Correction
Due to a reporting error, the Feb. 22 article “Hillsborough facelift plans evolve” identified a source as Anne Morris, a program associate for the Office of Urban Development in the N.C. Division of Community Assistance. The woman described is Anne E. Morris. But the woman who spoke at the meeting is Anne K. Morris, community development planner for the Raleigh regional office of the same state division.
The quaintness of downtown Hillsborough now is masked by the barrage of strip malls, fast food restaurants and parking lots travelers must pass to get to town, residents at a design workshop said Monday.
But planners are working to change that, as they brainstormed with business owners and residents at the workshop on ways to extend the small-town feel down Churton Street — the subject of a long-term redesign initiative.
Residents were invited by the Churton Street redesign committee to the Hillsborough Town Hall Barn to offer suggestions for improving the town’s main thoroughfare, which runs from Interstate 40 through downtown Hillsborough to the split of N.C. 86 and N.C. 57.
“The economics of the whole town is governed by how it looks,” said Margaret Cannell, executive director of the Hillsborough-Orange County Chamber of Commerce.
Last January, the planning team took suggestions from city planning students at the University who competed to create a project to redesign the street. Monday’s workshop was the next step in the redesign.
Cannell suggested focusing on regulating signs along Churton Street to make the road more appealing and to help people find businesses.
“There’s all these little stores off on the side streets and no signs directing you,” said Anjan Desai, general manager of the Holiday Inn Express in Hillsborough. “Not too many people know we’re here.”
