The Hillsborough Street Business District, which is responsible for making improvements to the street and surrounding area, has petitioned the city of Raleigh and the University to allow students to purchase meals at restaurants on the street through University meal plans.According to the petition, the businesses would be willing to provide a service to allow students to use their Board Bucks at various locations on Hillsborough Street in addition to those already provided on campus.Alan Lovette, a representative for the business district and owner of Melvin’s Hamburgers, said the University would collect all of the immediate profit and then return a percentage to the businesses bi-monthly.”Like the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, N.C. State Dining could set up the meal plan card in restaurants of interest and receive all of the purchase and then pay the restaurants a percentage back at the end of every two weeks,” Lovette said. “Also, Raleigh Take Out could be involved by taking the food to students who might be sick or are studying for exams.”Ellen Anne Curtis, a freshman in mathematics education, said she was impressed by the variety of options offered at other Universities.”It would be nice to have a wider variety of dining options like Duke and UNC students have,” Curtis said.Tiffany Brown, a sophomore in agriculture education, said she believed adding Hillsborough Street to the meal plan would improve the quality of student life while also helping to revive the local business district.”I interviewed like 50 people for a project and all but one said they’d love to have it,” Brown said. “This is especially true since the Atrium closes so early and the Dining hall can get old after a while.Lovette said he agreed the plan would help both students and area business.”N.C. State needs to look at this as a service offered by the restaurants by assisting students in their needs,” he said. “The two year construction project on Hillsborough Street will hurt business unless students are given a reason to come back to Hillsborough.”Both Brown and Lovette agreed that opening up Hillsborough Street to the meal plan would give some students more convenient options for dining.”When students go to class north of the railroad track after 2:00 p.m., they have no place to eat meal plan food unless they walk all the way back to the dining halls,” Lovette said. “If Hillsborough Street restaurants could be on the meal plan, students could eat closer to their classes. This would also help promote Hillsborough Street while giving a percentage of their food sales to on-Campus Dining services.”The petition also included two other requests. The first is for parking to be uniform and marked and the second is to create a 100-foot crime and begging buffer around the University.Lovette said the business district has petitioned before but has not yet received a response.”The businesses have made requests to N.C. State and the city of Raleigh since 2007 and we have not yet heard one request answered since then,” Lovette said. “We have narrowed it down to three requests on a recent petition signed by all the businesses and again, no answer.”Jay Dawkins, student body president and junior in civil engineering, said he hopes the financial and legal issues will work out.”I know there are a lot of students who would like to use the meal plan on the street and it would bring business to Hillsborough,” Dawkins said. “It is just a matter of whether or not legal and financial details will work out and I’m not an expert on that. I love the idea but I don’t know about the financial side.”