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.
Comments
Taxing Subject
Mon, 04/13/2009 - 06:11 — CitizenWillI wonder if Council will renege on their earlier pledge not to use tax incremental funding (TIF) for the lousy Lot $5 project now that the DPC has hired a new director who just "happens" to have chaired a statewide effort promoting TIFs.
Redirecting revenues that could be used to fix Downtown's broken sidewalks, improve signage, kickstart economic development and promote a better visitor experience using a TIF to underwrite the Lot $5 boondoggle is not only very poor policy but, once again, a terrible deal for Chapel Hill's citizens.
I hope the Chapel Hill News will follow the bouncing ball to see how the TIF angle emerges from the shadows.
Out of town expert
Sat, 04/11/2009 - 16:58 — marcoplosI often wonder if a local person who is already familiar with the nuances of the local scene and is connected to the local network of people might not do a better job, one more tailored to the details of our lives here. But we always seem to get someone from Florida or Illinois or Oklahoma, or - anywhere really - that has been to a fine university and learned the tenets of planning as taught at all the fine universities across the country.