Funeral home relocates to temporary quarters

By Ray Gronberg

gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648

DURHAM -- The Scarborough & Hargett Funeral Home has moved to temporary quarters, clearing the way for county officials to demolish its former building on Roxboro Street to make room for a new courthouse.

The move began over the weekend, in conjunction with the end of the temporary lease the county had granted the Scarborough family for continued use of the Roxboro Street building.

Scarborough & Hargett is now operating out of the Carolina Times building at 923 Old Fayetteville St.

County officials, meanwhile, got ready to send the courthouse project out to bids. County Engineer Glen Whisler said early this week that nine companies had qualified to bid on the project and would receive copies of the blueprints.

The county bought the Roxboro Street building from Scarborough & Hargett in 2006 for $3.6 million. Elected officials had previously authorized administrators to initiate an eminent domain taking from the firm, owned by Queen and J.C. "Skeepie" Scarborough.

The funeral home's long-term plan has been to move to a site off the Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway in the UDI Industrial Park. But construction there stalled a year ago and hasn't resumed.

J.C. Scarborough couldn't be reached for comment, but UDI President Ed Stewart said the funeral home owner has assured him "they were going to get back on the development of [the new building] any day now."

Stewart added, however, that he hasn't been given an exact start date. "I wish I had one," he said.

The Scarboroughs had asked the county for another month on Roxboro Street, but over the summer County Manager Mike Ruffin and his staff held firm on the Oct. 31 deadline.

They said they wanted to get the courthouse out to bid this fall to take advantage of the low prices builders are offering amid the recession.

County officials agreed this week that the new courthouse will in fact be formally named the Durham County Courthouse. The building may include a large photo display honoring the former courthouse on Main Street that now houses county offices.

The naming decision was one of several construction-related issues County Commissioners addressed this week.

They also gave designers of the new human-services building now rising on Main Street the green light to etch into the structure's glass entry a motto summarizing its mission.

It will read, "Durham's vitality is built upon the health of our community to foster and enhance the wellbeing of every citizen."

Commissioners also went along with the county library's plan to commission a sculpture from Raleigh artist Thomas Sayre to place outside the new South Regional Library going up near the corner of South Alston Avenue and N.C. 54.

The sculpture, paid for with a $50,000 private donation, will stand about 17 feet tall and be a stack of concrete slabs arranged to resemble a log-built farm building.

Sayre said the design is supposed to honor the history of the Lowe's Grove area, and was cleared by the library's designers from the Durham-based Freelon Group.

The Freelon Group also designed the human services building. Another Durham company, O'Brien/Atkins Associates, is handling the design of the courthouse.