By Ray Gronberg
gronberg@heraldsun.com; 919-419-6648
DURHAM – Most City Council members raised no objections Tuesday to continuing work on the idea of demolishing the former Duke Diet Fitness Center and replacing it with a man-made swamp.
“It’s just too big an opportunity on an ideally placed site,” Councilwoman Diane Catotti said, alluding to the potential for using the property to filter runoff from downtown Durham and the Trinity Park area.
Catotti and her colleagues in essence gave the Public Works Department permission to get the ball rolling on the design of what officials expect will be an $8 million project.
But one councilman, Eugene Brown, said he has reservations and would be particularly dubious about paying top dollar to acquire the Diet Fitness Center from Duke University.
Public Works is figuring that about $3 million of the project’s $8 million price tag would go toward acquisition.
That’s in line with what officials were expecting to have to pay for it up until early 2009, when City Manager Tom Bonfield nixed a plan to buy the facility and turn it into a city-run community center.
Duke hasn’t been able to find another potential buyer for the building and its nine-acre, floodplain site, Brown noted.
“I know we’re dealing with this poor, struggling private university just to the west of us, but the idea of paying even close to $3 million for what is basically a white elephant is just absurd,” Brown said.
Bonfield said he’s in “active” talks with Duke officials about the price, but offered no details. “We’re trying to work through some issues,” he said.
The manager rejected the community center proposal in 2009 because he didn’t think the city and its Parks and Recreation Department could afford to operate another such facility.
The proposal – pushed nearly to the brink of acquisition by Bonfield’s predecessor, former City Manager Patrick Baker – also ran counter to a city parks plan that called for locating new community centers in the suburbs.
Public Works over the past year has pushed the man-made swamp idea because it needs to find a way to meet new state anti-pollution mandates intended to reduce deposits of nitrogen and phosphorous reaching Falls Lake.
Falls is Raleigh’s primary drinking supply and receives runoff from every part of Durham County that lies north of the Durham Freeway.
The state wants local governments to reduce runoff even from existing development. At present, runoff from the 485-acre basin above the Diet Fitness Center isn’t filtered before it heads to the lake, Public Works stormwater engineer Sandra Wilbur said.
Swamps both natural and man-made basically absorb nutrients from water that passes through them.
Public Works contends a project on the Diet Fitness site would be more effective and less expensive than building a number of smaller filters in the Trinity Park and downtown basins.
Council members acknowledged that the project does have some neighborhood opposition. The Old North Durham Neighborhood Association formally weighed in against the idea, arguing that officials should look at ideas that would retain the building.
Its president, Peter Katz, said residents fear the swamp “could be a liability to our community” because people in other parts of Durham haven’t liked the city’s handling of similar projects.
He cited complaints from neighborhoods like Forest Hills that basically concern the city’s handling of pollution-control landscaping along streams.
Council members urged Public Works to keep talking with neighbors. But when it comes to the complaints about landscaping, “some have validity, and some are debatable,” Councilman Mike Woodard said.
Speak Your Mind