INC NEWS - Councilman voices concern over $2M from Duke (Herald-Sun)

[John Schelp]

Councilman voices concern over $2M from Duke
By Ray Gronberg, Herald-Sun, 30 October 2006

To avoid it looking like a trade, the Durham City
Council shouldn't accept a $2 million donation from
Duke until after it's decided what to do with the
university's Central Campus rezoning application, a
councilman says. 

Councilman Mike Woodard said he's asked City Manager
Patrick Baker's staff for an opinion on whether
elected officials can delay a vote on the donation
without harming plans for a new downtown performing
arts center. Officials intend to use the Duke money to
help pay for the theater. 

By postponing that decision, the council could hold
hearings on the 128-acre Central Campus rezoning and
settle that issue without having to worry about
whether the terms of the donation tie its hands,
Woodard said. 

Duke officials have said three-quarters of the money
is contingent on the council giving them control over
the design and maintenance of a stretch of Anderson
Street that bisects the Central Campus development off
Erwin Road. 

The donation agreement also specifies that Durham
officials have to issue "any other necessary approvals
required by the city for Duke to undertake the
improvements," a clause Woodard and other council
members worry could create at least the appearance of
a conflict of interest as they ponder the rezoning. 

"I'm interested in making sure that we can present
these as separate issues, because they are separate
issues," Woodard said Friday. "I'd like us to resolve
the rezoning question as soon as we can. Then if a
majority of the council agrees with the Anderson
Street proposal, then we take the action on that." 

Woodard's comments made him the fourth council member,
joining colleagues Thomas Stith, Diane Catotti and
Eugene Brown, to voice qualms about whether the
juxtaposition of the $2 million donation with the
rezoning passes what Stith has termed "the
common-sense smell test." 

Under state law, a city can't do anything in advance
of a rezoning hearing that commits its council to
voting a certain way on zoning applications. City
Attorney Henry Blinder said recently he believes the
agreement on Anderson Street and the $2 million
donation doesn't run afoul of that. 

Others aren't so sure. 

"In talking with local lawyers, they've called this
'Milk-Bone money' -- where Durham has to sit up and
beg for Duke's money," John Schelp, an Old West Durham
Neighborhood Association activist who's been involved
in talks with the university about the rezoning, said
in an Oct. 21 e-mail to the council. "This deal is
darn close to quid pro quo -- and can have a chilling
effect on the regulatory function of the city and the
legislative function of the council." 

The rezoning has provoked controversy because Duke,
campus neighbors and local business interests have yet
to agree on the conditions officials should attach to
it. The most contentious point concerns the amount of
on-campus retail and restaurant space the city should
allow. 

Schelp and other activists have asked for a
30,000-square-foot cap on overall retail development,
and a per-store limit of 7,500 square feet. In
addition, they want Duke to live with no more than
15,000 square feet of restaurants and dining
facilities on Central Campus, in addition to the
city's existing ban on free-standing restaurants
within a "university/college" zone. 

Duke officials have countered by saying they'd accept
a 50,000-square-foot cap on overall retail
development, on top of a per-store limit of 20,000
square feet. 

Negotiations between the two sides have been stalled
since an Oct. 10 Durham Planning Commission vote that
went against Duke. 

Schelp said he's expecting a new proposal from Duke
early this week and a meeting between the two sides on
Nov. 7 -- a day after the council's schedule is
calling for a vote on the Anderson Street proposal. 

He added that he believes Duke President Richard
Brodhead and other administrators have concluded that
they don't need to make additional concessions to the
so-called "stakeholders coalition" of neighbors and
business owners because they think the rezoning has
majority support on the council. 

Another leader of the coalition, Tom Miller, said he
agrees with Woodard that the council should decide the
rezoning first, before deciding what to do about
Anderson Street and the $2 million. 

Miller -- who's usually been more optimistic than
Schelp about the possibility of an agreement on the
rezoning -- said he's "a little frustrated" because
the two sides haven't sat down since the Planning
Commission meeting to hammer out their differences. 

"I hope it's not that they feel with this Anderson
Street thing that it's no longer necessary to come to
an arrangement with this particular group of
stakeholders," Miller said.