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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview K-0648, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Koka Booth moved with his family to Cary, North Carolina, in 1971, drawn to the Research Triangle Park area by its potential for growth. He immediately immersed himself in the community, winning a seat on the town council and eventually the mayoralty, a position he left in 2000. Booth set out to make Cary the kind of place where his children would want to spend their lives. The town council cleaned up downtown and required businesses to contribute to park-building efforts and to modify their storefronts and signs. As mayor, Booth paved roads, built recreation facilities, and oversaw the construction of a water treatment plant. He describes these changes and defends himself against accusations that he allowed the city to grow too quickly over his twelve-year tenure as mayor. He hopes that Cary's smart growth will continue, but sees some warning signs in the city's reliance on private businesses to fund its upkeep. This interview offers a brief look at community growth from the top down.
Koka Booth, former mayor of Cary, North Carolina, describes the growth of his city during his twelve-year tenure.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Today is Tuesday, July 6th, 2004. This is Peggy Van Scoyoc and I am in the office of Mr. Koka Booth. We are going to talk about all of his years of service to Cary. Can you tell me, first of all, when you arrived in Cary? Were you born here?
No, but I got here as soon as I could. August 12, 1971.
So you've been here a good long time.
I've been here a long time.
What brought you here?
My wife was from Rocky Mount, North Carolina. I had been in the coal business and we sold the coal mines. I wanted to bring my wife back home because she'd been good about staying with me up in the hills of West Virginia. So I thought I should come back here. And, in truth, we had two young lads who were in middle and high school, and there was no future for them up there.
So you saw more promise here.
I surely did. Research Triangle Park was quite an attraction.
That makes sense. Were there a lot of industries in the Park at the time you arrived?
Well, IBM had arrived in the Park in '63 and Monsanto came some short
time after that. From '63 to '71 they grew steadily. So yes, there was,
we were getting some nice industry out there. IBM was fabulous because
they grew very rapidly out there and that attracted other companies who
had reason to be near them.
So after you arrived here, what was your first position?
I became active in the Band Boosters. My son was in the band and Cary had
an outstanding high school band. We became very active in the band. It
was invited to the
How did you get onto the Council?
There was a gentleman who was an insurance man that was elected to the Town Council. He got transferred to South Carolina. At that time there was real interest in going to a business oriented type of community. Because of the activity that I had had with the community, they were trying to choose somebody that would be that element of our community. So I was appointed to the Town Council. I thought I would serve that term and that would be the end of it. In fact, I didn't even know you got paid for serving. I had never gotten paid for any other service like that and I wasn't expecting it. Shortly thereafter, Mayor Fred Bond told me, "Oh, you will run again. When you accepted this, you also accepted you would run again." So I did do that.
And won, obviously. How long were you on the Council?
Twenty-two years.
Oh my. So you saw a lot of changes in that time.
What was Cary like when you first joined the Council, and then how did it change?
Couldn't buy a pair of shoes for my boys here in town. Two doctors, I
think we had two traffic lights. There was not a sidewalk from Ashworth
Drugs to the elementary school. Great community. People were absolutely
wonderful. The school was good. Just what you would
But there really wasn't an industry base at that time?
We had Taylor Biscuit Company was located here. There was W.R. Grace had a facility that, they filled the drums with chemicals for agriculture next to that plant. Other than that in the "city limits" that was about it. We had some facilities relatively close, but they weren't in the city and so the city didn't get any taxes out of them.
So at that time, the only tax base that we really had…
It was 9% non-residential and 91% residential.
Wow. Was there a lot of development going on yet?
Building was a very active business in Cary. When I moved here, shortly thereafter, Pirate's Cove started to be built. You can see the size that turned out to be. Then in about '72, '73, Kildaire Farms announced their development. MacGregor, we were not the ninth house to be built in MacGregor, but we were the ninth family to move into MacGregor. So that's kind of the trend that you saw suddenly develop. There was a development off of Maynard Road called Wishing Well Village that they developed a number of homes. There was a development off of Pamlico Drive that built some homes. That's, you see where the areas were being located. Nice homes but everybody was traveling someplace else to work.
So when and how did that change?
As I remember it, I think when the, there was a group of a hundred people got together at MacGregor one day and said, we had to do something to change directions here in town. They agreed to put some money together and buy some land and have it rezoned for industrial development. They bought land over off of Old Apex Road and the first company that built there was the pharmaceutical aerosol group that built over there from England. Then the land between U.S. 1 and 64 across the street from MacGregor was zoned for an industrial park. There was a great deal of raised eyebrows about that, but the very first industry we recruited there was Firetrol from Erie, Pennsylvania who made fire suppressant equipment. You can go there today and it looks like an office building. Then Container Graphics, of course the Lord Corporation built a research facility there. We got a company out of California that built sprinkling equipment called Hunter Industries. There are just so many really top notch, high quality industries that were attracted to that park. That was kind of the turning point. We were shooting for a goal of 60% residential and 40% non-residential. Came close two or three times to retaining that, but it was always a goal and we never quite met it. But when we raised that bar and started getting industry, and getting good industry, it made so much difference. Of course now, places like SAS came to Cary in 1980 and just absolutely made all the difference in the world for being here. When they moved here, they came here with twenty people from Raleigh.
Only twenty? How many employees does SAS have in Cary now?
4,000 plus here today with 900 acres and 24 buildings. The company is
10,000 employees worldwide, almost. Now you can see what that difference
makes to a community. People like SAS contribute so far more than tax
base to a community. It is unbelievable what they do. The employees who
are making good salaries and things, they can contribute so much. They
like the arts, they like professional sports, they like college sports.
They like for their kids to have
What attracted companies in the beginning, before you had any real industry here?
I think the quality of life. I definitely think. You say, well, Cary always had the colleges close by and state government was close by and the airport. I have had so many people to say to me, well the reason Cary was so successful and they got all the things is because of our proximity to the airport, the proximity to the university system, proximity to other things. And that's true. But let me ask you a question - who's the closest to all of those in our area? Who is the closest to Research Triangle Park and the airport?
Cary?
No, Morrisville. Why didn't Morrisville become the… and I'm not putting Morrisville down, please don't misunderstand. But I truly believe that the leadership made the difference.
Tell me about the mayors that…
I think we've had great leadership in Cary. Fred Bond, I tell people I tried to model my style of running a meeting after Fred. He was wonderful at running a meeting. He was very friendly and open but very stern, ran a quick meeting and a timely meeting. If you couldn't reach an agreement, let's put it off and we'll come back to it. There's no use staying here all night. I give him credit for a lot of foresight in bringing the planning director on board and starting the beginning of a professional way of looking at things.
I think Harold Ritter was a great mayor because Harold was interested in
aesthetics. I give him credit for a lot of the beauty that you see in
the town, with the crepe myrtle trees downtown and the planted medias
and the landscaping ordinance that we have and the sign ordinance and
Now the sign ordinance made a big difference.
I think the sign ordinance was what just made us all, today it makes us different. The sign ordinance was really put together by our business community. I think they implemented the writing of a tougher ordinance than most elected officials would. They took a lot of trashy signs down. If you notice today, the sign can't be taller than the building, colors and things. We've had a lot of comments. When I hear about people wanting to change today, it really is interesting to me because the thing that really made us different and great, and we had really big companies like Phillips 66 and Toys R Us, to really debate a sign. We held our ground, and I think it's made a great improvement. I can tell you lots of stories of meetings with top officials that told us that they were going to do it their way. Let me give you a good example. Where else have you seen a Walmart that is red brick on all four sides with a green and white sign on the front? You don't ever see one. See the difference? That's what I'm talking about. This was the first place in the world that didn't have a McDonalds golden arch.
Really? And we've got plenty of McDonalds around town.
Yes, and that was not easy, but they blend in to the community. I don't think, at the time people would debate we hurt people by doing that. I don't think we hurt them at all. I think we made a better looking place and made them more compatible with the community. I'm really happy to see the way the Town's turned out.
At one time, about the time of the sign ordinance, didn't you also vote some money to really upgrade downtown? Was that the same time?
Yes, we had a bond referenda and as I recall $750,000, and we put in the new lighting systems down there and we put in brick sidewalks. We took the overhead lines which were the ugliest, nastiest electric power lines that you've ever seen and it was just hideous the way it looked. It was removed, put over on the railroad track and revitalized downtown. As I remember, in a short period of time, less than a year or so, about twenty-two businesses popped up down there. Downtown has always, in my opinion, been very very active and people have a lot of interest in downtown, and continues to be. A lot of new structures going down there. I think it's boosted that and it never, in my opinion, never died. I glad of that. I'm proud of downtown. I think there's some things happening like the elementary school, to think it's the oldest public school in North Carolina, can be realized. Revitalizing it, hopefully we can make an auditorium and performing arts center out of that for the children. That would be wonderful.
Tell me about the changes in the parks and rec?
When I moved here, as I remember, we had about seven acres of parkland,
which was Mills Field next to Triangle Swim Club, next to the Lutheran
church close to the high school. It was a baseball field and as I have
been told, it was pretty much developed by the Jaycees. We had a couple
little strips of land down in old Cary that were little open space
areas, not much. We had an ordinance that required developers to donate
a portion of their land to recreation when they built. For instance,
like MacGregor and Regency and Kildaire Farm and all those, and acquired
a lot of land. Then we went out and bought Bond Park and made a deal
with the county that the spillway could be a part of the park. It was so
far out that people didn't think it would ever be used. Of course, it's
almost in the center of the town now. Not that you're smarter than
somebody else, but you have so much more input and you have to have a
vision too. I think there was a lot of vision in some of these things
and today we have some absolutely magnificent parks
So when you were on the Council, what other things did you address and bring in to Cary that hadn't been there before? The water treatment?
Yes, we were dependent of Raleigh for water and waste water treatment. Raleigh changed their philosophy. We were a part of the larger system where Raleigh had received federal money for this system and they were a lead agency and they got ready to expand the plant which they needed to do. They told us, very businesslike, that they were going to a profit oriented based water system. So it was time for us to look. At one time Cary had been on wells, and the water was red and it was very difficult for women to wash clothes because they always turned out rusty. So we, after doing a thorough engineering study, we decided with a great deal of difficulty to build our own water and waste water treatment plants to become independent. We were told that it wouldn't be cost effective to do that but we would own the keys to do that. Today it is not only that we own the keys, it is very cost effective for us to do that too. I think it was two of the major decisions - that and Cary Parkway and Maynard Road loop being completed are some of the highlights of infrastructure that just made us a really different place to live.
Are other communities dependent on Cary's water treatment plants?
Apex and Cary own the water plant together. Morrisville buys water from us and the airport buys water from us. A portion of the Research Triangle Park uses the water system of Cary. That may have changed in recent years. I don't know, I haven't kept up with that part of it, but anyway, it allowed Wake County to develop the Research Triangle Park - Wake County side which they weren't able to do…
because of water. So Cary's water plant made that possible?
I think so. Cary goes clear out to Globe Road on the other side of the airport. People don't realize we have an industrial park out that far. Did you know that?
No, I didn't.
So it's not running a line as far as you think. It's just across the road, so to speak.
What happened with schools during the time you were on the Council?
After we'd been here three or four years, the Raleigh city school system and the Wake County system merged, even against the vote of the public. Merged, even against the vote of the public, merged. Cary had a wonderful school system, a very very high rated school system. There was a great battle to keep that from happening because Cary fought it. I think Cary suffered greatly when that happened because as Cary continued to grow, in my humble opinion, they didn't get fair share of the new schools, and so, as you know, a school was built in Apex rather than in Cary, and Athens Drive rather than Cary. Those two schools at that time should have probably been Cary schools.
So why weren't they…
Politically couldn't have.
How has that changed over time?
Well, we have Green Hope High School now, and we've got West Cary Middle School has been greatly enhanced and improved, and there's a new Cary elementary school and there's all the schools at Dillard Drive and Dillard Middle, and all of them have been a big boon in Cary. But they could have been built to keep up with the growth.
It's phenomenal.
Yes. And Cary was the leader in the bond referendum for that to happen
too. We were the ones that drove the engine to see that those schools
were built. And we got some
Cary Academy was built by SAS.
A private school and given to the community by Dr. Goodnight and his wife Anne and John Sall and his wife Ginger. It is a not-for-profit private school.
Is it fully open?
Oh yeah. We have grades 6 through 12, and 100% of the graduates in the last five years have gone to college.
A hundred percent!
That's the reason I made the statement I made. I really believe that. Because I think Cary had everything going for it that if we could have had the school system we could have had a great school system. We just couldn't, you know, you can't build a building that cost $30-40 million. This is just not in the cards to have that kind of money.
So now tell me about becoming mayor. You were first Mayor Pro-tem?
Yes. You know that Mayor Pro-tem thing was kind of a ceremonial thing
here, not really much to do with that. Everybody has committees and
things, and that was, but it was just a ceremonial thing more than
anything. I talked to Harold Ritter and he said, he told me he wasn't
going to run. So I told him that if I was going to be on the Council and
spend that much time and doing what I was going to do, I was going to
take a shot at it. So that's the reason I decided to
What year was this that you ran the first time?
I finished, my last night was December, '99 but counted, swearing in takes place in 2000, so I guess '88. I think that's right.
About twelve years?
Yes, I was Mayor twelve years, right, yes.
So what all happened during your mayor-ship?
Well, we built the train station, and didn't even have any trains coming
to stop there. We built the water treatment plant. We built the north
Cary, let's see… Harold had just finished his term when we dedicated the
south Cary plant, so that was kind of a straddle thing. We bought the
land and built the Thomas Brooks, we built all the recreational
facilities at Green Hope High School and the twenty tennis complex. We
built Harold Ritter Park. We bought the land for Regency amphitheater. I
think I'm telling you right that I was still on the Council when we
signed the contract to build it. We certainly had everything in place.
It was touch and go out with Regency Park. We finished Cary Parkway and
we finished paving Maynard Road for two lanes all the way around the
city. We built a transfer station downtown for the sanitation so we
could save a lot of money in taking our big trucks and stuff to the
landfill and cutting the tires off of them and stuff. There's things
like that that we did that are difficult to explain to the public that
is cost
How do you plan for and stay ahead of the kind of growth that Cary has experienced?
I think by having a good staff, and Cary has always had a good young staff, and having an outstanding manager such as Bill Coleman and Jim Westbrook. You know the measures, and measuring items that you have to keep in touch with to make sure that happens. For instance, we're one of the safest cities in North Carolina. At the time we had one police officer for every so many thousand people. You have to watch that and if the numbers start changing, you have to change those numbers. You build fire stations so that you can have response time of so many minutes. If you don't have that response you need to build a fire station. So those people are professional at advising you. If you allow this to be built, allow this to happen, if the growth area takes place here, these are the facilities required and this is what you have to do. So I think that's the direction that good management, and I think the Council management for doing this was just an absolute wonderful way of running a city. For having a professional person who is not political in his thinking, working with someone who has to be political in his thinking working together, makes for a good atmosphere. If you can go ahead and do this if you want to, but if you do that next year you have to raise taxes. Or, you can do that if you want to but next year you're not going to be able to build that X facility that we need so badly. Or, if we don't build this water treatment plant, you will have to stop something.
So the trade-offs had to be spelled out and analyzed
in advance. We would go to a retreat and they told us that, if you stop
growth in Cary, or you reduce it to this percent… In Colorado, Arizona,
Florida, we can show you what happens when they jump over those lines,
those government lines. They will go to Holly Springs,
Over the last few years, since you were mayor, the growth has supposedly been slowed down within Cary. What impact has that had?
Stopped, it has stopped. It has impacted the budget that if we don't, if it doesn't start growing again your taxes will increase next year.
which they are predicting. There you are.
Yes. Now, you can criticize me for growing too fast. And I had a man who
was going to run for office call and talk to me. He told me, he said, "I
wouldn't have supported you if you had run again." I said, "What did you
not like?" He said, "You grew too fast." Here's the question I asked
him. I said, "Would you have told SAS, American Airlines, Siemens
Medical, Firetrol… which company would you have told not to come?" He
said, "Well, I would just wouldn't have taken them so fast." I said,
"Have you ever been in the sales business?" He said, "No." I said, "You
take the order when you can get it. You don't take an order when you
want it. You take an order, you want it all the time." And he said,
"Yes, but we shouldn't have grown so fast." My answer is, we didn't take
every company that came to look in Cary. You know the Pergo plant that
went to Garner? I told the Chamber of Commerce that wasn't a good plan.
With formaldehyde and sawdust and fifty trucks over here next to Weston
going twenty-four hours a day, I wouldn't want to live over there and I
wouldn't want… so we said. So they chose Garner, which is a good
location because Garner had a place that wasn't next to residential and
they were very happy. So you don't take everybody coming down the pike
and you have to be very
Makes sense. How has the role of the major changed over time?
Well, as the city grows it's more demanding. I had a job here at SAS. I was criticized for working at SAS, large developer. I never voted on a SAS issue. And they were generous to me to allow me to go if I had to. There were times when I left here when I knew I shouldn't sometimes, but when you have a chance of getting a new industry and the president of the company's going to be here, what do you do? So they were really good to me. I think the role has changed dramatically in that we are really, we are the seventh largest city in the state.
So the mayor is now a full-time job? It was probably, I'm sure, in your years.
I'm not sure that you would say it's full, I think he's a full-time
ambassador and a full-time negotiator. We got great people. We got the
best city manager in the state of North
Can you tell me a little bit of that history, of when it was a deteriorating, empty building and how things played out?
It was owned by Bob Strother, a local florist. Bob had repaired it and
fixed it up and made it his home. It was a very lovely place. Bob moved
away and the place just set there idle. The roof deteriorated
dramatically and it actually had a large hole, about like a bomb had
dropped through it, which absolutely just destroyed it, the building,
the floors and everything in it. The group got together and tried to
raise… first thing, the Town had to buy it. Well, the decision to buy it
was so easy. It's next to the town hall and everything. But after you
buy it, we had to build it up to today's standards for handicap ramps
and elevators and all that. We knew it was going to be tremendously
expensive. Here you are strapped to buy fire trucks, fix the streets and
all. It was sort of like the family, you want to take a two week's
vacation and you have decide, are you going to take a two week vacation
or are you going to pay Johnny's tuition to go to college? That's some
of the decision we had to make. Thank goodness the people supported it
enough to make it happen. And thank goodness we found a way of making it
happen and restored the facilities. Because I think it's got so, we
don't have a lot of history in Cary. People talk about… we've got the
first public school, and what else do we? We have slave cemeteries, and
we were a battleground during the Civil War, up to Morrisville. I'm so
glad that we were able to save it, and I hope that there's always money
to keep it maintained. I hope that it's always there. A lot of companies
gave a lot of money, if you go there and look at those tags on there.
It's interesting what a little tag like that meant, ten - fifty thousand
dollars, and didn't ask for much recognition and didn't get a lot. I
hope that we, it is so fragile and I hope we don't overuse it because
it's not
That makes sense. So while we're building for the future, we need to also take care of our past.
Yes, we surely do. The same way with downtown. We need to every once in awhile go back downtown and do some major fixing up down there. For instance, I noticed the… I don't know whether you know this, but the cloverleaf in the street down there, the added expense for that was paid by the Durham Herald newspaper. They were trying to get started in Cary, and it didn't work but they paid for that. The difference in the cost of just doing it and putting that cloverleaf in the town seal, they paid for it. The town clock, the money was raised by the Rotary Clubs. When we did that, that was on the plan to put, we didn't have the money to put it, so the Rotary Clubs raised the money to do that. Some companies here in town paid for the installation. A lot of times when we couldn't afford to do, we went to other people, asking them to do things like that, to make it happen. It was important to make it happen. They did at the high school, they did at the elementary school, other places, people…
You've given us a great background to get started in understanding your tenure with Cary and all that you've done. I think we need to go away and think about all of this, and then we can come back and do a second interview. How would that be?
That would be great. Okay.
Well, thank you so much for you've given us today.
You didn't eat much for lunch.
Oh, I did. It was fabulous. I got a wonderful lunch too, it was terrific. Thank you so very much.
END OF INTERVIEW