Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger spoke with 97.9 The Hill’s Andrew Stuckey on Thursday, August 4. She discussed Chapel Hill’s role in a bid to host the University Games, the potential for social districts around town, the return of students to UNC and more. This is an edited transcript. Listen to the full interview here.
Andrew Stuckey: We are joined by Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger. Let’s look back to National Night Out on Tuesday.
Mayor Pam Hemminger: It was a lot of fun, and was a little hot that night. We’re talking about maybe starting it later in the day next year. It was fun to be out at the Hargrave Center and Estes Drive and then some other communities as well. Hubert Davis showed up at the one at Hargraves Community Center, so that was a lot of fun. There were burgers and hot dogs and music and bouncy houses and lots of nonprofits out there. And of course, our public safety department was out there and enjoying the heat and the lots of neighbors. It was a lot of fun.
Stuckey: Excellent. I’m glad that the event went off without a hitch, in spite of all the heat. It was very hot that day, as it has been most days lately.
Hemminger: I know, but it was a lovely event. I was also out in the heat on Monday. I was outside with Dr. Michelle Laws. She’s the founder of the Busy Bees service organization. And it’s our third little free library that opened up in coordination with the Chapel Hill Police Department and the Public Housing Department. It’s fun to put the books in there and get these started. She’s really involved in doing things like this to help folks in the community. I love this because Michelle talks about growing up in public housing and having the ability to go to a library knowing it was safe, but not everybody has the ability to have books right there that you can take, borrow, put back, trade, or whatever. It’s just a wonderful thing to do. So, I encourage people that if you have extra books and wanna drop them off at one of our little libraries, that’d be great. Or, if you want to come to get a book, that would be great. I love having those around.
Stuckey: We’re visiting with Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger. Another thing that has happened that I’d like to hear a little bit more about; you were just mentioning the University Games had representatives here visiting. Can you tell me more about that?
Hemminger: I just came back from a lovely meal. We ate in the Chase Dining Hall on campus, but these were representatives from the International University Sports Federation. The triangle region is one of the finalists for the 2027 summer World University Games. We’re competing with, a community in South Korea to host this event. They were very interested in the triangle region university systems, along with all the venues we have. They told me they took a helicopter ride up in the air to see all of the different universities and the greenery that we have here, all the sports venues we have here. They were really enjoying the food from the area. They have been treated to many different things. UNC dining halls pulled out all the stops today. It was just a lovely spread, but the group that I was sitting with at the table was someone from China and Switzerland and Italy. They went right for the cookies. They had gone out for chicken wings one night too. That was not on the schedule, but they had wanted to do that. They were just asking me what typical American food was besides hamburgers and hot dogs. So we were having a conversation about that. And then they tried root beer and Cheerwine and sweet tea. We were laughing because we have different types of things in different countries, and you forget what might be completely foreign to someone else is something we’re so used to seeing here. So that was kind of funny.
Stuckey: That sounds like a fun experience.
Hemminger: It was a fun experience. If we were to get the games, over 600,000 people would come to the triangle area, which would be great for our economy. Also just a lot of fun. I was told the last time this event was held in the United States was in 1993. So it’s been a while and it would be great to have it in this area. All these athletes, there were several athletes that were interns helping with this program, as they put together the prospects for either North Carolina or South Korea.
Stuckey: Do you have a sense of the timeline for when that decision will be made?
Hemminger: Supposedly by the end of the year is what they were thinking, but it just depends too on when they finish up their visits and do their scoring. They’re based out of Switzerland from my understanding, and they are going to Greensboro tomorrow to check out the aquatic center and then they fly back to Switzerland on Sunday. So they’re here for a week. They go to South Korea for a week and then they’ll do all the ratings and get back in touch with the groups that are hosting them. It was a wonderful collaboration today with UNC, the local group that wants to sponsor this here, and Aramark ventures. They really did answer questions. And like I said, they pulled out all the stops. At Chase Dining Hall the food was just fabulous. I got treated to lunch. That was very nice.
Stuckey: It was a potentially very exciting story for the community. So we’ll definitely keep an eye on that. Is there anything else on the town’s end that needs to happen or is the ball kind of in their court now?
Hemminger: It’s kind of in their court. We talked about most of the events that would be held on campus, but I did also talk about our robust transit system that could get people downtown. We talked about our diverse community. The fact that we have so many things for people to do in our area and that they could explore Greenways or breweries. There’s other things to do besides the games, because it brings a lot of visitors to the area as well. So this could be huge. They would put them up in dorms. They were going out, looking at the dorm rooms as well…on a hot day. They had a good walkabout on campus. They had been at NC State and Duke, and they were going to some other campuses as well.
Stuckey: Speaking of people coming to Chapel Hill, students are coming back very soon. They’re probably coming back now, actually. They’re probably starting to trickle back in, but classes start in like a little over a week. So how’s that looking now on the town side? Are we ready?
Hemminger: I met with university folks today and had some conversations yesterday. They’re geared up and ready to go. We talked a lot about what it looks like to come back together with COVID numbers the way they are. Right now the university is going to encourage people to wear a mask if that’s what they would like to do, but they’re not gonna mandate it. There will be free testing still available at the student health center. They were working on plans for people to have places to isolate if they could not go home, if they go back to their place to isolate. They have made it easier for students to get free tests as well… to pick them up and to have them. So we talked about that a little bit. We talked about protocols for getting people moved in and road construction projects and where we were on certain aspects. Especially the west end paving, that was mostly finished. They still have a little bit of striping to finish up over there, but there shouldn’t be any traffic delays in the major part of getting people moved in. We did talk about Estes drive. We have another year to go on that project, so it’s gonna be tied up for a while. We’re waiting on Duke Power right now to move some holes. So we catched up on events like that and talked about what the fall is going to look like. I was pleased to hear that our arts communities were going to be working together and planning together with a downtown partnership Arts Everywhere, our arts department and our public engagement/cultural events are working at a schedule together for the fall. That’s important. So we can have many different opportunities that do not have overlap, so that we have opportunities for people to attend different things or all of them if they’d like to attend.
Stuckey: Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger is on the phone. And I’ve got one more question that I need to ask. And one more that I’d like to ask. So we’ll go with the need to ask first. We got news yesterday about the early voting sites in the county and the library is a new voting site that hasn’t been a voting site before. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that.
Hemminger: I know people are wanting more options so that they can easily get to a place to vote. Early on, we have about half of our voters vote early and we wanted some more opportunities. I know the board of elections was looking at this and working with the town to move things around, to see what options there may be. If they’re gonna give it a try at the library, our library is one of the most heavily used resources in the community. So I think people will take the opportunity to vote, especially if they’re going to the library for other reasons. So I think it’s a good thing to give a try and I think it’s gonna be very successful.
Stuckey: Yeah, it seems like a very good fit.
Hemminger: I think so too.
Stuckey: So the thing that I wanted to ask about just because I’m curious: House Bill 768 recently went into effect, which is revamping some of the alcohol laws. One of those results that people seem to be talking about the most is you no longer have to be a member at a bar in order to be served there. I’m wondering if you’re hearing anything from businesses on Franklin or anywhere else around town about how this change is affecting them.
Hemminger: Well, this is for private bars, which are different from regular public bars. And so that one’s an interesting phenomenon as well. They’re just relaxing a lot of these rules. Part of the other bills are the social districts, which would allow open containers in certain areas of town at certain times. So if you had a festival downtown, for instance, you could mark a district to be a social district. People would have the same kinds of cups. All the vendors would have to use the same kind of cups or have wristbands for people to show that they had bought it at one of these establishments so people don’t bring in extra alcohol to do this. They’re just loosening up the laws. As we noticed during COVID especially, people want to have gatherings outside, but they also wanna be able to have an alcoholic beverage within reason. We’re gonna be taking a look at this. I know that our coalition is gonna be talking about it and our downtown partnership’s gonna be talking about it. The private club thing hasn’t been as much of a factor in Chapel Hill. I know in some other communities where they have different kinds of regulations, it has been. So again, they’re just loosening up some of these laws like they did with the brunch bill to allow for moderate consumption of alcohol.
Stuckey: All right, we are visiting with Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger, and we’ve got about a minute left. Is there anything that you wanted to mention that we haven’t gotten to yet?
Hemminger: I’ll tell you about some really good news on the climate action front. This week Chapel Hill joined ten other communities to launch a group purchasing program to install solar energy and battery powered energy at people’s homes and businesses. Orange County, Carrboro and Hillsborough, we’re all partners together in this as well. It will make solar energy more affordable and more accessible. Solar out of Cary has been chosen to be the installation partner for this effort. There will be a kickoff event next week at the North Carolina Museum of Art. There’s gonna be other information coming about this, but if you’re considering doing solar, good news for you, because it will make it more approachable for the individual homeowner or a business or anyone to get the solar panels installed in your roof. It’s where we need to be headed. We are a great area for solar. I heard a recent debate about cutting down your trees versus having solar. No, we don’t want people to cut down their shade trees. That’s not the plan. If your home doesn’t have the shade trees, then it would be a good thing for you to consider doing. We even had an interesting conversation about why there’s no solar at the beach. It was an interesting conversation about salt, air corrosion, hurricane damage, those kinds of things. But here in this area, we have opportunities for solar energy. More so than wind energy in this immediate area. So this will be really good news as we make progress on trying to move towards that renewable energy and reduce our carbon footprint.
Stuckey: Outstanding. I’m sure we’ll be talking about that more in the future as we start to see people actually get those installed under this program. It’s been a pleasure, Pam. I always look forward to talking to you again next week. Thanks for being here.
Hemminger: Thank you. We’re excited to get back onto getting things opened back up. The students bring a lot of great energy when they come back to town. So you’ll see a lot more activity going on. Like you said, they’re already trickling in now. We’re excited to have them back and integrate them back into our community and it’s going to be an action-packed fall. So hang in there!
Stuckey: Right. Thanks Pam.
Hemminger: Take care.
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