Carrboro CVS is occupied, closes up parking lot
It’s not that I don’t have sympathy for the Occupy people.
I spent a good deal of my college career in sit-ins and various student protests. But in those days we were protesting a war that was killing hundreds of thousands of people.
The little town of Carrboro is famously liberal, having had one of the country’s first gay mayors. When self-described anarchists occupied the empty building on the corner of Greensboro and Weaver Streets (right across from my office) last weekend, our current mayor, my realtor colleague Mark Chilton, apparently offered them ice cream to leave (the offer was declined). This is the kind of town Carrboro is.
No more free parking
But after the occupation, the owners of the large corner property, which includes a big parking lot that has been open for the public to use, put up a big and ugly chain link fence (photo courtesy of the Carrboro Citizen), fencing off not only the abandoned building but also the parking lot. Parking in downtown Carrboro is at a premium and this was a good-sized lot with plenty of FREE overflow parking for Carr Mill Mall and Weaver Street Market. So I’m not sure what the occupiers actually accomplished.
As I wrote last May, the plans for the new CVS are actually quite attractive and fit in nicely with the brick buildings on the street. I completely understand that the neighbors of the CVS and residents of the mill neighborhood will not want the bright lights of a CVS parking lot and the all-night traffic of a 24-hour drugstore, but surely that can be dealt with in the Town’s approval process. The Town of Carrboro is quite progressive in its planning process and tends to be very careful in adhering to the Vision 2020 plan.
Who are the “corporate profiteers” in this situation?
In my opinion, the time for protest was during the two years the property stood vacant and deteriorating. The property was owned by Ruffin Slater (founder of the cooperative Weaver Street Market) in the name of “Carrboro Community LLC.” The Carrboro Commune people who led the occupation protest against “the ‘right’ of the wealthy to profit from empty buildings.” It seems to me that Mr. Slater and the Weaver Street Market cooperative (against whom I have no personal beef and whom I admire and respect for single-handedly facilitating the transformation of Carrboro into the hip metropolis it is today) is the entity who more than anyone profited from this empty building. According to public records, Mr. Slater paid $625,000 for the building in 2003, and sold it to Revco (CVS parent company) in 2010 for $1,350,000.
Something positive for Carrboro
As someone who has to look at this building every day, I am eager for the day that the property will be redeveloped into an attractive building that is useful to the community and generates property taxes that will help Carrboro thrive. I do remember how exciting it can be to imagine a utopia where there is no private property and resources belong to the people, but in the real world that is a less effective strategy than might be imagined.
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