Airport Rd. panel finalizes report

Members of a local committee that has recommended the renaming of Airport Road met for the last time Saturday to finalize their report to the Chapel Hill Town Council.

Two weeks ago, a majority of the 18-member Special Committee to Consider Renaming Airport Road voted in favor of changing the road's name to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Saturday, they discussed a 14-page draft report prepared by OpenSource Leadership Strategies Inc. - the Durham consulting firm hired by the town to ensure that the committee's meetings went smoothly.

The draft includes the committee's recommendation to "change the name of Airport Road to 'Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard' and also have separate street signs underneath with the designation 'Historic Airport Road.'"

It also includes nine related recommendations, which range from establishing a library branch in the black community to providing continuing opportunities for racial dialogue and creating a museum exhibit about the history of Airport Road.

The half-day meeting began with facilitator Graig Meyer reminding members about the goal of the session.

"We are not in a position in the process to entertain new recommendations," he said.

Members then broke up into groups, in which they discussed ways to promote racial equality and continued discussion of race relations in Chapel Hill.

Some members suggested that Town Council members visit a city where there are particularly good interactions between different racial groups.

Bishop L. Gene Hatley, who represented the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on the committee, said the challenge will be getting residents who were not involved in the renaming process engaged in discussions about race relations.

Committee member and UNC graduate student Yonni Chapman shared similar sentiments.

"It's not until people sit down next to each other ... that you actually get some dialogue going," he said. "Promoting that dialogue is the first step."

The second half of the meeting was spent revising the draft of the recommendations, which will be delivered to the council Dec. 6.

Members made several key revisions to the document's content.

The major changes made were to the minority report, which represents the views of the three committee members - Catherine Holland, Stephen Largent and Bruce Johnson - who oppose the renaming.

Largent said he wanted the minority report to emphasize that he is opposed to anything but retaining the road's current name.

Johnson, who has lived on Airport Road for more than 50 years, expressed a similar stance.

"I am still 100 percent against the renaming of Airport Road," he said.

To reflect their opinion, Meyer added to the report the statement that "these three members would like to indicate that they do not support, in any way, the renaming of Airport Road."

Other changes made to the document include the clarification of some of the committee's recommendations, as well as the inclusion of a sentence that explains that recommendations are listed according to the degree of support they saw from committee members.

Facilitators will revise the document, return it to the committee for feedback and then finalize it for the December presentation.

"That evening, the council will take some action," said Mayor Kevin Foy.

Most likely, Foy said, the council will vote on the recommendations separately and then forward them to Town Manager Cal Horton, who will deliver a detailed report to the council in January.

"If the road change is approved by the council, that needs to be done in an orderly fashion," Foy said.

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.