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: Sarah Potter, Economic Development Program Coordinator with Town of Chapel Hill’s Economic Development.
Listen to the full conversation with Aaron Keck or read the transcript below, which is lightly edited for clarity.
Aaron Keck: Sarah, thank you so much for being with us today.
Sarah Potter: Happy to be here. Excited to kick this series off.
Keck: Tell us about yourself and, and the role that you play.
Potter: My role in our department’s a little bit, kind of like the jack of all trades person, I split my time between project management, some of our administrative work, contracts, invoices, all that kind of stuff, and then I also do a lot of our communications and marketing work as well. A lot of relationship building with other departments, but also with businesses downtown and businesses throughout Chapel Hill.
Keck: How long have you been with the office?
Potter: I’m going on about 11 months. I started last October right out of graduate school. I earned my MPA degree from the University of Georgia.
Keck: Do you have any previous background in Chapel Hill?
Potter:
Athens is a pretty similar comparative city. It’s a small southern college town with really close connections with government. So I was used to working in that kind of environment before I came here, so it’s pretty good comparison experience in that development.
Keck: One of the things that economic development has going on now is the Downtown Business Grant Program. Tell us about that.
Potter: This is a grant program that came out of undesignated ARPA funds. We have a pool of about $100,000 remaining, and wanted to support our downtown businesses, recognizing that those downtown businesses are critical to making that vibrant downtown environment. A lot of them were, or some of them are, facing relocation efforts, either through redevelopment projects or increasing land value. This grant recognizes a need to have financial support for our existing businesses and wanting to keep them downtown.
Keck: So not so much new businesses that are coming in, but the ones that are here?
Potter: Eligible businesses are existing businesses who are facing a relocation pressure, whether that’s a UNC project or a private development firm. If they have to upfit a building or have some kind of construction or even need down payment assistance.
Keck: I’m just going to name the whole grant program after Cosmic Cantina and Purple Bowl.
Potter: One of the most unique things about this program is we’ve been talking to every business that might need financial support. We’ve been gathering data and feedback from downtown businesses about future grant programs too, and what those might look like. It’s been a good process really assessing what the downtown business needs are right now, so we have some things in the works. Some of our partners, including The Chamber, we’ve been talking about what the future of grant programs might look like. Orange County has been a great resource. They have cyclical grant programs too, so they’ve been a really great help with this.
Keck: What have you learned from those conversations?
Potter: A lot. The Chamber’s going to be working on a future project. We’ve just started talking to them about it, so hopefully some good things will come out of that. Obviously there’s a need for financial support. One of the unique things about Chapel Hill is a lot of the buildings are historic, so upfitting those are really expensive. Raising Cane’s is a great example of how long that construction has taken and how much more money they’ve spent on that project, and that is a frequent occurrence. We are trying to support whatever businesses we can and do whatever we can. Raleigh has a similar program. When we were developing this specific business program, we did a lot of comparative research to other North Carolina local governments to see what kind of programs they were offering, what they found worked and what didn’t. So this is also like a pilot test run to see how we manage a cyclical program like this, and hopefully we’ll continue it.
Keck: Businesses want to participate in this. How do they get involved?
Potter: There’s an application form at Downtown Small Business Relocation Grant Program | Town of Chapel Hill, NC Applications are open until August 30th. If you have any questions, you’re welcome to reach out to our office. We’re happy to walk you through the application and give technical assistance if you need help, so we’re always there for you.
Keck: Downtown Small Business Relocation Grant Program | Town of Chapel Hill, NC. You can also find more information at the economic development website, Home | Chapel Hill Economic Development. Speaking with Sarah Potter from the Economic Development Office. We’re also in the middle of a mobility study and a streetscape for downtown too.
Potter: It’s a big project. We just finished a finalized plan of phase one. That was the mobility study that focused on curb to curb, the street focus. Identifying what our existing street networks should do for balancing the type of users we have. We have cyclists, motorists, transit, pedestrians and we can’t be asking our streets to do every single one of those things well. We don’t have the availability to widen the street more than it is, so trying to balance those different users for each street. So that’s what the Mobility Study covers. It is giving us a good vision for what that might look like. And then phase two of the streetscape, which we’re about to put out the bid for, that would be a much longer project, about eight/ nine months. That’s going to be very detailed and we’ll go over materials and solicit tons of public engagement, so people have different things to react to, which is great.
Keck: What kind of things can people expect from that?
Potter: We’re going to go into more detail about what a tree canopy might look like on the street, what actual materials the sidewalk can be and what the street might look like. So people will see different versions of what it could be and say, I like this, or I don’t like that. A little bit less conceptual and less vision, more of an action plan.
Keck: Anything else coming up that folks should know about?
Potter: We’re excited about the Garden Spot, which is a vendor market that we’ve been helping get the word out.
Keck: This is the one behind the Lantern?
Potter: Yes 421 West Franklin. Then coming up in September will be The Junction Grand opening, which is the Innovation Hub on East Rosemary. We’re very excited about that. It’s been a long time coming. I believe the date will be published in the next few weeks, but it’ll be toward the end of September.
Keck: How big of a deal is The Junction going to be for downtown?
Potter: It’s going to be a very big deal. There’ll be a lot of people, new jobs and employers who’ll be working downtown or bringing in new people, going to lunch and eating and shopping downtown too. It will have a pretty significant eco economic impact. One note about The Junction that’s really great, it’s a center for business and ecosystems. Launch Chapel Hill, which is the local businesses accelerator, is going to be hosted there as well. They are going to be doing a lot of activation programming, getting people into the space that will be open to the public. Look out for those dates and you can check out the space. It’s very, very cool.
Keck: And then say more about the Council Committee on Economic Sustainability, because that’s coming up too.
Potter: Yes! That’s a committee council that our department helps manage and run. We set the agendas, and that starts up again in September. September 8th will be the first one back after the Town Council took their summer recess, and that’s going to be a big date. We have a big announcement coming from our update on the midtown pilot project, which was the pilot project that was voted on once Complete Communities was passed. We’ll have a pretty big town staff update for that event. After that specific committee council meeting, we’re going to have a public virtual meeting about that announcement. We wanted to give the public the time to react, ask questions, have some dialogue about what the update is. So that will be there as well.
Keck: What else should folks know that we haven’t touched on yet? And where can people get more information?
Potter:
Always check out Visit Chapel Hill for what’s going on. The Downtown Partnership has tons of events. There’s some new business openings and anniversaries coming. You guys have an anniversary celebration coming as well! So there’s just a lot happening downtown. It’s an exciting time to be there.
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