Zoned out

Several residents of Durham breathed a collective sigh of relief May 5 when Duke officially declared its plans to seek University College District zoning for Central Campus. Until then, a handful of neighbors were fearful that Duke would create a retail mecca when it rebuilt the campus. Their worries sprung from Duke’s 2004 decision to rezone East and West Campuses as UC District, which limits retail facilities to those related to the University mission, but to wait before acting on Central. The anxieties often sounded like paranoia, especially because it was the same few people who kept crying out.

The wait to rezone Central, however, was a sensible University move. The renovation Duke is planning is a wholesale recreation, and until the first brainstorming reports this semester, the University had not seriously considered what would attract people to the campus. Zoning the area too early could have restricted its usefulness. The “limited retail” specified by UC zoning is vague, and officials wanted to ensure that Duke could build outlets like a bookstore—even if it sold Blue Devil merchandise to a non-Duke audience. Now that these details are better discussed, the University can zone Central the way it had always intended, and it can finally quell some of the neighbors’ discontent.