Good people of Cary,

Welcome back! I took last week off from writing the newsletter due to having surgery on Tuesday. It is good to be back into the swing of things.

For those curious, I had something called a “cleft lift” which is known as the gold standard for treating something called “pilonidal disease” - an extremely painful skin condition that forms on your lower back/top part of your butt. I won’t go into more detail, but don’t Google pictures if you’re squeamish.

There’s a really interesting element that connects this to Cary. Only five doctors in the United States are known to do an actual proper cleft lift, and people travel from all over to get the procedure done. One of those doctors is Dr. George Wadie in Cary!

While speaking with Dr. Wadie and his team, they mentioned how a vast majority of their patients aren’t local. Some people even have traveled internationally from European and Asian countries to get this procedure done here in Cary. Pretty cool we have a world renowned doctor right here in town, and I am certainly grateful I happen to live here.

Beyond my medical woes, we have quite a bit of updates around town that I’m excited to share. Let’s dive right into it.

Thank you for continuing to support local,

James

GoCary has suspended its Downtown Loop bus service as of July 9 and there's no timeline for when it might come back.

For anyone unfamiliar, the Downtown Loop was a free circulator bus that made a continuous route around downtown Cary, with 13 stops near spots like Downtown Cary Park and the restaurants along Academy and Chatham. It only ran Thursday through Sunday, with buses coming around every 25 minutes or so.

The Town says the suspension comes down to an ongoing driver shortage, and pulling the Downtown Loop helps keep the rest of the GoCary network running on schedule.

"We appreciate our riders' patience and understanding as we make this service adjustment," said Transit Director Kelly Blazey. "We're committed to keeping customers informed and encourage them to use GoCary.org or the GoCary app to plan their trips and stay up to date on the latest service information."

The Loop was very useful during big downtown events. Being able to hop a free shuttle after parking at the much quieter Town Hall Parking Deck instead of circling for a spot made festival weekends a lot smoother.

If you relied on the Loop, you're not completely out of luck. Many of the regular GoCary routes make stops in and around downtown, just not at the same frequency. Try mapping out your commute using the GoCary app to see what number to get on.

That said, downtown parking looks a lot different now than it did even a year ago. There are more than 2,000 free public spaces downtown, including four parking decks.

GoCary is actively recruiting bus operators, so the driver shortage is something they're working to fix.

Additional reading: Town of Cary News Release

Big changes at 210 E Chatham St, where the space previously known as The Williams House (and prior, Bull City Ciderworks) has officially become Arcane, a bookstore and speakeasy concept.

The wording may be a bit confusing at first, but the bookstore section is called The Williams House, while the rest of the space is Arcane.

This change has been gradually happening for a few weeks, but it’s about to get official.

Today, July 15, marks the grand opening, and a bigger celebration follows this Saturday, July 18, with local NC authors, live music, and a "blind date with a book" exchange, where you pick a wrapped, mystery book based only on a few teaser clues written on the cover. More activities are also planned.

We’re excited to see how the space continues to take shape!

Additional Reading: Arcane’s Website

With GoCary’s Downtown Loop service suspending, I wanted to share some thoughts.

I wrote a long article about the history and controversy of the trolleys that the Town of Cary purchased and then quietly sold at a loss.

But the short version: Cary was supposed to have charming wheeled trolleys that you could hop on and off to get to different sections of downtown.

After purchasing the trolleys and testing them, it was found that they did not meet the accessibility standards that Cary required, so they planned on returning them. The mayor wrote about this in his blog. The town then deleted all mention of the trolley from their website.

However, the company wouldn’t accept the return. They instead parked the trolleys where they remained stashed away until they were sold almost two years later.

The controversy, of course, was not as much that they sold the trolleys for a $260k loss, but that they didn’t announce any information surrounding what was happening with the trolleys beyond the mayor’s outdated blog post until after a former council candidate posted a video talking about this information, and News & Observer submitted public record requests about the trolleys.

To make it even shorter: trolleys arrived, tested, not accessible enough, couldn’t be sent back, sold at a loss, no transparency in the ~two years while all of this happened.

However, despite not having the cute trolleys, the town found a solution with GoCary’s Downtown Loop.

When it was discovered that the trolleys weren’t working out, the town launched GoCary’s Downtown Loop.

From Thursday - Sunday, a free regular GoCary bus would circle through different parts of downtown (roughly every 25 minutes) and allow you to quickly get to where you want to go.

The Loop was a great idea. Perhaps it is not needed as much as it was before with the new parking decks, but I’ve used it several times during events while parking at the Town Hall Parking Deck, or getting back to the library parking deck when it was raining when I was over at the other side of town.

That said, I was the only passenger on the bus whenever I used it. I very rarely saw other people take it. I spend a lot of time at the downtown dog park, where one of the stops is, and it usually had no passengers on it.

Of course, this is anecdotal and also a common complaint about the GoCary bus service in general, which isn’t true (there were over 300k passenger rides last year). But I would be very surprised if the numbers weren’t very low for the Loop specifically.

I think that, unless you are SUPER in tune with everything that goes on around town, you’d have no idea the Downtown Loop was even an option. They looked just like any regular bus and weren’t super exciting to get on.

There was a lot of excitement for the trolleys. The charm and novelty of them were half of the appeal. Once people tried them because of that novelty, they would then understand their practical purpose and utilize them. Why circle the side streets of downtown during a big event when you could just park at the mostly empty town hall parking deck and get to ride the trolley?

Even though they were functionally exactly the same, I still think about what a trolley’d downtown Cary would look like.

And I’d bet it would still be running.

Interested in partnering with us? Reach out at [email protected] and let's find something that works for you.

Movie Night: Finding Nemo
What: Free outdoor screening of Finding Nemo, part of the Downtown Cary Park movie series curated by The Cary Theater. Food trucks on site.
Where: Downtown Cary Park, Great Lawn Pavilion (327 S Academy St)
When: Fri, July 17 | Lawn seating setup begins at 5 p.m., movie starts around sunset (roughly 8:30 p.m.)
More Info

Maker's Market at Fenton
What: Monthly local artist and maker's market with live music, hosted by Triangle Pop-Up.
Where: Fenton Square by Paragon Theaters, 21 Fenton Main Street
When: Sat, July 18 | 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
More Info

The American Revolution Experience
What: A traveling pop-up exhibit from the American Battlefield Trust and the Daughters of the American Revolution, using storytelling, artifacts, and interactive kiosks to explore the Revolution. Free.
Where: The Gathering House at Downtown Cary Park (327 S Academy St)
When: Opens Sat, July 18, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. (mayoral proclamation and opening ceremony at noon), continues through July 25 with varying daily hours
More Info

Tucked into a quiet downtown neighborhood at 400 S. West St., Heater Park is one of Cary's open space parks, the kind built for open grass and shade trees rather than playgrounds or paved trails. At just 1.5 acres, it's easy to drive past without even realizing it's there.

There's no playground, no paved trails, no big amenities list. What you get instead is a long stretch of grassy, tree covered land, a small stream, and a couple of benches. That's it, and that's kind of the point. It's a great place to show up with a frisbee, a soccer ball, or a blanket, or just to pass through while walking your dog.

The park is named for a former Wake County Commissioner who also served on Cary's town board and was active in the local Methodist church and Masonic Lodge back in the mid-1900s, so there's a little bit of Cary history baked into the name even though the park itself stays pretty low key.

The tall hardwood trees make for solid shade on a hot day, and the creek has spots with kind of a steep dropoff, so it's worth keeping an eye on younger kids if you let them explore near the water. It's also a favorite for downtown residents walking their dogs, since it's small enough to feel like an extension of your own backyard if you live nearby.

If you want a park with things to do, this isn't it. If you want five quiet minutes with some shade and low traffic, it's exactly right.

📍 400 S. West St., Cary, NC 27511

Thanks for reading! If you liked or disliked this report, feel free to reply and let me know! I love hearing from you.

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