Edwards' Headquarters Becoming Nuisance to Neighbors

Chapel Hill, N.C. — Thursday marked the second postal scare in four months at John Edwards’ campaign headquarters in Chapel Hill.

Both incidents proved to be harmless, but for businesses in Southern Village, Edwards’ headquarters is becoming more of a nuisance.

Businesses complain that they're losing money. Some of them shut down for the day. Business owners told WRAL they're tired of the scares and tired of the business day interruptions. One business owner plans to do something about it.

Dr. Annelise Hardin is a pediatric dentist with an office on the same floor as Edwards’ campaign headquarters. She said she has had enough of bomb scares and evacuations.

Her office plans to draft a letter to the building's management expressing frustration about the loss of business. She is planning to get other companies in Southern Village to sign the letter.

Keith Getchell runs a restaurant two doors down from Edwards’ campaign headquarters. The bomb scare wiped out his lunch crowd, he said. He, too, is frustrated and plans to sign Hardin's letter.

“We expected with the employees they were going to have and people visiting the office, we thought we’d get more out of it,” Getchell said. “But it hasn’t really helped our business. And with a day like today, it hurt our business.”

Hardin said the campaign staffers have been good neighbors. But running a new pediatric dental practice, she is concerned about her business surviving and her patients’ safety, she said.

“We need to have some protocols, maybe some resolutions as to how do we avoid this,” she said.

Andrea Purse, a spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, said Friday that mail would no longer be delivered to the campaign headquarters at Southern Village. Instead, it would be delivered to and processed at an off-site location, she said, declining to be more specific.