APRIL 10, 2002

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Winmore project could create affordable housing

It had been known only as the Horace Williams satellite, a 62-acre parcel located off Homestead Road about a mile from the vastly larger 979-acre tract of the same name.

For years, campus planners and administrators had not known how to make the satellite fit into the long-range plans of the larger tract.

That dilemma ended March 28 when the University Board of Trustees agreed to sell the 62 acres so it could be part of a mixed-used residential development being pursued by Winmore Land Management LLC.

Winmore already has a contract to buy an adjoining 66-acre tract, and the acquisition will allow the firm to roughly double the size of the project, which still must gain regulatory approval from the town board of Carrboro before construction can begin.

Winmore's partners are architect Philip Szostak; attorney Herman Greene of Chapel Hill; and Bob Chapman, a planner based in Durham.

With the property acquired from the University, the developers will ask the town to allow them to build 398 residential units, with 192 single-family homes, 110 townhouses and 96 apartments.

A key feature that sold trustees on the proposal is that many of those units would be priced so that University employees, as well as those with the Town of Carrboro and UNC Health Care, could afford them and that they would be earmarked for their exclusive use.

Some trustees were hesitant about selling the property -- any property, really. Land is a finite resource that will not be getting any cheaper, they argued, and there is no way to predict today what use the University might have for the land 10 years from now, or 100.

"This land is never going to get any cheaper," Trustee A. Donald Stallings said.

Others worried about the risk that the University is taking because of the financial arrangements inherent in the deal.

Instead of a straight-out sale, the deal calls for the $1.25 million purchase price to be paid in the form of a promissory note bearing 7 percent interest for about seven years. The sale would be secured by a purhase-money mortgage plus 30 percent of the gross sales revenues from lot sales in excess of $15 million. And this profit-sharing arrangement would cover the entire 129-acre development and not just the 62 acres the University sold.

The arrangement calls for the University to bear some risk that a straight-out sale could avoid, Trustee Chair Tim Burnett said.

But David Pardue, chair of the Buildings and Grounds Committee and one of the three trustees who worked directly in negotiating the deal, said the immediate rewards to the University outweighed risks that were negligible.

Real estate projects can go sour, but the shortage of affordable housing is too acute in this market to believe it would happen here, even in hard times, Pardue said.

The average house in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro area now costs in excess of $300,000, leaving many University staff and junior faculty hard pressed to find homes close to campus anywhere near the price range they can afford, Pardue said.

Winmore cannot solve that problem, Pardue said, but at least it begins to address it. A stipulation of the deal requires Winmore to set aside 50 to 60 homes priced no higher than $175,000 that must be sold to employees of the University, UNC Health Care or the Town of Carrboro.

Another enticement to the deal was a gift of land on which at least 96 apartments would be built and rented exclusively to those same groups of employees. Pardue credited fellow Trustee James Hynes with negotiating to get that provision included in the contract.

Chancellor James Moeser also has voiced his support for the proposal because of its affordable-housing component.

In response to the broader objection of selling the land, both Pardue and Nancy Suttenfield, vice chancellor for finance and administration, pointed out that the decision to sell already had been made as part of the settlement with the University's philosophy department over the will of the late professor Horace Williams. How much of the proceeds from the $1.25 million sale will go to the department remains to be negotiated, officials said.

Plans continue to turn the main Horace Williams tract into a place for research and residential living, work and play, shopping and studying -- a place where people could get to work or go to lunch with 15-minute walks rather than hour-long commutes.

Winmore will be developed with similar "smart-growth" principles, said Douglas Firstenburg, a consultant with Stonebridge Associates who outlined the proposal to trustees before they voted.

The development is expected to mix offices and stores with residential property, Firstenburg said. The developers also plan so set aside some 50 acres for open space, land the developers have said they would be willing to give to the University.