FROM STAFF WRITER JESSE JAMES DECONTO:

At a pizza lunch celebrating the framing of the top story of its downtown Chapel Hill project, Greenbridge Developments announced $5,000 in donations today to two local nonprofits.

Half goes to Mama Dip’s Share the Love Fund, which helps Northside and Pine Knolls children and youth pay for extracurricular activities like camps and music lessons.

“This area is about the young people, so thank you, thank you so much,” said Mildred “Mama Dip” Council, who recently turned 80.

The other half goes to the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Orange toward its efforts to open a new facility in the Pine Knolls neighborhood.

“This is just the beginning of a series of engagements between Greenbridge and the community,” said partner Tim Toben.

The developers have come under fire from some local black leaders and the student group United with the Northside Community Now for not doing more to help the surrounding neighborhoods.

Greenbridge partner Michael Cucchiara said the developers will ask every resident in the 98 condos to contribute to neighborhood nonprofits.

“We hope all of them contribute and it doubles and triples,” he said.

Sherril Koroluk of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill says someone has "tagged" or just plain vandalized Michael Brown's Handprints Mural on the side of 422 W. Franklin St. (Chapel Hill Cleaners).

"I am not sure if the spray painted CDU66  H6C is a gang related tag or just gibberish," she writes. 

Brown painted the mural in 1990 with the help of local elementary school students. Here's what he told us about the project:

I was struggling for an idea when an old childhood memory came to
me. I used to enjoy walking past Sloan’s Drug Store because you could
still see some faded Carolina blue hand prints put there by students
after Carolina’s 1957 National Championship win. Eureka! Even a first-grader can make a handprint

Brown is about to start restoring the Blue Steeple Mural on the back wall of 109 E. Franklin St. (still my favorite). The society hopes to have enough money left over to now help pay for the restoration of the Handprints mural.

The Painted Walls Project, which has been raising funds to restore the murals, still needs donations to pay for the restorations. The project is a joint effort by the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill, the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership and the Chapel Hill Historical Society.

Click here to find out how you can help.

Wintergreen Hospitality has acquired Chapel Hill's boutique Franklin Hotel for $14 million, according to public records. 

UNC grads Jay Patel, 27, brother Anup Patel and their father Pravin Patel own Wintergreen Hospitality, which has operated more than $60 million in hotel assets over nearly 30 years. The company has properties in the Southeast including Washington, D.C; Nashville; and Savannah, and currently owns and operates two Hilton Hotels properties: the Hampton Inns located in Lumberton and Selma, North Carolina.

"We will build on the Franklin's reputation for providing a premium hotel experience in Chapel Hill," Jay Patel said. "Our vision is to deliver unforgettably positive human interactions with guests, who will find their Franklin Hotel experience warm, friendly, sophisticated, highly service-oriented and casually fashionable.”

The Durham Train station will open at its new location on Wednesday.

The 10,000-square-foot depot is located in the historic Walker Warehouse Building at 601 W. Main St. The new facility replaces the interim station, which is currently located at 400 W. Chapel Hill St.

Four trains sponsored by North Carolina’s Amtrak will provide daily service to Raleigh, Greensboro, Charlotte, eight other North Carolina cities, and to the Northeast. The expanded station hours are 6:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily and begin on July 8. The facility offers limited short- and long-term parking.

Travelers should arrive at least 30 minutes before their train’s departure to ensure time for passenger check-in, ticketing and baggage check-in.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held on Friday, July 10, to celebrate the opening of the station. The public is invited to attend.

North Carolina’s Amtrak Piedmont and Carolinian trains are sponsored by the N.C. Department of Transportation and paid for through state funding, Amtrak and passenger fares. Complete schedule and train information is available at bytrain.org or by calling 1-800-BYTRAIN. Reservations are required. Passengers should book early for best fares.
 

Chapel Hill's landmark Varsity Theatre is for sale.

Owner Bruce Stone said last night he was hoping to hear from a buyer for the Franklin Street business by the end of yesterday.

“Today was supposed to be the day of decision,” he said Monday evening. "I can’t know the whole story until this day expires, which is why I’m sitting at home.”

Fans, a neighboring merchant and an employee at Stone's Chelsea Theaters all said they understood the business was closing or changing hands. They had heard the last show might be Thursday, though the newspaper received movie listings for the Varsity's upcoming week this morning.

If the Varsity closes, it would leave downtown, without a movie theater. The Carolina Theatre, which Stone also owned, closed in 2005 when property owner Joe Riddle decided to seek a single tenant for his space.  

On Monday, the possibility the Varsity might close prompted former Alderman Allen Spalt to e-mail Carrboro Town Hall suggesting, “If it can’t be saved where it is, maybe it is  finally time for a movie theater in Carrboro?”
 

Sherry DeVries, executive director of the Durham Arts Council, responded to criticism on the ABCDurham listserv this week about the move of CenterFest out of the Five Points/City Center  district.

I went to CenterFest last year and had a great time. The parking lot on Foster Street may not be the most scenic, but I know from other kinds of festivals that organizers like them because they're easy to access, set up and hook to utilities. Last year we were just about to leave when the TROSA band started playing, and we moved up to the stage area to hear Cindy (sorry, don't remember her last name, anybody know?), sing "Heard It Through the Grapevine." As good as Gladys, I swear.

Anyway ... DeVries says 2008 CenterFest at the Central Park District/Foster Street site, drew 22,000 visitors, a 30 percent increase. "Artists overwhelmingly rated the site positive," she wrote, "although there were a handful of artists that are still nostalgic for the old 5-Points site." The festival had 115 visual artists, about the same as when it was downtown, and 26 performing groups, up from 16 to 18 at the old site."
 
CenterFest costs over $170,000, she said. In 2008 about $94,000 came from corporate sponsorship, $55,000 from concession sales, booth fees and donations, and the Arts Council funded the remaining $20,000.

To move CenterFest back to Five Points would increase costs another $25,000 to $30,000 (more security, more sound systems, more contract staffing, more equipment, more signage, more gates, more electrical, and much more staff time, etc.), she said. 

"The DAC Board has made a decision that this is not a prudent business decision," DeVries said. "The festival works very well in its current Central Park/Foster Street site.  Even if someone stepped up and gave us $30,000 in additional money, we think it would be wise to utilize that funding to support our community’s arts organizations, artists and arts education programs – especially in this current economy."

The City Council voted 6-1 today to spend up to $112,000 to create a Wi-Fi network downtown. Councilman Philip Isley was the lone councilor to vote no.

The vote allows City Manager Russell Allen to negotiate a contract with WindChannel.

Once it's up and running, the Wi-Fi network is expected to cost about $21,000 annually to maintain.  

Isley quetioned whether there was any reason that the city needed to move ahead with the network now.

"We certainly could not do this ... we just think this will set the stage for the success of downtown," Allen said.

Real estate writer Jack Hagel reports Ram Development is cutting prices on its 140 West (Lot 5) condominium project in light of the soft market and increased competition (Greenbridge, East 54). 

The Florida developer launched pre-sales last year, hoping to break ground once 25 percent of the units were under contract, and complete the project by 2012. Lenders have since tightened up on projects, often requiring developers to sell about half the units before construction.

Ram's goal is to lure 10 more buyers by offering:

- Almost 10 percent off three-bedroom units, bringing the price to $470,000.
- Almost 11 percent off two-bedroom units, dropping the sticker to $375,000.
- About 8.5 percent off one-bedroom units, bringing the price to $215,000. Less than a year ago, Ram had hoped to fetch about $350,000 for those units.

Read Jack's story here.
 

The Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership has named Jim Norton, the president of Downtown Tulsa Unlimited, in Oklahoma, its new executive director beginning June 1. 

Norton chaired a statewide effort to approve tax increment financing in Oklahoma and advocated for residential development in downtown Tulsa, the partnership board said in a release. He was involved in the inception and design of the National Main Street Program in the early 1980s.

He is a graduate of East Carolina University with a degree in city and regional planning and brings to Chapel Hill over 25 years of downtown development expertise. His wife, Annie, is a graduate of UNC's School of Public Health.

Norton succeeds Liz Parham, the partnership's first director who resigned last July to become director of the Office of Urban Development for the Division of Community Assistance at the state Commerce Department.

Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Barbara Trent ("The Panama Deception") is weighing in on the Greenbridge debate.

Trent, who lives in Orange County, doesn't like the language that critics of the seven- and 10-story towers now under construction downtown are leveling at the developers. The project received little criticism during Town Council meetings, but resentment is rising in the historically black, working-class Northside neighborhood as the towers rise. Many feel excluded and say their history is being erased.

"We all need to see Greenbridge succeed whether we supported it initially or not," Trent writes in a letter being published in Sunday's Chapel Hill News. "I can’t even imagine what a horror its failure would become. Think of an empty, half built building languishing for years instead of whatever vibrant community center we choose to make of it."

Trent urges residents to work through the town to obtain for tax relief for Northside property owners who will see their tax bills rise with the future condominiums, some of them selling for more than $1 million. 

"Let’s seed compassion, opportunity and cooperation so we will reap the same," she writes. "Think outcome. That’s what community organizing and being a good neighbor is all about."