Minutes 01-26-2018 Retreat - Laserfiche WebLink

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33 EDD that we won’t touch, but we all say it needs to be included. Let’s pick a number – a thousand feet, two thousand feet – and draw a line. A couple of years ago, he said, we added five words to the Unified Development Ordinance that almost eliminated development at every intersection with I-40 in Orange County: “where sewer and water exist.” Those words were added on the fly. Those words eliminate the otherwise prime developable properties at the I-40 intersections with NC-86 and New Hope Church Road, because those areas are in the Rural Buffer. I don’t have an issue with the Rural Buffer, but I do have an issue with a conversation dominated by “you cannot touch this.” We have to revisit this sacrosanct attitude. We can use a little common sense here. We’re not going to catch a lot of “big game,” he said, but we caught one with Morinaga and another with Wegman’s. They will have an immediate impact. Maybe we need a lot more along the scale of USA Dutch. I agree with that. I have no problem with all sizes. And they are paying decent wages. It’s disconcerting to me to hear phrases like “Orange County values” and “Orange County vision.” Orange County is gentrified. We are not a rural county. Chapel Hill is not a village. Hillsborough is not a mill town. If we don’t take a different path with our economic development then we are going to become an elitist, gated community. I want to know what my fellow Board members mean when they say we need to realign our strategy, he said. Does that mean we walk away from what we have been doing? I hope that means we need to go out to get everything we can get. Commissioner Rich said that to her it means an inventory of what we already have and what we have not yet gotten, of thinking of new ideas for what we are doing. What we’re doing now – what we have been doing for 30 years -- is not working. We need to start thinking at a higher level than how we have been thinking. Commissioner McKee said that we should not change our approach just because there will be a backlash in the community. I don’t want to impinge upon the established residential community next to the Eno EDD, he said, but we can take an area out of Eno, put water and sewer there, and support some development. We have to have the willpower to stand up to the backlash that’s coming, he said. Commissioner Price said that the Board has tried to protect the existing residential community next to the Eno EDD. We’ve tried to put transitional kinds of development across the street from residential areas so people are not living across from a manufacturing plant. Any plans should be flexible. We need to reassess areas that have been stagnant for 30 years and decide anew what to do with these chunks of land. Commissioner Price said she was not seeing anything in the Timmons study about incubators, cottage industries, small technology, etc. Those are the kinds of projects Jim Kitchen has been working on with people in Chapel Hill. She noted that some of the Article 46 funds are being used for small businesses. But most of the Timmons report is about manufacturing. I find that kind of narrow, she said. Mr. Hines replied that Timmons looked for the “game changers” - the big components and opportunities being missed for the small sites in Orange County if you had the appropriate water and sewer infrastructure in place. There are a lot of indirect benefits to the kinds of development Commissioner Price is talking about, he said. But we saw you already taking steps to implement those sorts of things and wanted to show you the kinds of things you are missing out on. Commissioner Price said she thinks the incubators, cottage industries, and small technology businesses do not have to be indirect players, but significant components of a diverse economic ecosystem. Mr. Hines said that while sub-economies can underlie a local economy, Orange County will not attract the kind of development it needs if it does not solve the water and sewer infrastructure