Interview: Pam Hemminger, Mayor

Growth support

Creating job opportunities, commercial space are the key ingredients in Chapel Hill’s recipe for success

Pam Hemminger

Mayor – Town of Chapel Hill

How is Chapel Hill supporting private investment? One of the main reasons I ran for office is because I saw really bad choices being made that were going to lock us into being an elitist bedroom community and that’s not what I wanted for Chapel Hill. We are 80% residential and that’s just not a recipe for long-term success. That means people love to live here but they work somewhere else. To change that, we need to create more job opportunities in our community.

We noticed that startups and growing companies were leaving our town. We asked them why and received a list of issues, including the need to have more available commercial space here. We have taken a number of steps to help solve some of those issues to keep those companies here and help them with their growing needs. An early step was the creation of an Enterprise Zone in the northern area of town to attract or retain companies with light manufacturing operations. In March, Carolina Donor Services broke ground on their new headquarters – the first project in that new zone.

What has been the strategy to revitalize Downtown? One of the trends that concerned me about our Downtown was the significant amount of new student housing on Downtown land parcels. While we love the energy that students bring to Chapel Hill, those individuals are only here for nine months and it just doesn’t work for an economy. We need workers, families and young professionals who will be here for 12 months of the year living, working and shopping in Downtown.

Another component for Downtown was a need to invest in infrastructure because new development hasn’t occurred here despite proximity to the university and the positive outlook for our region. We were stuck in this chicken and egg situation wherein nobody was willing to build a commercial development because they couldn’t figure out how to park and nobody was going to build parking if the commercial was not there. Fortunately, a portion of our Downtown has been designated an Opportunity Zone and we were able to partner with a private developer to combine two awful parking lots into one newer deck. Creation of the new deck has catalyzed other commercial opportunities.

What is your outlook for Chapel Hill? I’m excited. We’re seeing all kinds of interest and companies wanting to be close to that energy, to try new models. People are eager to get back to business here and to get back to a real university experience as well. The university receives $1.2 billion annually in research dollars so we see this as a wonderful opportunity to retain talent and recruit companies with a synergy to the university and UNC Health, which benefits all of us.