The State of Morrisville breakfast and other opportunities to miss work

The Morrisville Chamber of Commerce held a State of Morrisville breakfast last week. The tables assignments were pre-marked, and since Ward and I could find no sign that said Dissenters and Trouble-Makers, we sat at Open Seating. I had mini quiches and pineapple-orange juice. Ward had mini danish since real men only eat real quiche.

Here's some of the more interesting points:

Grace Park
They are holding an open house on Thursday, Sept. 25 from 12-3. They promise food, but it looks like you'll have to play hooky from work to attend. And when you see us there . . . we won't tell if you won't.

Wake County
Nothing to do with Morrisville, but interesting if you're watching the economy -- Wake County has a $45 million, AAA bond to sell, but can't sell it. No bank is buying municipal bonds right now.

Duke Health Care Clinic
The urgent care clinic is slated to open Nov 10 with 6 urgent care doctors, 6 primary physicians, 2 specialists and high-end imaging equipment. Their hours will be 8am - 8pm, but they didn't say whether they were open on weekends.

Roads
The DOT speaker spouted off a list of Morrisville projects. Ho hum, I can get that info from the web, and he went too fast for me anyway. But he said some notable things about roads in N.C. in general:

The cost of construction has doubled from 2002 to 2007. I don't know how they arrived at this number, but North Carolinians have driven 52.4 billion miles less this year. This means a $24 million bite out of gas taxes for the DOT coffers. Also, only Texas has more total road miles in their state, our infrastructure is aging, and NC DOT falls further behind each year on bridges that need replacing.

Retail
The retail speaker was a salesman who spoke twice as long as his allotted time. But I did glean these points from him:

First, a hot tip: The clothing market is soft right now. Go to T.J. Maxx in 60-90 days to pick up bargains as the unsold stock rolls over.

And on Park West: They have 60% of their space committed but can't name names yet. They promise to start road improvements in the fall. That's today; should I drive over and check?