Durham Celebrates 25 Years of Success as a Visitor Destination

“That’s billions – with a B,” said Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau (DCVB) President and CEO, Shelly Green referring to visitor dollars spent in Durham over that last 25 years. Since 1990, when the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau (DCVB) started tracking metrics, 124 million visitors have experienced Durham and they spent $12.9 billion in Durham’s economy. The growth over that period, according to Green, is “pretty remarkable.”

The last four years coming out of the recession have seen steady growth. “Given the resources available, I am extremely proud of all that Durham has accomplished. The DCVB team is really skilled at spinning gold from hay,” Green said referring to Durham’s visitor growth measured against its investment promoting the destination.

DCVB benchmarks metrics annually that paint a picture of Durham’s performance as a visitor destination. The numbers are estimates for the past 25 years in total.

• $24 Million Visitors to Durham
• $12.9 Billion Spending by Durham Visitors
• $139 Million Occupancy Taxes Collected 
• $578 Million Local Tax Revenue Generated by Visitors
• 14.7 Million Visitor Inquiries Generated
• 15,764 Conventions and Groups Serviced
• 102,905 Conventions and Meetings Held in Durham
• 3.5 Million Convention and Meeting Attendees
• 5,149,485 Hotel Room Nights Used by Conventions and Meetings
• 1,172,662 Hotel Room Nights Booked by DCVB 
• 21,833 DCVB-Assisted Stories in the Media 

These statistics become more meaningful when considered in the context of real examples of praise and accomplishments earned by the community. Durham consistently ranks highly on measurements of quality of life, business climate, education, healthcare, and more. Fueled by its ranking as the number one retirement destination in the US and its title as Tastiest Town in the South, as well as the combination of diverse population and an engaged and welcoming community, Durham’s pattern of growth looks assured. A searchable database of Durham’s accolades is online here.

“Durham is successful because it is a great community that prides itself on things like authenticity and being genuine. These things matter more and more to visitors and residents alike, and we are now benefitting from that trend,” Green said. “To look back on the last 25 years at today’s Annual Tribute Luncheon has been a tangible validation of our work at DCVB, and of the community we represent. I couldn’t be more proud.”

A video shown at the luncheon traced DCVB’s inception back to 1982 when discussions of the need for a destination marketing organization dedicated to Durham were first chronicled in municipal and economic development circles. Legislation in 1986 permitted the collection of an occupancy tax on hotel room sales beginning in 1989 when DCVB started out with a modest office in Brightleaf Square.  Included in the video were former board and staff members as well as President Emeritus Reyn Bowman who ran DCVB from its inception in 1989 through 2009 when Green took the helm.   Watch the 25 year retrospective video online here.

The Annual Tribute Luncheon is produced by DCVB to celebrate Durham’s unique sense of place. Former honorees include Pastor Shirley Caesar, Dr. John Hope Franklin, Coach Mike Krzyzewski, Durham festivals, and acclaimed Durham chefs, among others.

Mining for Benchmarks

This a re-posting of an article on Bull City Mutterings, the blog by Reyn Bowman, President Emeritus of the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau.


"Mining for Benchmarks"
Bull City Mutterings
Reyn Bowman

Compared to the national average for how people perceive where they live, residents of Durham, North Carolina, where I happen to live, are seven times more likely than the national average to believe that living here today is better than it was five years ago and more than a third less likely to believe things have worsened over that period.

That is one of the take-aways gleaned from comparing results from two scientific surveys taken a few months apart, one on behalf of the American Planning Association (APA) and the other by the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau (DCVB), the community’s marketing agency.

Mining secondary studies is an important way to leverage primary research even further, but it is absolutely crucial to establishing benchmark perspective.

I felt comfortable using the two surveys to develop a benchmark because wording of the questions’, statistical reliability and anonymity were so similar.

In an example of “reverse mining,” DCVB had posed similar questions including this one to help mine benchmarks from the Knight Foundation's Soul of the Community study, subtitled “Why People Love Where They Live and Why It Matters.”

But the benchmark from the APA survey could also be compared against the results of a bi-annual satisfaction survey begun a few years ago by the local government for the City of Durham which differs from the nearly two-decade annual DCVB survey because it excludes Durham residents who do not live in the city limits and is heavily promoted as a survey conducted by and for city government.

Respondents to that survey agreed by 6 to 1 that the city was moving in the right direction.  When the goal is harvesting benchmarks, the relative anonymity of the surveys can have an effect as well as whether they are written or telephonic.

Durham County is basically a single one city county so when DCVB anonymously asks all Durham residents to rate the community as a visitor destination the results are favorable by nearly 8 to 1 but when city government openly poses the question to just city residents, the response drops to 5 to 1, which is still favorable.

The difference could be that the opinions of city residents differ from Durham residents as a whole or because written surveys can be less top of mind or because respondents interpret city to mean only certain specific areas or even because people may answer answer if they know who is behind the question.

Both surveys are reliable and equally valuable but considerations must always be made when selecting a benchmark.

Often surveys such as APA’s yield results that can shed light on broader issues.  When asked which leaders would be best to implement change (respondents could check all that applied,)  neighborhood representatives and business professionals tied at 43% each, both nearly 1 1/2 times greater than elected leaders at 26%.

I guess, if this were viewed on a national level, that this is favorable to both President Obama, once a neighborhood organizer, and also to Mitt Romney, once a private equity capitalist, but not so much that they both have held elected official.

But on a more serious note, in Durham, where neighborhood activism is strong, it may be why so many were stunned when the City Council levied a special tax on Downtown when it purportedly had the support of only 6% of those effected, and why so many now are steamed that anyone who opposed this special tax has been arbitrarily and questionably blackballed from serving on the quasi-public board that will administer this tax.

Blackballing may be is common in politics but it has no place in the administration of public or quasi-public organizations or in neighborhoods improvement.

Mining surveys such as APA’s can also provide comic relief – 92% say that things work better with a plan, 79% agree that community planning is needed but 20% don’t want it funded by tax revenue – 62% rank water quality a priority (5th highest) but failing I guess to connect the dots, storm water is rated a low priority.

A nice result for those of us who work with unique sense of place is that having “locally owned businesses nearby” rates as the number one factor for an “ideal community.”  The APA survey also validated why so many places fail to grasp the importance of aesthetics, one of the key drivers of community attachment in the Knight study.

Those communities and their organizations that mine data for insightful decision making are way ahead of the curve, while those that also mine every piece of secondary research are close behind; but the few who still do everything possible to suppress research, well they don’t have a clue!

First Responders For Durham's Community Appearance

The subject of appearance is on the minds of many in Durham, NC these days with the impending removal of trees around billboards here and statewide.  A new law that goes into effect on March 1 will permit billboard owners to clear cut to the ground more than a football field of all trees and shrubs from in front of their signs.

Appearance is a big part of a community's image.  In a recent poll, by a margin of about 4 to 1, Durham residents agreed or strongly agreed that appearance should be a high community priority.

Read on for an interesting piece by DCVB's President Emeritus, Reyn Bowman, on a way that the City of Durham quietly responds to this concern everyday and continues to try and deliver the promise that Durham is where great things happen.

"First Responders For Community Appearance"

Bull City Mutterings

Reyn Bowman

Durham North Carolina's tiny 8-member Rapid Response Impact Team is the hidden force behind much of what is often credited only to neighborhood associations or organizations like Keep Durham Beautiful.

Headed by Durham native, Daryl Hedgspeth, as part of the City’s Neighborhood Services Improvement Department, the Impact Team was responsible in the past calendar year alone for:

• Removing nearly 9000 instances of graffiti and related symbols and scripted words.

• Removing 324 displaced shopping carts that had been driven away from the sites where they belong only to be abandoned and left to junk up roadsides and trails.

• Removing more than 1100 illegal dump sites created by people, both residents and nonresidents who travel to Durham to work, who couldn't be troubled to properly dispose of the refuse.

• Mowing 344 "weedy lots" and cleaning up debris from another 243 sites, nearly 746 tons in all.

In addition, the Impact Team facilitates individual neighborhood cleanup initiatives such as “big sweep” efforts focused on waterways as well as cleanup preparation for, urban gardens, clearing neglected right-of-ways, and dealing with costly-to-remove up huge bills such as paint and hydraulic fluids spills. 

The Impact Team is also most likely the group that quietly distributes and retrieves barricades for parades, fundraising walks and runs, festivals and other community events.  They also supervise a team of two dozen young people over the summer it picked up 9 tons of litter in just eight weeks.

Given the fact that Durham residents gave only two failing grades to their community, including one for inattention to general appearance, the Impact Team’s remarkable effort is one area not yet scaled to the size of the task it faces.

This remarkable group doesn't get the attention it should because to do so would be to draw attention to neglect and raise questions about why community appearance is given such high priority among residents, but receives far too little attention from those in governance.

Residents who mount volunteer cleanup efforts in neighborhoods and along streams and trails or spy graffiti or illegal dumping or weedy lots or debris that are threatening the community’s well-being, including public health and safety, should call or e-mail Durham One Call for assistance but it is likely the Rapid Response Impact Team that they will thank in the end.

What Number One Means

Durham, NC is no stranger to the number one spot on rankings.  Again, on Monday, it was ranked as America's Most Tolerant City by Newsweek/The Daily Beast.  Number one is a nice spot to be on such a list, especially for a community that aggressively promotes its accepting and welcoming nature born of the community's diversity.  In short, everyone is welcome in Durham.

The ranking is certainly a nice accolade, but the public can benefit from some deeper understanding of the list before shouting from the roof tops.

First, rankings are ever more common in modern media for a several reasons. Media companies (yes, these are companies that need to make a profit like any other) are strapped, often more so than others, with thinning employment ranks due to shrinking revenue.  They, like everyone else, need to do more with less and deliver what the people want.  History provides myriad examples of people wanting to be, or know who is, number one.  In other words, rankings sell papers, magazines, and website hits and media often use them to achieve that goal to great effect.

Second, rankings are fairly easy to produce.  Without diminishing the value of this ranking--or any other--consider that these lists are usually more compiled than researched, and that they are not necessarily efforts journalistic in nature, but more so exercises in simple arithmetic.  They don't carry a lot of water in terms of scientific validity.  Additionally, these rankings are often based on criteria that can seem a bit arbitrary as they typically look at disparate and unrelated facts, and then draw conclusions therefrom.  Put another way, rankings like this aren't always an expression of a news organization's most arduous efforts.

Third, these rankings are rarely of cities.  The data they cite is often of a thing called a Metropolitan Statistical Area, or MSA.  The US Census Bureau creates MSAs based on populations in certain land areas.  For example, Durham is in the Durham-Chapel Hill MSA with Durham being the anchor of the four county area so named.  Those counties are Chatham, Durham, Orange and Person; not a city at all.  The Daily Beasts' study methodology states that the ranking "limited the cities under consideration to those with a population greater than 250,000 according to the U.S. Census Bureau." According to the US Census, the city of Durham has a population of 228,330.  This is a perfect example of improperly identifying an MSA as a city - a common error that is vexing to all, especially those in destination marketing.

Fourth, this ranking makes no mention of Durham's Latino population.  Residents from Central and South America make up, according to the US Census, 14.2% of the population in Durham. Perhaps not relative to the outcome, but worth noting as it relates to the overall value of the ranking.

If a destination is looking to hang its hat on a research study about a given aspect of their community, say tolerance or openness, then one with more scientific backbone is likely a better support.  Destination marketing thought-leader Reyn Bowman, President Emeritus of the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau in Durham, NC wrote about openness recently on his blog Bull City Mutterings.  Reading the associated studies he cites quickly demonstrates that to measure a community characteristic such as tolerance or openness is both difficult and time consuming.  It's not as simple as pulling three details from three separate sources and using those pieces of data to indicate a statistically valid outcome.  The studies cited to generate these numbers are all sound in their own right, but the tabulation of them collectively to produce rankings yields data that just don't hold a lot of water.

Nonetheless, Durham, NC is a tolerant place - and no ranking is necessary to define that.  People in Durham, and those who visit, already know: it is accepting, diverse and anyone who so desires to be is welcomed.  For those interested in all the rankings that Durham has received, visit the website www.durhamaccolades.com on which rankings are organized in a searchable database.

So yeah, kudos to Durham for the ranking.  Residents always appreciate recognition of the fact that Durham is a place like no other, and that it really is where great things happen.

A Leap Forward For Intra-Neighborhood Communication

Part of what makes Durham a great place to live is its strong neighborhoods, whose residents epitomize so many of Durham's brand values.  Durham residents are caring, activist in nature, passionate about where they live, unpretentious, and community-spirited.

DCVB has always had an interest in neighborhood communications because residents make Durham such an inviting place for visitors; they are the ones on the street helping people locate landmarks, giving people directions, or just offering smiles, nods and cheery good mornings.  With about 80% of executives who are looking to relocate their businesses also experiencing Durham first as a visitor, the neighborhood experience is one of high importance.  

This blog, written by Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau President Emeritus and Durham blogger Reyn Bowman, showcases a new intra-neighborhood communication tool.  The entrepreneur (another one of Durham's brand values) who created it was a former owner of one of Durham's celebrated cuisine restaurants (Guglhupf).  He made contact with DCVB to get assistance weaving Durham's overarching brand into the new site.  Take a look and see if your neighborhood has its website set up.  If not, submit it!

Leap Forward For Intra-Neighborhood Communication
Bull City Mutterings
Reyn Bowman

Durham entrepreneur Hartmut Jahn has created the next generation in neighbor-to-neighbor or intra-neighborhood communication. Years ago Durham neighborhoods jumped on listservs as a way to communicate but now Neighborship takes listservs to a new level.

The new platform offers everything a listserv does and so much more including:

• A website for each participating neighborhood

• The option of a personal inbox and a method of sending emails for each participant

• A chat option in addition to email or digests for quicker exchanges

• A way to enlist and post recommendations for vendors and service providers

• A means to communicate alerts or information to immediate neighbors rather than the entire neighborhood

• The ability to get immediate notifications or digests of exchanges

• The ability to post announcements or events that hopefully will soon tie directly into the Durham Community Calendar maintained by DCVB.

• A map of the area covered by each neighborhood etc.

For an example of a neighborhood page, I’ve put a snippet of my Rockwood Neighborhood page as an image in this blog. You should be able to click on it to enlarge. Other neighborhoods will be visible after registration.

To register to use Neighborship, click here. To request that your neighborhood be added to the drop-down, email help@neighborship.com.

I haven’t heard back yet from the administrator for my Rockwood listserv but I know the emails can be pre-loaded to any neighborhood added to Neighborship to make the transition easier. Understandably, although ironically, some neighborhood that that were early-adopters of listservs may feel some reticence, even inertia when it comes to change.

That’s natural but the new platform is a great leap forward and Neighborship is rolling out to communities across the nation making it yet another reason to believe Durham is indeed where great things happen!

Setting DPAC Apart!

Durham blogger and President Emeritus of the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau shares his thoughts on the success of Durham Performing Arts Center.


Setting DPAC Apart!


Bull City Mutterings
Reyn Bowman


Beverly Thompson is part of a unique collaboration in Durham.  As the director of the Office of Public Affairs for the City of Durham, she collaborates with communication professionals who represent Durham as a community via the now-best-practice, 20-organization Durham Public Information & Communications Council (DPICC.)

This body was created and has been facilitated by the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau (DCVB) as the community's marketing agency, since the mid-1990s, to synergize and improve collaboration among communication professionals working at the various organizations that represent Durham.

The mission of the DPICC is to leverage both the quantity and quality of information distributed about the community and to jointly address issues that undermine Durham’s identity and image.  DPICC oversees Durham’s overarching brand.

I caught up with Beverly recently and learned that guests at the DPICC meeting this month were Bob Klaus, general manager of the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC) and two members of his staff, Cassie Jones, guest experience manager and Michael Colvin, senior house manager.

Until my retirement nearly two years ago, I enjoyed working closely with Bob and the folks on my team worked closely with Cassie, who truly epitomizes what was said at the meeting.

Bob works for Nederlander/PFM, a partnership that owns and operates theaters worldwide and operates the DPAC under contract with the City of Durham.

Week before last, the City announced that in just its third full season DPAC hosted 192 events, including 58 sellouts, which were attended by 357,000 residents and visitors including 11,000 season ticket holders for the SunTrust Broadway Series.

After operating expenses, DPAC netted $2.5 million in revenue of which just 60% is retained by Nederlander/PFM and 40% is distributed back into a City fund for the facility.  While the distribution seems a hair less than last year, these overall  measures have already transcended what was not originally projected until the fifth year of operation.

Coupled with more than $1.2 million in visitor tax revenue, more than half a million in ticket surcharges and the net from naming rights, this may narrow the overall cost of the theater for this year to around $1 million or so by my estimate.

Public infrastructure including cultural is not really meant to pay for itself other than by leveraging a vibrant community into economic vitality.  But this is as close as you get.

At the DPICC meeting this month Bob revealed four of the keys he sees to DPAC’s success to date:

    * Borrowing “best practices” from other theaters and organizations such as Disney, DPAC focused on customer service as the strategy to set the facility apart from other entertainment venues, here or in other communities.

    * Hiring at DPAC is very selective and considered pivotal to its success and every year all front line staff (ushers, ticket takers, etc.) must re-apply for positions with typically 20-30% not invited to return based on past performance.

    * Extensive training is given to front line staff on how to do whatever they can to say “yes,” rather than explaining what they can’t do.  If they aren’t able to to fulfill a request, they are trained to immediately elevate the issue/problem to a supervisor so they can get back to helping others.

    * Thousands and thousands of comment cards are solicited from customers and each manager reads every single card.  Whenever additional comments are added, Bob personally responds to each of them.

The strategy definitely works.  Congratulations to Bob and his team at DPAC, to both Nederlander and PFM and to the management and governance for the City of Durham.

Hats off as well as to Durham Wayfinders, a corps of 1,000 volunteers recruited and coordinated by DCVB that grew from an idea by Bob Klaus into a resource for all Durham festivals, events and facilities.

The Bull City Rumble - Rockers vs. Mods!

The Bull City Rumble is coming up soon. See below as Durham blogger and President Emeritus of the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau shares his enthusiasm for the distinctly Durham event.


The Bull City Rumble - Rockers vs. Mods!
Bull City Mutterings
Reyn Bowman

If you’re like me, you stay off the roads during holidays like Labor Day. This year, I’ve marked my calendar to be sure to see the second annual Bull City Rumble, September 2nd and 3rd, 2011.

Similar to most festivals and events in Durham, it will draw an even mix of visitors and residents. This year the Rumble will be held along West Main Street in the Historic Brightleaf District of Downtown Durham with an event Friday night at the Geer Street Garden in the rapidly emerging self-identified NoCo District a few blocks away. These organic, uniquely Durham districts provide the perfect backdrop.

I love the poster this year, especially the logo which also comes on other merchandise such as patches and shirts. It isn’t just because I ride a retro-styled Harley-Davidson Cross Bones, I just like type of vintage vehicle including old farm tractors.

The event features the café racers and scooters from the late 1950s through the 1970s that will be on display at the event. Not American-made bikes like my Harley but English bikes like the Norton my friend Bill Kalkhof tells me he rode in college.

These bikes’ roots trace back over a half a century during a period when Rockers or Ton-Up boys evolved as a biker subculture that originated in Great Britain and spread across Europe. Rockers were also known as “greasers” to Mods (Modernists) who rode customized scooters such as those making comeback now.

Just think Gene Vincent and Be Bop A Lula vs. The Small Faces. The Rolling Stones are more like Rockers. The cross-over Beatles initially dressed like Mods.

The bikes you can see at Bull City Rumble will be “riders”, not “trailer queens” as the producer notes. This will add even more to their authenticity and the event is more than vintage bikes and scooters. It will also feature the vibe of uniquely Durham neighborhood districts and independent businesses and entertainment venues.

Making this event even more organic is that it is partnering with Preservation Durham which will also benefit from the proceeds.

In my best Michael Buffer imitation: Let’s get ready to Rumble!

(Click here for information on visiting Durham including the master calendar of community events.)

The Spirit Of Bob Fowler

 Durham blogger and President Emeritus of the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau shares his thoughts on integrity and authenticity as embodied by Durham's gourmet food markets of past and present...

The Spirit of Bob Fowler

Bull City Mutterings
Reyn Bowman

The original founder of Fowlers would be proud of Jennings Brody.  From a family of traditional grocers, he founded Fowlers in its former downtown location at the far southwest end of Brightleaf Square, two blocks from where it has been reborn in Peabody Place under another name today.  Bob Fowler displayed a genius feel for how to make a store gourmet while keeping it genuine, authentic and inviting to everyone.

I feel fortunate to have visited with him many times during my former life as a community/destination market executive.  Listening to him helped me more rapidly gain a feel for what makes Durham, North Carolina so unique, a sense that far too many in that field fail to grasp as they approach communities as generic “plug and play.”

After Fowlers sold and moved to a new location, it lost its way and failed.  Resurrected as Parker & Otis by Ms. Brody, the store exhibits the authentic feel and sense of Bob’s original store as though he was still perched in the “crows nest” office from which he kept a close eye on what mattered to his customers.
The sense of how to mix the old and the new as Jennings does cannot be mimicked by those without it, even if as she was, they are tutored in Foster’s Market by one of the best.

People in communities with a strong sense of place such as Durham are sensitive to the difference between knock-offs and the real thing.

In the words of Scott Russell Sanders from his essay about what makes a place real, “what all of us long for, I suspect, is to love the places in which we live and live in places worthy of love…we hunger for integrity and authenticity.”

Fortunately, people from or drawn to Durham know exactly what he means and have found such a place.

Localism Index Signals Return of Local, Independent Businesses

No stranger to the buy local mentality, Durham has always been a community committed to support the growth and development on its independent businesses.

"Localism Index Signals Return of Local, Independent Businesses"
Bull City Mutterings
Reyn Bowman

Below is a graphic illustrating reasons to be optimistic that “localism” is on the rebound. It has appeared in both Harpers and The Nation.

To stay abreast of this movement, click here to subscribe to The Hometown Advantage Bulletin eNews published by The New Rules Project of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

Just 96,240 Acres Remaining!

Durham blogger and President Emeritus of the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau shares his thoughts on the Durham Tree Alliance...

Just 96,240 Acres Remaining!
Bull City Mutterings
Reyn Bowman

Durham County lost just less than 2% of its tree canopy moving from 98,000 acres down to 96,240 acres in less than a decade.  About 51% of the County remains covered in hardwood and evergreen forests including nearly 40% of the City of Durham.

Continue reading this blog post...

Tourism Sector Representatives Stunned By New Proposed Statewide Billboard Threat!

Durham blogger and President Emeritus of the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau shares his thoughts on the proposed statewide billboard legislation...

Tourism Sector Representatives Stunned By New Proposed Statewide Billboard Threat! Bull City Mutterings
Reyn Bowman

There were a lot of stunned looks on the faces of representatives of North Carolina’s $17 billion tourism sector, meeting last week in Asheville at the Governor’s Conference, when news circulated that a car dealer from Jacksonville was justifying legislation filed on behalf of the Outdoor Billboard industry as “business-friendly.”

Fueling outrage across the state is the risk that the bill signals to the scenic beauty, historical and cultural features central to tourism as the state’s second or third largest economic sector and relied upon now by 40,000 Tar Heel businesses.

Continue reading this blog post...

Durham’s NoCO District – Emblematic of Revitalization through “Small Room Gardening”

Durham blogger and President Emeritus of the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau shares his thoughts on the area North of Corporation Street...

Durham’s NoCO District – Emblematic of Revitalization through “Small Room Gardening”
Bull City Mutterings
Reyn Bowman

It is getting better but many economic developers, including those with my background in visitor-centric economic and cultural development, seem more than a little “macho-man,” maybe even chauvinistic. And I hope it doesn’t take one to know one!

So a decade ago when Richard Florida first began to publish his data analysis on the bellwether “creative class,” (formerly known as knowledge workers or people who “think” for a living) it wasn’t surprising when many economic developers, addicted to “big game hunting,” either blew his work off as a fad or more often perverted the nomenclature to justify anything they happened to be doing.

Continue reading this blog post...

Downtown’s Eyes Turned 85 This Week!

Downtown’s Eyes Turned 85 This Week!
Bull City Mutterings
Reyn Bowman

This week the soulful eyes of Downtown Durham turned 85 years old.
It was February 2, 1926 when The Carolina Theatre opened as the $250,000 Durham Auditorium and hosted famed Will Rogers that first year and the symbolically-even-more-famed African-American contralto opera singer Marian Anderson the next.

When it opened, the facility was the first theater in Durham to admit African-Americans, though through separate doors and with separate seating, but Ms Anderson performed to a diverse audience that is characteristic of Durham and in 1963 it became fully integrated.

Continue reading this blog post...

“A Change Is Gonna Come”– A Durham Inspiration!

The Durham story continues to fascinate with every new detail uncovered.  Read below about a how a hit from the '60s was inspired by a visit to Durham.

“A Change Is Gonna Come”– A Durham Inspiration!
Bull City Mutterings
Reyn Bowman

The words to this song have always resonated with me and I’ve learned recently that the writing of this song was inspired in part in my adopted home town, Durham, North Carolina.

Sam Cooke played a concert here in May of 1963. After his performance, he stopped to talk to some Civil Rights activists and sit-in demonstrators here. After talking to them, he returned to his bus and penned the first draft of this song and then tucked it into his notebook.

Mr. Cooke recorded it in the final weeks of that year but it wasn’t prevalently released until after his death in 1964. It became an anthem for the Civil Right Movement of the 1960s.

Sam Cooke, for many of my generation, was our introduction to Soul music and a much more diverse world than where we grew up.

Courtesy of YouTube, below are videos of Sam Cooke’s version, followed by a contemporary version by Seal:

Tourism Factor In #11 Best Place For Business

See DCVB's President Emeritus Reyn Bowman's blog below for a rather focused look behind a ranking and learn a bit more about why Durham is now being included on some lists it had never graced previously.  It is also important to note that rankings such as these are using the word "city" to refer to Metropolitan Statisical Areas which is an improper reference.  Follow the link to see the US Census' definition to learn more.

Tourism Factor In #11 Best Place For Business
Bull City Mutterings
Reyn Bowman

Because it crossed the 500,000 mark in population, the Durham NC MSA is included for the first time in the MarketWatch “best of” measures.

Also new this year in the “best places for business” methodology are new and improved metrics for tourism just released this month and signaling the growing influence of visitor centric economic and cultural development for communities.

Continue reading this blog post...