5 questions: A conversation with Chapel Hill mayoral candidate Adam Searing
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Mayoral candidate Adam Searing was a “latchkey kid” who grew up playing in the creeks and woods of Chapel Hill.
Since that time, the town’s population has doubled, and UNC has added just over 10,000 students. Less than a third still live on campus, and the impact that the university has on the town’s housing stock and affordability remain a key concern.
While the town borders remain roughly the same, hemmed in by the 1980s-era rural buffer that limits water and sewer service to prevent sprawl, more recent changes show Chapel Hill has lost its way, Searing, 56, told The News & Observer in a recent interview.
Without a new direction, the town could lose more of what makes it unique, he said.
Searing faces fellow Town Council member Jess Anderson in the Nov. 7 election for mayor. Early voting begins Thursday, Oct. 19, and runs through Saturday, Nov. 4.
Here are excerpts from our conversation.
Why do you say the town has lost its way?
I think we have not listened to people in our community. I think we have put emphasis on these kinds of large developments and need to follow the money. I think, and the final point is when you look around you see that we do have a lot of large luxury apartment buildings, we have plans for big office buildings downtown, wet labs. And we don’t have any plans for new parks, new green space, and in fact, a lot of what people love about Chapel Hill.
We are going to grow and we are going to develop, and that’s no question about it, but we need to keep the great things about Chapel Hill, which is a lot of our historic character downtown. I’m definitely for more apartments downtown, like Rosemary, like Martin Luther King, absolutely more townhomes and more dense development, like Homestead Road, or South Creek, which include a lot of green space, but if we don’t balance that with preserving our local character, increasing our green space and our parks and the amenities that people in other towns enjoy, I think we in many ways are heading towards just becoming another kind of cookie-cutter urban municipality.
How would you lead a council that regularly votes against you?
I tried to work with people, and it was clear that the majority had a definition of working with them, which was different from my definition.
I firmly believe that this is a democracy, and when you have a majority, you do not have to vote for the minority point of view, but I also respect that we need to have fair and honest debate and treat people with respect and listen to what they have to say and respond and not belittle them and not laugh and make faces and talk among members while people in the community have waited for three hours to speak at night at one of our massive meetings.
Obviously, for me, all year, the minute I started disagreeing — starting with the coal ash dump, the Legion park — it seemed to be fine to accuse, in violation of our most basic rules of how you conduct a legislative meeting, to personally attack me, not on my positions, but as you’re lying, you misrepresent, you play whatever with the truth, you are a demagogue.
When it became clear that I would not get much traction with my colleagues, I started to reach out to these different coalitions that formed around these different issues I was talking about. I have a duty to represent folks in this town, and I also have a right to think about what’s right for the community, and I’m going to do what I think is the proper thing to do.
It was so exciting to me to be able to recruit these four great candidates (council candidates David Adams, Breckany Eckhardt, Elizabeth Sharp and Renuka Soll) who are stepping up and willing to put the time in and say, even though we know it’s going to be nasty, we’re willing to give it a try because we care about the community.
How do you respond to critics who say your statements and weekly newsletters have misinformed residents by leaving out or misstating key information?
My cell phone number is on the town website, my email, I am always happy to speak with anybody and meet with anybody, and have hundreds of times in the last year and a half. If somebody sees something that they think I’ve been inaccurate (about) or I have not written, then I would love to speak with them and explain my position, and maybe something I’ve said is not correct, and then I will correct it. I don’t pretend to be some infallible sage who knows absolutely every piece of information out there, but what I do try and do is provide every original source I can so that people can link back to the materials that I used.
I just think one thing, in addition to that. We have very little independent news coverage of what happens in town, and it’s not through the fault of anybody. It’s just the business model is such that it’s very hard to find that kind of independent coverage, and so I think you often have competing narratives. In the absence of really comprehensive, really independent coverage, it makes it more difficult for people to sort through different claims.
How do you think the town can support local businesses, recruit new companies, and provide housing for local employees?
I think this (Carolina Junction) innovation center with UNC seems to be a good thing to do. I’ve read about it, and it was nice to be able to be in there when they opened it up, see what they’re doing, and I know there’s a couple small companies that are already working in there. It’s on a much smaller scale, but it’s sort of like the Centennial Campus at State, which I think has just been quite successful. We just don’t have the kind of space to do that kind of thing.
There’s the whole issue of local businesses vs. the Boston developer (at 306 E. Franklin St.). I think I’ve seen about three articles that talk about how there’s a glut of wet lab space and there are huge vacancies, including in Research Triangle Park, in wet lab space.
We’ve got some wet lab space in the innovation center, and then we’ve got this one approved for behind the post office, which is going to be huge. So that’s two. I get that my desire to represent local businesses colors my views about this, but when I see those stories and now we’re talking about building another one, it seems like we’ve got a lot of eggs in one basket for our downtown.
We’re (also) going to take away some of our historic structures and, I think some people would say, some of the charm of Franklin Street when you put a 150-foot glass wet lab right there.
(Searing said he would first consult with small business owners and the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership as mayor.) Other ideas:
I’ve seen in a number of communities where they either have some sort of park or a skate park or something that brings more families downtown. I know that we have this huge problem with the (commercial) rents, because of lot of the buildings are owned by folks who don’t live around here.
Maybe just have more people living above some of these storefronts downtown (could help) ... or if there’s ways we can make (UNC’s Porthole Alley redevelopment) something where more people who work for the university are downtown. One thing about that project I really like is the idea that you make it more of an entrance to the university.
I think we can build taller in the downtown area, along Martin Luther King, Columbia, Rosemary, Franklin. I do really like the apartments (at 101 E. Rosemary), and the apartments down farther on Rosemary seem to be fitting in, and the hotels, which I think are good. But you have to be careful as you get closer to the neighborhoods. I think you need to be a little more deliberate about these decisions.
I think that we miss the boat sometimes on attracting people to come here. If we built a bunch of (pickleball) courts, you could attract some of these national tournaments to come here. It means over 1,000 families come camp or stay in town and spend money for the whole weekend, for like three days, so this is a huge economic boost.
We have over 100 miles of mostly informal trails (and) there’s a huge amount of people who like being outdoors and hiking and biking and stuff, and we just don’t take advantage of that.
This story was originally published October 18, 2023 at 5:30 AM.
