The ridiculous Eastgate Crossing shopping center

All the pictures in this blog post can be found in this Google photo album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Wmv5CCPML59feCTP9

My wife and I took a day off work to have a staycation and just putter around Chapel Hill. The weather was amazing, so we made a trip to Babalu Tapas & Tacos to sit outside in their great outdoor patio and enjoy some drinks. Of course when I noticed a mojito flight on the menu I couldn’t resist…

After lunch we decided to explore a path behind Babalus to see if they had connected the Eastgate shopping center to Berkshire Chapel Hill Apartments near Whole foods. I have been pretty impressed with a lot of the new developments and how Chapel Hill has been prioritizing walkablity and pedestrians. There was a connecting path, including a a flight of outdoor stairs, that came up right behind Red Pepper. 

This makes Eastgate pretty walkable to anything on S. Elliot Rd. We kept venturing behind Eastgate to see if there was any new development on the Fordham Blvd Aparments (which are adjacent to 15-501) and how it could possibly connect and create a walkable path to Eastgate. I remember reading something about a greenway trail possibly going in along Booker creek. As we were walking behind Stein Mart we noticed that Booker creek literally seemed to go underneath Eastgate…

I know this shopping center has a history of flooding, but I never realized that they built the entire shopping center on top of the creek. It is literally the most ridiculous thing I have seen in the triangle (building wise?). The culvert (or whatever you would call this monster) is over 30 feet wide or so, and you can’t see the other side. It is literally so long and dark you can’t see the light, or where it comes out. It is deep enough right there I might come back with a kayak and see if I can float the whole way through.

We walked back out front to figure out where the creek came out, and the parking lot suddenly made sense. There is a long skinny aisle that is a different color from the rest of the parking lot. This section of parking lot is concrete versus asphalt and I just never thought about it before. In the picture from Google maps above you can see the culvert stretches the entirety of the parking lot and literally go underneath Starbucks. Someone thought it was a good idea to build a Starbucks on top of Booker creek.

Inevitably someone will comment to me that this type of construction is normal and not a problem. Well apparently it is a problem, because this Starbucks is so badly flooded that it is still not open after 4 months since the storm happened. It doesn’t even look close to opening, I know because I looked in the window.

I highly recommend also reading this article from the Durham Herald Sun that covers the most recent flooding: https://www.heraldsun.com/news/local/counties/orange-county/article218937515.html This was one of the only articles that seemed to cover how ridiculous this is. Let me know if you know any other great articles I could read… this is really depressing to me that someone thought building a strip mall right here was a great idea. I really like the idea of daylighting this creek and creating more green space. This parking lot has got to go.