You may also like Crosstown Traffic | WakeWatch | Bull's Eye | Eastern Wake Buzz
News
Web Search powered by YAHOO!
OrangeChat
How are we doing? If you have a question, complaint or suggestion about coverage of Orange and Chatham counties in The News & Observer and The Chapel Hill News, post your comments in this blog or e-mail us. Comments here may be reprinted in The News & Observer or Chapel Hill News.
The pol, the agitator and the screenwriter
Submitted by mschultz on 09/04/2008 - 09:52
We just posted a story on the first candidates for the new 15-member authority being formed to search for a new airport location in Orange County.
Two of the names are familiar: former Town Chapel Hill Town Councilman Joe Capowski and former council candidate and frequent council critic Will Raymond. Capowski is seeking the town's one seat. Raymond is seeking one of the county's three seats.
The third is a fellow named Russell Day. He's an almost pilot who's worked in ground services at different airports for 10 years but is currently working as a carpenter and finishing a screenplay about "a pilot who falls in love with a whore who becomes a stockbroker." It's set in the '80s, he says, which I guess explains all that.
Day has a novel idea. He suggests putting the airport on the site of the current Orange County landfill, already a transportation hub area.
"It's been done before," Day says. "You've got UPS over there. You've got the train tracks over there. You've got the highway. To me it looks like an ideal location."
Read more about the airport authority here.
About the blogger
Mark Schultz is the editor of The Chapel Hill News and The Durham News, and one of the Western Triangle editors for The News & Observer.Want to post a comment?
In order to join the conversation, you must be a member of newsobserver.com. To register or to log in using your existing account, click here.Advertisements
Comments
Fishier and Fishier
Thu, 09/04/2008 - 16:14 — ZippoIt's interesting to note that the awarding of the contract for construction of the new AHEC hangar at RDU has now been postponed indefinitely.
Could this mean the University is hoping to locate a new airport without having to build a temporary home for its airplanes at RDU?
If that's the case, they must be much further along in identifying a potential site in OC than any of us know about. We need folks who can get to the bottom of this in a big hurry.
Exciting opportunity to integrate the community into the process
Thu, 09/04/2008 - 13:34 — WillR (not verified)One reason I applied was to work to bring community input directly into the process. If you are familiar with my website citizenwill.org, you know that I try to bring concentrated research to bear in order to help our community make fact-based decisions on issues. Other than my background working on local boards , having already been involved in plotting HWA's future, I think one of my strongest qualifications is this desire to integrate broader community awareness and participation in vital issues.
If appointed, I will do my best to document the Authority's deliberations, publish as much of the supporting documentation as possible and provide an analysis, of course from my own viewpoint, of the progress being made. More importantly, I will work to be a conduit for the wider community's concerns about the process, the suitability of sites and other relevant issues. I'm sure that both the appointed elective officials and UNC officials will do the same, but hopefully I can help provide community perspectives that I believe will be distinct from those.