What Durham wants: new residents

County plans to team with Chamber of Commerce to counter image problem

As they packed to move from Florida to the Triangle in 2004, Tony and Lili Alfano received the same word of warning from everyone they spoke to.

"Everybody said: 'Do not get a house in Durham. Never get a home in Durham,' " Tony Alfano recalled recently.

Lured to the Research Triangle Park area by work, the Alfanos looked for homes in Durham before settling in Holly Springs. Theirs was the sort of decision Durham officials are trying to influence with a new focus on attracting residents to the Bull City.

Nearly half of Durham County's work force lives in other counties, and Durham boosters point to the city's image problem -- real or imagined -- as the culprit.

"We feel like after we attract the companies, we want to provide more information and make sure Durham gets a look and a fair shake in terms of living here," said Ellen Reckhow, chairwoman of the Durham County commissioners.

To that end, Reckhow and County Manager Mike Ruffin recently took part in a bus tour that brought about 20 employees from Stiefel on an orientation trip around the Triangle. Stiefel is a skin-care products company that will soon bring 200 jobs to RTP.

The county plans to begin working closely with the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce to focus more directly on landing employees relocating to the Triangle. Doing so is not currently a part of the chamber's strategic plan for corporate recruitment, but county leaders say it should be.

Statistics illustrate Durham's struggle to keep those who work in the county living there. According to 2000 census data, nearly half the people who work in Durham County -- about 74,000 of 157,000 workers -- live in nearby counties. By way of comparison, two-thirds of Raleigh's work force lives in Raleigh, according to the same data.

At Durham's largest employer -- Duke University and its health system -- about 14,000 of the more than 26,000 employees live in Durham County. The university encourages, but cannot require, its employees to live in Durham, said John Burness, a Duke spokesman.

In competing for new residents, Durham has a number of challenges. One is simple geography. RTP is so centrally located that even though it is in Durham County, workers can easily live in Wake or Orange counties and have a reasonable commute.

Those looking for something a bit more rural may be drawn to southern Wake County or northern Chatham County.

People looking for the very best schools find Chapel Hill and Carrboro particularly attractive. While SAT scores at public schools in Durham and Wake counties are generally at or above the state average, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro system consistently posts the state's best scores.

And then there is the image thing. Durham County officials acknowledge they have some work to do if they want to get out from under the city's reputation as a violent, drug-infested city with substandard public schools.

"It is an unfair image that is portrayed of Durham," Ruffin, the county manager, said recently. "Once you peel the skin back on a whole lot of what you hear about Durham, you find that first impressions aren't all that correct."

The thing is, first impressions matter. For the Alfanos, the first impression -- accurate or not -- was of a small city with a stagnant housing market. Though they liked some of the homes they saw in Durham, the Alfanos selected Holly Springs in large part because they figured they would realize a better return on their home investment.

"In our brief tour [of Durham], it was our feel that there were more old, run-down areas than new ones," said Alfano, a physical therapist whose company is based in Durham.