Name change would bring returned mail

Business owners and residents of Airport Road will have one year to make the transition from their current addresses to their new ones if the suggestion by the town's special committee to change the road's name to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard comes to fruition.

According to the policy of Chapel Hill post offices, mail addressed to Airport Road will be delivered to the old addresses for one year after the date of the official name change, said Kenneth Saraga, supervisor of customer services for the Chapel Hill post office on Estes Drive.

Mail then would be returned to sender for six months, stamped with the new address. A statement would be placed on pieces of mail asking citizens to notify correspondents of the address change, Saraga said.

After a year and a half, the mail would just be returned to sender without a notifying stamp.

"If (mail carriers) recognize the last names with the old addresses, we'll do our best to get the mail to the recipient, but officially it's one year," Saraga said.

The proposal to rename Airport Road in honor of King was first introduced by the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in January.

A special committee to consider this proposal met earlier this month and decided in favor of changing the name to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

The committee's recommendation to the Chapel Hill Town Council will include a suggestion that the road have two signs - one with the new road name and a second sign underneath reading "Historic Airport Road."

"I think that the committee members felt that this would serve the purpose of preserving the history of Airport Road while also reducing confusion by travelers who don't yet know about the road name change," said committee facilitator Gita Gulati-Partee, president of OpenSource Leadership Strategies Inc.

Many of the residents and committee members who oppose the name change have based their concerns on historic or financial grounds.

Chip Foushee, owner of The UPS Store on Airport Road, said he does not expect that the cost of changing business cards, letterheads and signs will cause businesses any permanent financial harm as others have claimed that it would.

Instead, he said, his concerns stem from his belief that the town and the local chapter of the NAACP have not done enough to inquire about the feelings of business owners before going ahead with discussions.

And Bruce Johnson, a committee member and a business owner on Airport Road, estimated that changing the business cards and phone listings would cost his business $17,700.

"The numbers of people that were or are going to be financially impacted are significantly larger than what was being stated initially," Foushee said. "I believe that it was deserving of that (research) process, because it is a significant move on the part of the town, and it does have an appreciable impact on a lot of people on that road."

Foushee also said his stance of opposition to the road change has been misinterpreted.

"(They) attempted to interpret it as if it was a statement specifically against naming it Martin Luther King highway," Foushee said. It was only a statement against any name change in general, he said.

Committee member and Airport Road business owner Stephen Largent said he was disappointed with the whole process.

"If the name gets changed, it will be without any representation of significance from the community," said Largent, calling the process "severely diseased."

"I support nothing that's been going on in terms of the final outcome," he said.

The draft of the committee's recommendation will be presented Saturday at its next meeting.

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.