Up & Coming Weekly

Where I Want to Spend the Apocalypse by PITT DICKEY It’s Vegas, baby! I recently went on a fact fi nding trip not sponsored by the U.S. State Department to fi nd facts in Las Vegas. I didn’t fi nd any facts but I did manage to learn some stuff. For instance, there is not a lot of difference between a dry heat in Vegas at 106 degrees and a wet heat in North Carolina at 117 degrees on the old heat index. Both are reasonably miserable. An acetylene torch is also a dry heat. The trip out was fun. Our plane was diverted from Dallas due to thunderstorms. We got to land to refuel in wonderful Waco, Texas. Waco was once home to David Koresh and the Branch Davidians. I expected to see a plaque on the wall of the Waco airport commemorating Koresh or at least Janet Reno but all they had was the Waco Chamber of Commerce motto which is an upbeat, “Waco, We Do!” We were in Vegas for a brief trip so I remained on eastern daylight time while I was there. This meant I woke up about 5:00 a.m. Vegas time. Nothing is more uplifting than going down stairs and seeing people who have been up all night gambling still going strong at 5:00 a.m. My favorites are the morning gamblers on oxygen holding a cigarette in one hand and pulling the slot machine with the other. Vegas is fun for the whole family, particularly if you are the Manson Family. We stayed at the Bellagio, which I recommend if you enjoy paying $7.50 for a glass of orange juice with breakfast. In order to become one with the Vegas strip, I walked every morning before the sun got to its full broil setting. One morning I culture trekked from the Bellagio up to Fremont Street which is about six miles. Street people on Las Vegas Boulevard early on a Saturday morning are pretty colorful. I saw a couple of older ladies in motorized scooters buzzing down the side walk. One lady was on oxygen and I overheard them discussing where to have breakfast. It was inspirational, they weren’t as mobile as they used to be, but they were still out having fun in Sin City. As Teddy Roosevelt would say, “Bully for them!” I walked past the Circus Circus Casino and saw a sign for the “All You Can Stomach” breakfast buffet for only $9.99. The Circus Circus is up at the funky end Thoughts on UDO From the Housing Community by MALCOLM MCFADYEN OPINION There is considerable buzz on the street these days about the proposed Unifi ed Development Ordinance, otherwise known as the UDO. Different camps have different perspectives, and for each camp, their perspective is their reality. True reality usually lies somewhere in between. I would like to share with you some realities from our perspective. First of all the Housing Community is not against the UDO. We feel it has not been fully vetted and is not ready for passage. Our volunteers have been faithful members of the Stakeholders group that has reviewed the document for over two years now and have been integral to the process. The City has probably received more “in kind” free consultation from all the Stakeholders than they have paid the Chapel Hill consultants. Our members are Stakeholders because they understand the importance of the UDO and want to be sure we get it right the fi rst time because so much is at stake. We want to be a positive part of the process. At the June 1 presentation by the consultants and City staff, it was our perception that these presenters were saying that the UDO was ready to go and that there might be a handful of items over which there were disagreements. That is where our reality was much different from theirs. During the two year process, there had been numerous points that our Stakeholders had made to staff on repeated occasions that to our way of thinking had not been addressed. To our count, there were 66 items given in writing in January that we felt were still unanswered that Staff seemed to be saying had been resolved. We honored the process and once again presented these items, this time to the Planning Commission in writing on June 15 with book and page references plus the reasoning behind each of our objections. Some of these objections are quite complex and will require a good deal of discussion to resolve. Some of them should be solved quickly. Our concern is how Staff’s reality was that this current version of the 525 page UDO document was nearly ready for passage, when we had repeated raised multiple objections on at least 66 items verbally and in writing since January. There are plenty of specifi c points of disagreement we can discuss but major ones concern the Open Space requirements and the Parks and Recreation fee in 6 UCW JULY 7-13, 2010 lieu of provision; what we perceive as a general disdain for multi-family projects and onerous requirements for design and layout; the defi nition and enforcement of “light trespassing;” an opposite opinion on the merits of connectivity; and that the Administrative Manual is not completed. There are also concerns with block length, the location and layout of street trees, sidewalks and utility easements, parking requirements, and many other substantive issues. According to our research from the engineer who worked on the project and is a Stakeholder, if the Parks and Recreation fee in lieu of were applied to the Westlake at Morganton Apartment complex, there would have been an increased cost from that provision alone of approximately $750,000 which would have killed the project. This same engineer applied the Open Space requirement and Parks and Recreation fee in lieu of to the Patriot Park subdivision and found the added cost to this subdivision from these two provisions alone would have been nearly $500,000. These are staggering numbers that our reality cannot justify, especially from just two of the UDO provisions. The UDO is a fabulous academic study in Planning. We feel that the process must be taken further. You must take it to the fi eld, and that is where our reality says the UDO needs work. We feel that the following acid test questions need to be applied initially to our 66 questions and then to the next version of the revised document: 1. Is it practical? 2. Will it work in the fi eld? 3. How much will it cost? 4. Who pays the cost? 5. Can they pay the cost? 6. What are the unintended consequences? The Home Building community will continue to work hard to produce an ordinance that provides a more attractive community with more logical development in a cost effi cient manner. We feel the UDO in its present form does not provide that. To our way of thinking, it needs considerably more revision, in which we continue to be prepared to be a positive part. MALCOLM MCFADYEN is the President of the Home Builders Association of Fayetteville. WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM of the strip and features a giant looming clown sign holding a hypnotic sucker to lure in hungry tourists. Anyone who has coulrophobia or clown fear, like I do, should stay away from the Circus Circus. That is one big angry clown they have up in the sky. He looks hungry. Another casino lured in hungry and insane tourists proclaiming, “With one pound of bacon, our BLT is heart stopping, nurses standing by.” You gotta love Vegas food, particularly if you are a cardiologist. Once past the Stratosphere, the Strip turns into a No Man’s land of wedding chapels, tattoo parlors, bail bondsmen and homeless gamblers. One chapel boasted that Joan Collins and Michael Jordan had been married there, though apparently not to each other. I walked past the world famous Drive In Wedding Chapel where you can get married in a pink Elvis-style Caddy in a driveway. It was next to the sleaziest and emptiest dust covered adobe style motel that exists in the western hemisphere. Pure Vegas. When I fi nally got to Fremont Street I was ready for a 99 cent shrimp cocktail. Unfortunately the BP Oil spill seems to have wiped out the cheap shrimp. I settled for a bagel and coffee. Fremont Street is old Vegas featuring very tired original casinos. At night it has a delightful light show under a several block long canopy of lights. Fremont Street in daylight is not so delightful. It looks like a hung over rentable lady of the evening without her make up or false teeth on a Monday morning. Even Vegas Vic looked carcinogenic in the dawn’s early light. It was pretty spooky. The World Cup was on in casinos all over town. I actually watched a soccer game and got caught up in America’s ancient soccer rivalry with Ghana. The crowd went nuts when we tied the Ghana team on a penalty kick. Americans actually cheering for soccer. As the King of Siam would say, “Is a puzzlement.” My wife Lani pulled for the Ghanians because “they have so little and we have so much.” PITT DICKEY, Contributing Nothing is strange in Vegas, because everything is strange there. Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomingweekly.com.

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