Summary
"When I came here, downtown was a ghost town, which it was until about five years ago," says [Frank Konhaus], who ended his tenure at Kontek on Aug. 1. "There were a lot of false starts-'This'll put us over the edge. This'll put us over the edge.' But now I think there's a critical mass."
[Georges Rousse] himself is a dynamo, ceaselessly courteous, yet uncomfortable with his actually serviceable English. He's a small, energetic man who dresses daily in the same uniform of a black Izod shirt and black jeans, and he's in fine physical condition, owing to the 10 km he runs most mornings (in Durham, he jogs the American Tobacco Trail) and his frequent trekking vacations in Nepal. Although Rousse is a Parisian, his annual schedule of 30 projects keeps him in constant motion. Prior to his September residency in Durham, he was in Spain and Luxembourg. After Durham he will travel to New York, Paris, Spain and then on to São Paulo, Brazil. He is accompanied on this trip by his wife and business manager Anne-Marie, who is beautiful and elegant in the way that only French women can be. While she snaps pictures with her ever-present digital camera, Rousse struggles in good humor with the most difficult challenge of his Durham stay.[Stone] takes me down to the basement of the warehouse to show me Rousse's work. Eleven rows of wood pillars have been painted so a thin, horizontal white rectangle appears to float in the air. Some drywall has been added to complete the effect. Stone regards the fine art in his basement with bemusement. "It's 'art' and 'fashion,'" Walker says with finger quotes, "not art as I know art or have known art." But Stone's professed bafflement is a friendly one-he seems to be enjoying it even if it's not his cup of tea.See the full content of this document
Extract
The Big Picture
There is a room in Durham that tells you much of what you need to know about the Bull City's past. It's located in the Chesterfield building of the vacant Liggett & Myers cigarette factory on West Main Street. Deep inside the first floor, there is a conference room of the kind you know from movies that were made in the 1940s. The soundproofed walls are oak, and there's a table that's more than 20 feet long. A pull-down screen is at one end of the room. On one wall is a giant painting of the Liggett & Myers building as it must have looked in the mid-20th century, and as if this image were an actual view out the window, there are drapes on either side that can be drawn to cover it. On the table is an ashtray, still containing cigarette butts.
This room is the seat of power, the archetypal room where the executives must have me...See the full content of this document
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