New Town Council member Jim Merritt stood in the doorway of St. Joseph CME Church last night after the latest community meeting about the Greenbridge high rises.
No, he said, he would not have voted for the condominium tower going up on West Rosemary Street. "Most people had no idea what 10 stories would look like," he said, when I asked where the opponents were when the town approved the project. "By then it was too late," he said. "I'm appalled how massive it's going to be in relation to the surrounding buildings and the neighborhood."
Of course, that's his neighborhood. Merritt's mother lives on McDade Street, and last winter, he and others from Chapel Hill's black alumni association delivered holiday meals on the streets where they grew up. Of course, it wasn't "Northside" then, but smaller communities with their own names. We call it Northside now, outsiders looking in.
Ninety people attended last night's meeting. Velma Perry criticized the developers for misappropriating her comments in a promotional video. CJ Suitt, a spoken word artist, criticized me for allowing developer Tim Toben to see and respond to an open letter we published in The Chapel Hill News. I explained to him the letter accused the developers of wrongdoing and we had an obligation to let them respond. (I also invited Suitt to publish his poem in the paper.)
It's hard to tell what the meetings of United with Northside Community
Now will accomplish. The group has been stung by accusations they're
behind the anti-Greenbridge graffiti and a fake letter of apology
falsely signed by the developers in recent weeks. Less known is
their work in the church's bread ministry feeding the hungry and a
community history center they are creating, the Marian Cheek Jackson
Center for Saving and Making History.
Surely some of last night's rhetoric, more inflammatory than insightful, won't help. Nor can local NAACP president Eugene Farrar's warning not to speak with the developers, though I understand his concern that seemingly benign invitations to lunch could have the effect of dividing community opposition to the project.
But the project is approved, the opposition is small, and the longterm African American home owners in the increasingly rental neighborhood getting older. There needs to be more communication, not less, about tax relief, support for renters, and the two sides coming together to see if there is room for both.
There is pain, for sure, in Northside. And after that, there will be something else. The question is who will be left to feel it?
