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 Siler City, North Carolina  (919)663-3232   

Business owners ponder ways to bring shoppers back to town

By Cara Rotondaro

While visitors once drove, literally, right into the heart of Pittsboro, the US 64 bypass  completed in 2001 now takes cars that once may have just happened upon the town directly around it, leaving local business owners wondering how to bring business back into their sometimes bypassed town.

The number of people who stop to visit the historic shopping district has dropped noticeably since the bypass was completed, according to business owner Jacques Dufour.

Dufour and his wife, Wendy, own two stores in Pittsboro: French Connections and the Annex. Both specialize in French and African arts and crafts.

“We need to draw people from outside,” he said.

By counting heads in his stores, Dufour estimates that foot traffic in Pittsboro went down 50 percent after the fall of 2001, and bringing that number back up has been slow going.

While he also attributes the lessening crowds to the economy after 9/11, the bypass, he said, had an impact.

And improving the numbers is slow going. He said business is still 40 percent lower than what it was before the fall of 2001.

“That just proves it was people coming in from out of town,” he said.

Visitors coming from Durham and Chapel Hill are turned off by seemingly never-ending roadwork on US 15-501, as well, he said.

 “We were sure it was going to be done in July,” he said of the 15-501 work, which adds two lanes of traffic. “When will it be done? I don’t know.”

There’s little they can do.

Dufour said he and his wife spent $22,000 on advertising last year, and that “for a small place like ours, that is a lot of money.”

He hopes specialty shops will stick around in Pittsboro, but with less traffic and buyers coming in, it’s hard.

A vicious cycle occurs, he said, in which the town needs the shops to draw the customers, but they need the customers to keep the shops alive.

“We need to keep the retail because people like to come here for day trips,” Dufour said.

He said they sell a lot of their goods out of state.

more- See Thursday, June 30 paper: Vol 85, No.29

Chatham board skips Hawaii trip

By Randall Rigsbee

Chatham commissioners are avoiding the flak many of their elected counterparts from other local governments have faced recently by declining to attend an upcoming convention in Hawaii.

The National Association of County Commissioners will conduct its annual conference in Hawaii July 15 to 19.

Approximately 200 county commissioners from North Carolina and many more from throughout the United States will attend the conference.

Registration for the event, which will include discussions about issues such as economic development and growth, is $415 per person, but other expenses include airfare and hotel accommodations. Neighboring Wake County taxpayers will foot a bill of approximately $16,000 to send eight commissioners and county personnel to the event.

Chatham commissioners    briefly discussed the upcoming conference during two recent board meetings, though commissioners never considered attending.

“I really don’t think there’s any interest to go,” board chairman Bunkey Morgan said in an interview last week.

Morgan acknowledged that part of the reason is sensitivity about spending taxpayer money on trips that, while of potential value to those who attend, may not be warmly perceived.

 “I just don’t think that’s the right kind of image,” Morgan said.

And while Morgan won’t be traveling to Hawaii for the July conference, had he opted to go he says he would have paid all the expenses out of his own pocket.

 “I personally pay my way for every one of these,” he said. “That’s a commitment I made when I came on board.”

While none of the Chatham commissioners will be Hawaii-bound next month, several Chatham commissioners will likely attend the less expensive and much closer North Carolina Association of County Commissioners’ annual conference, which will be held in Charlotte August 25 to 28.

The cost of attending the Charlotte conference is $210 per commissioner.

“It’s a very good seminar,” Morgan said of the conference held annually in North Carolina. “There’s a lot of good interchange with other commissioners.”

Hit and run incident leaves cyclist wounded

By Joseph Pardington

Imagine being free of a seatbelt, a steering wheel and an internal combustion engine while cruising along the road atop a human-powered alternative – a bicycle.

Now imagine being harassed, cursed at, and even dodging glass bottles being thrown at you from somebody in an oncoming car, truck or SUV.

Or worse, imagine being struck by that vehicle and left wounded next to the road.

Thirty-two year old Drew Cummings of Durham does not have to imagine this hit-and-run scenario. He lived it Saturday, June 18 as he was riding along US 15-501 from Chapel Hill to Pittsboro to help his church build a Habitat for Humanity house.

Cummings remembers riding south that morning near Andrews Store Road when he saw a northbound vehicle cross the centerline and drive directly into him at a high speed.

The car smacked into his ankle, and struck his thigh, which dislodged the car’s mirror.

Cummings was not able to completely identify the vehicle that hit him. He said he believed the other vehicle was a light gold Buick four-door less than 10 years old and that it looked boxy from the back. The mirror and part of the fender were submitted as evidence to North Carolina Highway Patrol Trooper S.L. Bridges. Cummings did not notice the license tags.

The hit-and-run investigation is continuing, Cummings said, but added that there were no witnesses to the incident. The NCHP accident report verified that nobody witnessed the event.

As Cummings came to rest in the future median of US Hwy 15-501, he said he looked for somebody to chase the vehicle that hit him, or at least to get a license number.

“There was nobody,” he said. “This car was the only car in sight.”

more- See Thursday, June 30 paper: Vol 85, No.29

The Chatham News

is Published Every Thursday by The Chatham News Publishing Co, Inc at

303 West Raleigh Street, Siler City, NC 27344, (919)663-3232

Alan D. Resch Editor-Publisher

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