Chapel Hill, backward and forward

At last night's Town Council meeting, we authorized an agreement with Preservation North Carolina for a historic preservation easement on the old Library Building, 523 East Franklin Street, now home to the Chapel Hill Museum. This was the result of my petition from 2005. At the time I blogged about the local significance of this building, designed by Don Stewart. I'm thrilled that this distinctive and important example of mid-century modern architecture in Chapel Hill will be preserved for future generations.

And will there ever be lots of Chapel Hillians in the future! We also discussed the draft Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro MPO 2035 Long-Range Transportation Planning Organization Socio-Economic Projections. Chapel Hill's population is expected to grow by 55 percent in that time (with jobs growth of 107 percent), to about 80,000. How accurate are these numbers? So far with their crystal ball, says planner David Bonk, they've been accurate to +/- 10 percent.