transit system in 1974. I’m sorry that because of the space limitations, that’s not open to the public, but you can stream it on Transit’s Facebook page so we can see that going on. And it’s going to be a cooler weekend than this week so I hope people get outside and enjoy the better weather this weekend.
McConnell: Yeah, no kidding. Back to the renaming, I did not know until we did a recent story–and I’m likely in the minority of the community members here–just how important Howard Lee, former mayor of Chapel Hill, was to establishing Chapel Hill transit. It seems like he and Lillian Lee are the perfect people to rename this facility after.
Hemminger: He actually went down himself and drove the first bus back that they bought, I think from Atlanta. He drove it up here to start the transit program here to help folks get to their jobs who couldn’t afford cars and to make it more equitable in our community. And there’s a wonderful picture of him with the very first bus out there. It’s great leadership, a great story. We’re so grateful that he did this and that Lillian was right there, backing him up with everything. And we are honored to be able to name it after them. We’re excited to have this ceremony on Monday.
McConnell: So we have the Chapel Hill and Carrboro Juneteenth party Sunday. We have the renaming of the Chapel Hill transit facility on Monday and then Tuesday, for school students in school communities, is the first day of the Food For Students program. You helped found this program back in 2015, 2016, Pam. How does it feel? And did you ever envision it growing into what it has become as we’re about to enter yet another summer? They’re probably going to continue to serve the most meals they ever have.
Hemminger: So pleased that we have partnerships to make this all happen for our children. I will tell you it was supposed to be the start of something with the hopes of having more summer camp opportunities for our children because that’s what they really need. And we’re working towards that as well. We opened up a couple more summer camps this summer in partnership with the school system. But in the meantime, we need to help feed our students and get them some enrichment possibilities. It’s a long summer if you’re not having lots of activities and enrichment opportunities for yourself. And I’m just so pleased that this community has responded so well and wants to keep the program going. I have met volunteers that have volunteered for every day every summer or certain weeks of the summer every summer and am just so heartened by the caring in this community, and the kids love it. They look forward to it. Free Book Wednesdays are a big hit. They come running out to check the books before they even stop and look at the food! You’re just like, okay, you’re hungry for something to read. It’s wonderful. So I’m very proud of this community for sticking with it and wanting to enhance it. It’s great.
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