Greetings.
I am writing a citizens’ response to Mayor Williams’ State of the City address. My orientation is to address the appalling degradation of the environment Durham’s short sighted sell out to developers has fostered, and I will do that. However, the Indy, 5/1/24, confirms that the environment is not the only casualty of Durham’s politico-construction complex. Small downtown businesses Mayor Williams purports to represent and support (as a small business owner himself) are being suffocated by seemingly endless construction.
After enduring eighteen months of construction driving away customers and having been told construction of a large apartment complex on the next lot would be finished before the end of 2023, a manager at Fullsteam Brewery explained,
“We were looking forward to a great year [in 2024]” Ari Sanders says, “then we got an email: ‘Hey, we’re gonna block the street off in front of you for about 30 days.’ Then it turned into 60 days, and what wasn’t quite clear was there was going to be a massive generator directly in front of our front door, blowing diesel fumes, putting out so much noise that it was pretty much OSHA non-compliant in front of our building for months.”
Jeremy Roth at Motorco Music Hall adds,
[The construction] just makes the neighborhood very, very unappealing. You can imagine, you know, you’re downtown, and you’re thinking about going down to what Sean Wilson calls the DIY district. And you start walking down Rigsbee and you see all the orange cones and fences and trucks parked across the road and it’s like, ‘I don’t want to go down there.’ And we’re definitely feeling that, we’re seeing that.
Sadly, when these small business owners turn to City Hall for help, they are met with shrugs.
Individual developers do not have any additional responsibilities to their neighbors beyond respecting trespass law,” says Alexander Cahill, senior development services manager with the Durham planning department. “The only notification requirements are associated with blasting, and that’s permitted by the fire departments. It is fairly common for developers to voluntarily communicate with nearby neighbors about issues such as street closings, but that is not required. Such closures are permitted by either the city or NC [Department of Transportation] as applicable.”
I am wondering why Durham has not passed ordinances requiring developers to mitigate the disruption construction causes to local small businesses. Why does the city allow developers to close public streets, especially without substantial advance notice to businesses on the streets? Aren’t Durham’s small business owners stakeholders who should have input as to when and how their streets will be closed and their customers’ parking blocked? Why haven’t Durham’s leaders reached out to small businesses to help them survive the crush of big development? And, after granting the development community’s every wish for years climaxing with last year’s SCAD passage, why isn’t Durham demanding that big developers compensate existing small businesses for their construction related losses?
Putting small businesses out of business isn’t Dope. It’s not even decent.
Sincerely,
Katie Ross