The past few weeks have seen a lot of busy-ness on University Drive, across from the Forest Hills Shopping Center, where a sign advertises the University Townes townhouses.

Curbs and gutters are in, the underlayer is down for the driveway and parking lot and builder Dean Evans said his first building could be ready for residents in just a couple more weeks.

"This isn't a huge project, but it's a big one to me," Evans said.

Evans' site is an easy walk from Forest Hills Park, and also just a mile and a half from Duke University and less than a mile from N.C. Central, he said.

He planned his three-building, six-unit project with college students and their investment-minded parents in mind.

"People looking for a place for Johnny or Susie to live, and make a little bit of pocket money while in school. ... Places students could come into and feel at home."

Evans said he's a hands-on builder who likes to drive his own nails, and University Townes is sort of a family proposition -- marketing is being handled by his aunt and cousin at Committed Real Estate in Durham.

"My bottom line is a customer satisfied," he said.

Reading flavors

Aviel and Shawna Alkon advise that the coffee and tea bar is now open at BookDabbler, the used-book and gift shop they opened last fall at Loehmann's Plaza on Hillandale Road.

"We have 14 different coffee and tea flavors to choose from, and a scenic area to sit," they report in their January newsletter.

Meantime, the shop has a while-they-last sale on holiday cards and 2007 calendars and a 2/3-off sale on some hardcover fiction if you mention the newsletter.

Moving merchandise

South Durham and north Durham both have new packaging and shipping emporia.

Pack Mail 'n More is now open in the Renaissance Center at 7011 Fayetteville Road (across from Southpoint), offering mailbox rental, stamps, copying and printing, packing and eBay auction service.

At Riverview Shopping Center on North Roxboro Road (across from West Point on the Eno Park), Eze Packaging is the first tenant to open in a new 5,000-square foot building on an outlying parcel.

"It's kind of similar to a UPS store," said leasing agent Charlie Coyle.

Give and take away

Joining Eze Packaging in the Riverview addition, Coyle said, are a Golden Nails salon; a Little Caesar's takeout-pizza shop; and the sit-down China Star restaurant. Coyle said all four should be up and running by the end of the first quarter of 2007.

Also in the Eno country, where there are bulls there may be bears as well. Jus' Wing It, a drive-through restaurant in Riverview Shopping Center, and Grandma's Kitchen, north of the river at 5230 N. Roxboro Road, are out of business.

Growing Loco

Locopops, the gourmet-popsicle shop that opened in Durham in 2005, is growing.

The business is opening a new, bigger kitchen and a second popsicle stop this spring at 115 Market St., on the new CCB Plaza downtown.

That expansion will allow Locopops to enlarge its original space at 2600 Hillsborough Road.

At the same time, Locopops is taking a taste of Bull City to that college town down the boulevard.

Another new Locopops is opening in March, at the Courtyard of Chapel Hill on Franklin Street.