The Town of Chapel Hill observes Halloween only on Oct. 31, and does not deviate from the celebration date, no matter what day of the week it falls. This year, Halloween falls on a Monday night. In expectation of the crowds that come to downtown Chapel Hill, Franklin Street will close at 9 p.m. and be reopened at 11:30 p.m.
Homegrown Halloween will continue for its fourth year. The shared effort among the Town, University and Downtown businesses aims to return Halloween on Franklin Street to its roots as a small town community gathering and to reduce crowd sizes.
“Because this year’s Halloween is on Monday, our message this year is one of moderation,” said Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt. “People have school and work in the morning, so have a good time, but leave early and celebrate responsibly. And, as in the last 3 years, this event is a Chapel Hill event. We are not rolling out the welcome mat for folks from outside Chapel Hill.”
In the past, the event has attracted an enormous crowd (upwards of 80,000 in 2007). Confined in the downtown area, this large gathering presents many public safety concerns related to personal and property crime, crowd panic and large scale civil disorders. Additional concerns focus on alcohol poisoning and gang-related violence. All of which spills over onto the University campus and adjacent neighborhoods.
The Chapel Hill public safety, and public works and parks and recreation team is experienced with managing many large scale crowd events in our downtown. Public safety officials in Chapel Hill are mindful that even the best laid plans cannot guard completely against crowd surges and possible disaster. Despite having many contingencies, they will be the first to say that safety cannot be assured.
Once again, the plan this year is to restrict traffic access to downtown Chapel Hill through lane and street closures starting. There will be no bus shuttles although Safe Ride buses will operate for UNC-Chapel Hill students. Alcohol checkpoints will be in place at the event, and DWI enforcement will also take place with cooperation from the NC Highway Patrol. The Town will work with downtown bar and restaurant owners to restrict alcohol sales after 1 a.m. Franklin Street will reopen to regular traffic at midnight. All ABC permittees among the bars and restaurants in downtown Chapel Hill will not permit customers to enter or re-enter after 1 a.m.
Because Homegrown Halloween on Franklin Street is geared to a local audience, the following restrictions are in place:
- Restricted access to downtown through lane and street closures
- No special event park and ride bus shuttles
- Parking will be essentially unavailable downtown
- Police plan to begin reopening Franklin Street at 11:30 p.m.
- Chapel Hill Transit will run its usual bus routes although some will be rerouted due to the traffic diversion plan. The Safe Ride bus routes normally in place on the weekends will be available to transport community members and UNC students away from downtown.
- Downtown bars and restaurants will close their doors at 1 a.m. to new patrons. They also will charge a minimum $5 cover charge to patrons not attending private events. In addition, downtown convenience stores that sell alcohol will either close their doors or stop selling alcohol at 1 a.m.
As always, there will be little to NO PARKING available close to downtown, and there will be no place for charter buses to drop off or pick up passengers. Charter buses entering the downtown Chapel Hill area will be directed by law enforcement officers to the outskirts of Town prior to dropping off any passengers. There will also be no parking in the neighborhoods adjacent to downtown. Access to neighborhoods will be limited by barricades and police personnel at the roads leading into them. This will begin early in the evening.
Prohibited Items:
Costume accessories that look like weapons; Weapons; Alcoholic Beverages; Glass Bottles; Paint; Fireworks and Explosives; Flammable Substances; Animals; Coolers
Downtown Residents
The Town of Chapel Hill will make every effort to keep people who are attending the event from parking in your neighborhood. Access to your neighborhood will be limited by barricades and police personnel at the roads leading into your neighborhood. This will begin early in the evening.
- Residents of the neighborhood will be able to drive in and out of the enclosed area. Tell the officer at the barricade where you live.
- Your guests will also be able to enter and leave. They will need to tell the officer at the barricade exactly where they are going.
- Illegally parked vehicles (even of residents, guests) will be ticketed and towed.
- Traffic will be congested and getting past the barricades may be a slow process. We recommend that you plan accordingly.
- Trash that would usually be collected on Tuesday will be collected on Wednesday, Nov. 2.
Transit Changes
Chapel Hill Transit (CHT) will end service early on the D, J, NS and NU routes and EZ Rider to accommodate the Halloween celebration on Franklin Street. The following schedule modifications will be in effect:
• D Route will end at 8:43 p.m. at the Sagebrook Apartments
• J Route will end at 8:56 p.m. at the Rock Creek Apartments
• NS Route will end at 8:39 p.m. at Eubanks Park and Ride
• NU Route will end at 8:40 p.m. at RR Lot
• EZ Rider service will end at 8:30 p.m.
All other routes will operate on regular routes and published schedules, although minor delays may occur due to increased traffic.
Safe Ride buses will operate from 11 p.m. to 2:30 a.m., along detoured routes. Safe Ride is a service funded by the UNC-Chapel Hill Student Government for the safety of students. Safe Rides will not serve the Downtown/Franklin Street area.
• Safe T – pick up and drop off from Chapel Hill Town Hall
• Safe J – pick up and drop off from Passport Motors (Franklin Street at Graham Street)
• Safe G – pick up and drop off from Columbia Street at Sitterson Hall across from Carolina Inn
Please be advised that due to road closures and traffic pattern changes, CHT may be unable to operate published schedules for these routes.
There will be no bus shuttles operating from park and ride lots to the Halloween celebration.
For additional information, including maps and schedules for Safe Rides, please visit CHT’s website at www.chtransit.org or call 919-969-4900 (press 1).
Halloween on Franklin Street by the Numbers (2010)
Event Management Cost – $191,031
Estimated # of attendees – 35,000
# of police officers – 329
# of parking monitors – 100
# of alcohol overdoses – 6
# of porta jons – 53
# of light towers – 16
Looking for things to do this fall and winter? Check out http://www.chillkids.com/index.html for fun things to do with the family!
Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and neighboring Carrboro and Cary are frequent recipients of Best Places awards. The Triangle area has been placed first or within the top five for living, working, raising children, retiring, starting a company, having the msot educated residents, being the foodiest small town in America and on and on. Here are our most recent accomplishments.
1. Durham Ranked #1 Place to Retire
The CNNMoney website named 25 of the best college towns to retire and Durham topped their list in 2011.
2. Chapel Hill Named Best Place to Raise Kids in NC
Business Week selected one town from each state for it’s list of “Best Places to Raise Kids,” and Chapel Hill earned the top spot for North Carolina. School performance is a key strength for the city as it has the states highest SAT scores and more than 90 percent of the high school students go on to college.
3. Raleigh/Cary #1 in the Top 10 Fastest Growing Retirement Spots
The Raleigh-Cary area was named number one by U.S. News in their list of the top 10 fastest growing retirement spots.
4. Raleigh/Cary #2 Brain Magnet in the Country
To come up with the country’s biggest brain magnets, Forbes Magazine took the 50 largest metro areas and ranked them by the increase in college graduates. The Triangle area is joined on the list by New Orleans, Tesas, Nashville and Birmingham.
5. Raleigh/Cary #2 Next Big Boom Town
Forbes Magazine ranked Raleigh/Cary #2 on it’s list of cities positioned to grow and prosper in the next decade. Criteria included job growth and demographic factors including rates of family formation, growth in educated migration, population growth, and attractiveness as a place to settle, make money and start businesses.
6. Raleigh Named #4 Best Place to Live by RelocateAmerica
Criteria included real estate and housing, economic health, recreation, and safety. Additionally, input was solicited from local residents, business and community leaders.
7. NC Museum of Art as #6 Best New Museum in America
Go, the in-flight magazine for AirTran, named the NC Museum of Art in Raleigh as the #6 Best New Museum in the U.S. Even thought the museum isn’t technically new, the accolade points the the incredible transformation created by the addition of the West Building that opened in 2010.
Check out the full article at http://raleighdurham.about.com/od/citiesandneighborhoods/tp/2011-Accolades-For-Raleigh-Durham-And-Chapel-Hill.htm
Looking for a fun activity outside where you can enjoy this crisp fall weather? Go on over to Ganyard Hill Farm for a hayride and picnic. It’s a great place for kids of all ages! Wander through the Pumpkin Patch and pick your own pumpkin… come early enough in the season and you can pick some cotton! There’s barnyard animals, a giant haystack and a corn maize! Don’t forget to meet Farmer Ganyard during your visit. For more information, visit http://www.ganyardhillfarm.com/
Festifall 2011: Bring on the Talent! Posted Date: 9/22/2011 The Town of Chapel Hill brings you Festifall, voted best annual event by the readers of Chapel Hill Magazine. Festifall will be held from noon to 6 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 2. One of the best combinations is October with crisp, cool air and music flowing down West Franklin Street.
The showcase stage, presented by 1360 WCHL and chapelboro.com, is filled with a variety of acts. Enjoy music from The Triangle Jazz Orchestra, acoustic folk of Mipso Trio, and neo soul of Jasme Kelly. Music is synonymous with dance and performance; the line-up is fantastically filled with fun. At the 140 West World Music Dance Tent, there will be dance lessons followed by live music to which you can test out the new moves you have just learned. Some of the sounds include original music from Latin America, the Caribbean, and West Africa to Motown, R& B, and country from performers such as Saludos & Company, Lo K Shun, and Bradley Simmons.
There is plenty for your eyes to feast upon. Over 100 artists will be gathered to show and sell their creations. Don’t miss the Grand Pumpkin in the midway coming to life with the colors of fall. Be sure to look towards the sky as you will find the Aerial Angels as they gracefully scale colorful lengths of ribbon 25 feet in the air with dazzling acrobatic moves. Performances on the hour will be followed by an intimate aerial dance lesson with the Angels! Almost every inch of West Franklin Street will be brimming with movement and a multitude of choices for one to jump into action at any moment. For more information about this free event sponsored by WCHL and chapelboro.com, visit www.townofchapelhill.org/festifall.
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http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/which-is-americas-best-city-09202011.html
Which Is America’s Best City?Based on metrics like school performance, green space, and cultural amenities, Raleigh, N.C., ranks No. 1 in Businessweek.com’s first Best Cities ranking
By Venessa WongAsk most people which city they would most want to live in and usually their answers would be shaped by such realities as proximity to their jobs and what they can afford. But suppose you could choose to live anywhere you wanted regardless of cost? What if you could live in a city that offered a wealth of culture, entertainment, good schools, low crime, and plenty of green space? Many people might opt for obvious choices such as New York or San Francisco, but great as they are, data reveal other cities are even better.
Businessweek.com spent months working with data that would help us to identify the best cities in the U.S. We looked at a range of positive metrics around quality of life, counted up restaurants, evaluated school scores, and considered the number of colleges and pro sports teams. All these factors and more add up to a city that would seem to offer it all. When we began the process we had no idea which cities would come out on top. The winner? Raleigh, N.C.
Raleigh No. 1
To most residents of Raleigh, it may not come as a surprise that their city earned the title of America’s Best City. Raleigh shows the cultural graces that go along with anchoring the so-called Research Triangle, home to North Carolina State University, Duke University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Among its many attributes the city sports 867 restaurants, 110 bars, and 51 museums, according to Onboard Informatics, as well as a thriving social scene, good schools, and 12,512 park acres, equal to several times the green space per capita in cities like New York and Los Angeles, according to the Trust for Public Land. It also offers a great deal on nights and weekends—from concerts and opera, to the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes and college sports, to the 30,000-square-foot State Farmers Market.
Raleigh may have a population of only about 400,000 and span about 144 square miles, yet data show it still offers a lot, if only in a smaller package. True, Raleigh may not be the center of the tech universe like San Francisco, a hub of higher education on the same scale as Boston, or a vibrant 24-hour metropolis like New York, but all those cities also offered higher unemployment, a dearth of parks, worse public education, and other negative factors that weighed against them.
“We’ve always said, you can find about every amenity that you want, even in a city of our size,” says James Sauls, director of Raleigh Economic Development, a partnership between the City of Raleigh and the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce.
The city has been home to an array of celebs including Olympic champion Kristi Yamaguchi, Dexter star Michael C. Hall, and singer Clay Aiken (whose dog was even named Raleigh).
Better, Not Bigger
With help from Bloomberg Rankings, Businessweek.com evaluated 100 of the country’s largest cities based on 16 criteria including: the number of restaurants, bars, and museums per capita; the number of colleges, libraries, and professional sports teams; the income, poverty, unemployment, crime, and foreclosure rates; percentage of population with bachelor’s degrees or higher; public school performance; park acres per 1,000 residents; and air quality. Greater weighting was placed on recreational amenities such as parks, bars, restaurants, and museums per capita, educational attainment, school performance, poverty, and air quality. As living in great cities can be expensive, affordability was not taken into account.
The data for this ranking came from the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Sperling’s BestPlaces, GreatSchools, Onboard Informatics, RealtyTrac, Bloomberg, and the Trust for Public Land.
Renting is Cheaper Than Buying in the Short-Term
It would seem that amid all the “toil and trouble” resounding throughout the current housing market amid the presiding economic crisis, it would seem that a strange champion has emerged from the encompassed chaos: rental homes.
Despite record lows set be 30-year and 15-year mortgage rates, right now it seems that renting is coming out on top of buying a home.
The presiding logic for this basis finds itself on the grounds of a more “short-term” scenario that what is often required for most prospective homeowners timeframe. Which is to say, in order to buy a home you have to commit long-term to the idea, while renters are only obligated as long as their lease is involved.
There is also the smaller fiscal commitment and greater freedom of mobility: and then end of the year, if you find someplace better to live, then you don’t have to renew your lease.
Article found at http://networkedblogs.com/mKooO
We all know that Labor Day is the first Monday in September. Here are some fun facts that accompany this American holiday? Hold on tight, we’re going to take a trip down Labor Day’s memory lane.
•Originally founded when American workers clocked in an average workday of sixteen hours in harsh conditions
•Detroit was the largest contributor of the early labor movement and they began demanding work days over a mere ten hours at a pay rate of two dollars an hour (big money in those days)
•First Labor Day celebration was on September 5, 1882 in New York City
•Labor Day is celebrated in American and Canada
•President Grover Cleveland declared Labor Day to be the first Monday of September
•The American Federation of Labor declared in 1909 that the Sunday before Labor Day would be Labor Sunday on which the spiritual and educational ideas of the labor movement would be emphasized
•Oregon was the first state to declare Labor day into law
•Unofficial end of summer
•Unofficial weekend that NFL and College football begins
•Traditionally this is the end of white shoes and pants; however this has relaxed over the years
While Labor Day closes out the summer season, the fun doesn’t have to end. After the Labor Day rush, hotels discount their rates in order to keep the customers traveling. The weather stays warm in Raleigh throughout September and into October. So don’t close your summer social calendar too soon!
