Welcome to “A Vibrant Chapel Hill, Today and Tomorrow!” a monthly interview series with Chapel Hill’s Economic Development and Parking Services office, exclusively on 97.9 The Hill WCHL & Chapelboro.com.
Every month, you will get updates from department staff and learn about initiatives the town is taking to ensure a Vibrant Chapel Hill, Today and Tomorrow.
This month’s guest: Dwight Bassett, Director of Economic Development and Parking for the Town of Chapel Hill.
Listen to the full conversation with Aaron Keck or read the transcript below, which is lightly edited for clarity.
Aaron Keck: Dwight, thank you so much for being with us. Good morning.
Dwight Bassett: Thank you for allowing me to be here. Excited to be here. Always.
Keck: I know there’s a lot going on. I need to start by talking about all the cool stuff that’s happening on East Franklin, and especially East Rosemary Street, the new Innovation District. What’s happening now?
Bassett: We’re continuing to make progress on the parking deck. It will be open hopefully in spring of 2024, which is six months from now. The Innovate Carolina Junction opened a couple of weeks ago. Super excited about the impact of that. There are additional businesses beginning their upfit in that same building, which we think will add to the employment base and help support downtown. The hotel behind the former Town Hall is in the final steps of getting their zoning compliance permit and will begin construction hopefully sometime this winter. The Porthole Alley is beginning its final design, and that is exciting. So, a lot of great things, and we look forward to apartment buildings at the PNC Bank location and wet labs and other things coming downtown, primarily because of the employment that can support those businesses downtown and keep our community members here so they don’t have to go to Durham or RTP for their work.
(photo via Chapel Hill Economic Development)
Keck: What actually is The Innovation District? What’s the summary on the piece of paper?
Bassett: We did a plan last year, and it was prompted by the Chancellor’s office, that created a Carolina Economic Development group within the university. And one of the goals was to create a better front door for UNC. So they agreed to fund a planning initiative, which we completed in 2022. And we call it Downtown Together because it’s the town and the university in conjunction with the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership to help lay out steps needed to improve downtown and make it a better front door, as well as building this Innovation District that we’re talking about. So, a lot of components. Chapel Hill has aspired for a long time to be a live, work, shop, kind of place where you aren’t quite as dependent upon your automobile every day. And we think adding housing on East Rosemary, along with adding places to work on East Rosemary, strengthens our businesses and helps us take huge steps toward achieving that goal. The more important thing, if you look at the last five years, Chapel Hill compared to Durham, Chapel Hill lost about 1,000 private jobs in that time period. And in the same time period, Durham grew by about 4,000 jobs. And that is why it’s so important that we take some of this research that’s happening on campus and turn it into companies and job opportunities for our residents and their children.
(photo via Chapel Hill Economic Development)
Keck: You mentioned Innovate Carolina Junction, which is kind of a centerpiece of the whole district, and that just had a really cool opening ceremony a couple of weeks ago. I know some businesses and folks are already in there now. What is the importance of that at the center of all this?
Bassett: One of the things if you look at the “best of” research when it comes to successful innovation districts, is community building, which you don’t think about when you say innovation district, it is kind of rallying entrepreneurs and startup thinkers in a space. And The Junction can act as that. And Launch Chapel Hill plays a key role. Launch has been around for over a decade now, helping to accelerate companies. They will do a lot of events and things of that sort. This is our foundational component for building an innovation district, is having a place that people identify as where I go to meet other companies. I meet people, I learn about other things going in on the community. And so, this is sort of the “town square” of the innovation district.
Keck: That’s a great phrase.
Bassett: We hope that it can become the focal point for everything that occurs, whether it’s a company that’s located upstairs in that building or an adjacent building, that they would think about coming there for events and learning opportunities and fireside chats and things of that sort.
Keck: And there is an event space in there too?
Bassett: Yes, several.
Keck: What else is happening that folks should know about?
Bassett: A lot of exciting things. Back before the pandemic we announced Well Dot, Inc. “Well” was coming to downtown, their vision of the company in downtown Chapel Hill was several buildings, not just everybody located in one space. They’re currently renovating their second building and growing employee numbers. Part of how we got them to come here was to commit to providing some parking as their needs grew. And we have just kicked that in. So, it has taken a few years to get there, but that means they’re hiring up and those workers can support our bars and restaurants and retail stores.
Keck: Are they working in the office?
Bassett: Yes. They still have some hybrid, but for the most part, they’re in at least a few days a week, where the Vista Center used to be, the old county building. They are renovating that and expect to occupy it in the coming months. That will be two buildings with employees in our downtown, that can help support all the great things happening downtown.
Keck: Anything else around the town beyond downtown?
Bassett: Absolutely. Out on Millhouse Road, Merritt Properties built a flex space, about 80,000 square feet. It doesn’t sound like that big a deal, but we’ve never had flex space that we approved in Chapel Hill before. And flex space can be anything from an HVAC company needing a home because it has a front door, it has a back door with a garage door. It can also be a place where startups go to their stage two. In other words, we’ve moved beyond a couple of cubicles at the local coworking. We need to step it up a little bit. So, this building can house a variety of businesses in existence, as well as those that want to foster and grow. We have the new corporate headquarters of Carolina Donor Services, now Honorbridge, on Millhouse Road. Super excited about that. There are good things happening at Carraway. So that whole district out there is beginning to build a life of its own, and we’re super excited about that.
Keck: ChapelHillEconomicDevelopment.org is the website from more on the Town’s Economic Development Office. You can head to Chapelboro.com/vibrantchapelhill to listen back to the full archives of this series Dwight Bassett, Economic Development and Parking Director. Thank you so much for being with us.
Basset: Thank you.
