Chapel Hill mayor rebuts downtown diss

CHAPEL HILL -- The mayor of Morganton visited Chapel Hill last weekend and had a great time - in Carrboro.

In a letter to The Chapel Hill News, Mayor Mel Cohen, a 1964 UNC-Chapel Hill graduate, said he "was saddened to see the deterioration" of Franklin Street.

"Chapel Hill is slowly declining, and it seems to me there may be an attitude of the Chapel Hill Town Council that downtown is not their priority," Cohen wrote.

Chapel Hill Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt said he wished Cohen had spent some time learning about recent developments downtown.

"I think Chapel Hill's doing a pretty good job," he said, comparing its 4.5 percent downtown vacancy rate to the 13.5 percent rate in Cohen's Burke County town.

The health of downtown Chapel Hill, perhaps because so many North Carolinians have passed through it, pops up a lot. Last year, Ted Abernathy, executive director of the Southern Growth Policies Board, told community leaders that Chapel Hill may have lost its edge as other cities such as nearby Durham reinvented themselves.

"You used to be the coolest place," he said.

In an interview, Cohen, a former traveling salesman and son of downtown Morganton merchants, said he visited his daughter in Chapel Hill last weekend and ate breakfast at Ye Ole Waffle Shop. He said the streets weren't clean and the empty storefronts were dirty.

"Chapel Hill, in my mind, should stand on its own, should be almost perfect really," he said.

"Look at Carrboro" next door, whose farmers market Cohen visited Saturday morning. "It's full. It's vibrant. I love it."

The Chapel Hill Town Council has taken steps to revitalize downtown.

The first homeowners in the 10-story Greenbridge condominium and retail project in downtown's West End will move in this summer. Plans are under way for an eight-story condominium and retail project on West Franklin Street.

Liz Parham directs the Office of Urban Development and the N.C. Main Street Center, which promotes economic development and historic preservation in towns under 50,000. She once ran the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership and said you can't compare downtowns.

"Every downtown has its focus," she said. "I think what's important is every downtown focus its efforts to make it the most economically viable it can be."

Despite Cohen's letter, Kleinschmidt said, other cities' leaders often tell him they wish they had a downtown like Chapel Hill's. "I hope he can come back so I can show him some of the things he missed."