by Jane Winik Sartwell, Carolina Public Press
July 14, 2025

It wasn’t that they didn’t know their businesses could flood. They just didn’t realize how bad it could get — until Tropical Depression Chantal hit Central North Carolina last week.

Up to 6 feet of water filled shops in one of Chapel Hill’s most beloved shopping centers as Chantal’s rains pounded the area on July 6. Flooding destroyed inventory, equipment and interiors. It left local business owners, employees and customers in shock.

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Across Orange County, in towns like Hillsborough, Carrboro and Chapel Hill, businesses large and small are dealing with the destruction wrought by Chantal. As recovery begins, it’s hard not to still feel underwater.

Carolina Public Press spoke with owners and community leaders in Orange County to get a sense of what things look like one week out.

Eastgate Crossing and University Place in Chapel Hill

When Sean Scott walked into Guglhupf Bakery on Monday morning, July 7, he stopped in his tracks. Chantal was gone, but the bakery’s Chapel Hill location was ruined.

He thought that perhaps the 4-foot metal flood gates would be enough to spare the bakery the worst of it. He was wrong. Water rose to five-and-a-half feet in under two hours. 

“It was kind of surreal,” Scott told CPP. “No one was ready for that. There’s been some pretty catastrophic damage. All of our equipment was lost. We had to tear down the walls.”

For Scott, the next steps of recovery pose a daunting challenge. 

“The legalities, the insurance, all of that stuff — it’s pretty hard to manage, especially when everything is so emotionally charged,” he said. 

Guglhupf Bakery’s Chapel Hill location is at the Eastgate Crossing plaza, which is owned by a parent company called Kite Realty. Although each business has a different lease agreement with Kite, for Guglhupf, Kite is only responsible for damage to the exterior of the business.

This is just one of the complex nuances that Scott is trying to manage. He is unsatisfied by the protocol in place for this kind of event.

“There’s not a checklist or order of operations,” he said. “I think it’s a wake-up call for the town, because Eastgate is in a known floodplain. There needs to be a bit more planning involved, and a bit more transparency.”

To remedy this perceived lack of transparency, Scott says he is getting to work on a database of revenue loss and flood levels from Chantal. He feels like he was leased the property without a real briefing on the flood risk. In addition, he is attempting to renegotiate his lease with Kite Realty. 

He thinks the bakery will reopen within a month. Even so, he estimates Guglhupf will lose $110,000, in addition to $150,000 in lost revenue. He knows Guglhupf will recover, but he isn’t so sure about other Eastgate businesses.

He’s planning a concert and auction event to raise money for businesses, the details of which are yet to come. 

“I want to do an in-person event, instead of some Go-Fund-Me, because then you get to see your neighbors,” Scott said. “That’s just a really beautiful part of tragedy: connecting with others and creating a good energy around the disaster.”

Nearly every business in the plaza, including a Trader Joe’s grocery store, is devastated. Most of the shops will need to be gutted completely. Many have flood insurance policies in place, but they are likely inadequate to their needs this time around, due to the severity of flooding from Chantal, according to Ian Scott, vice president for advocacy of Chamber for a Greater Chapel Hill-Carrboro.

“These are long-standing, beloved businesses,” Scott said. “Most are locally-owned, even if at first glance they look like chains. The impact of this will ripple around the community because Chapel Hill is really a hyper-local place.”

Eastgate wasn’t the only plaza in the area that flooded during Chantal.

Nearby, at University Place, formerly the University Mall, flooding overtook many businesses, including The Frame and Print Shop, several restaurants and the Silverspot Cinema.

Cleanup from Chantal at these locations continued through the weekend and is likely to continue for a while at several stores. Saturday, lines of dumpsters full of garbage bags of flood-damaged goods and materials stood alongside the curb outside the University Place businesses. 

The Chantal flooding impact was uneven at University Place. A few businesses, including Hawker’s restaurant, had reopened by Saturday after shorter closures.

Despite significant damage, the Frame and Print Shop was operating again. Mud and water from Chantal filled the bottom of the shop, according to owner Becky Woodruff. They lost supplies and equipment, resulting in a loss Woodruff estimates at $10,000.

“The main thing we’re focused on is keeping our staff healthy and employed,” Woodruff told CPP. 

“We don’t have any supplies at the moment, but customers are already coming back in.”

Hillsborough businesses and Chantal

In Hillsborough, the most widespread impact of Chantal on local businesses was a boil-water advisory that was lifted Thursday. Both the town’s water treatment plant and sewage treatment plant flooded, leaving the local water supply compromised. 

Durham stepped in to supply Hillsborough with water, but still, the town was still under a mandate to conserve water. That was finally lifted over the weekend.

“This is worse than anything I ever saw in the past 20 years in Hillsborough,” Hillsborough mayor Mark Bell told CPP. 

“No hurricane ever produced this much water in such a short period of time. There are a lot of people and a lot of businesses scrambling.”

In addition to flash-flooding in several places, major flooding occurred along the Eno River, inundating an old mill building that houses a charter school and the Eno Arts Commission. Many original works of art were lost in the flood. The town’s riverwalk and parks, a major attraction to the historic downtown area, will require major repairs.

By Wednesday night, downtown Hillsborough Italian restaurant Antonia’s had already begun a carry-out and delivery service, according to owner Brian Pearson. 

That way, they don’t have to worry about boiling water to wash silverware and plates. Pearson says it reminds him of the COVID protocols they used in the pandemic.

Open for business after Chantal

The main message Scott Czechlewski, CEO of the Hillsborough Chamber of Commerce, wants to communicate is this: we are open for business despite the damage from Chantal. 

In Chapel Hill, they too are planning their economic rebound. In the summer, though, when the UNC-Chapel Hill students are gone on break, the town can be pretty dead.

Still, Bedford and others are planning to go ahead with Uproar, the second-annual August arts festival in Orange County. One of the main locations of the festival is the now-devastated Eno Arts Mill in Hillsborough.

“After a lot of debate with my boards, staff, and our Uproar town partners, we have decided to move forward with Uproar,” wrote Katie Murray, director of the Orange County Arts Commission. 

“Our capacity is challenged due to this unexpected loss of our space, but we feel like showing up for our community, especially after this devastating storm, is exactly what needs to happen right now.”

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Chantal leaves some Orange Co., NC, businesses struggling appeared first on carolinapublicpress.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

The article focuses on the factual reporting of flood damage and community recovery efforts in Central North Carolina without promoting a particular political ideology or agenda. It highlights local business impacts, community responses, and calls for better planning and transparency from property managers and local government. The tone remains neutral and empathetic, emphasizing human interest and practical concerns rather than ideological framing. The content avoids partisan language or policy advocacy, reflecting balanced, community-focused journalism typical of centrist reporting.