Carolina North plans presented to town, BOT

The master plan for Carolina North, along with a concept plan for an Innovation Center that would serve as its gateway project, shared center stage at the Chapel Hill Town Council meeting on Jan. 23.

Jack Evans, executive director of Carolina North, said the twin presentations of the master plan and a concept plan for the Innovation Center were important steps for the town’s approval. Both marked a culmination of months of planning on a host of fronts.

In spring 2006, Chancellor James Moeser appointed a cross-section of University administrators and trustees, elected leaders and community representatives to a Leadership Advisory Committee (LAC) for Carolina North that over a series of meetings arrived at a broad consensus of underlying principles to guide development. The committee also identified other areas, such as the scope of housing to be built on the property.

With these principles in place, the University embarked over the past year on what Evans described as a series of parallel processes that have reached, or are soon to reach, a conclusion.

Other parts of the process include a fiscal equity study to measure the interplay of financial costs and benefits of Carolina North on the town and a major transit study to explore transportation alternatives that would lessen the dependence on cars.

Other completed studies include infrastructure needs and an ecological study of the entire 963-acre tract to ensure that environmentally sensitive areas, especially watersheds, remain undeveloped and protected.

Evans has also led a series of community forums sponsored by the University. The purpose of these meetings was not only to keep elected officials, University employees and area residents updated on the latest developments, but also to respond to concerns and incorporate suggestions as the plan has evolved.

Complicating this interplay of perspectives and expectations between the town and the University is the Innovation Center and the University’s desire to have it approved through a special-use permit before the town approves the master plan, which would guide development of a 250-acre parcel of Carolina North over the next 50 years.

The 85,000 square-foot building is designed to hold wet and dry laboratory space, office space and technical and business development resources designed to successfully identify, evaluate and launch new companies across many different areas within the University’s research programs.

It will also include space for the University’s Office of Technology as well as space to accommodate large conferences.

Comments at the council meeting
Evans said the Jan. 23 meeting marked the first time community members have had an opportunity to comment while the council was in session, but the eighth time they have had an opportunity to comment on either the master plan or the Innovation Center.

Of the 16 speakers at the meeting, all but four were strongly in favor of the building, including many who expressed support and excitement about the jobs it would create for Chapel Hill’s “creative class” of workers. Too many such workers now leave town for Raleigh and Research Triangle Park to find employment commensurate with their skills. The emergence of Carolina North, beginning with the Innovation Center, could begin to change that, they said.

Newly elected council member Matt Czajkowski pointed out that the Innovation Center touched almost all of his goals for Chapel Hill and that he would like to see a review process started quickly.

For Evans and University architect Anna Wu, the council meeting marked the second time that day they made presentations before equally crucial audiences — Evans to review the master plan, Wu to review an architectural rendering of a concept plan for the Innovation Center at the University’s Building and Grounds Committee.

The reactions of council members and trustees were starkly different.

Trustees are eager to see the process move beyond “talk,” in board Chair Roger Perry’s words.

Many trustees are painfully aware that the University has been talking about developing Carolina North for more than a decade.

The formation of the LAC, and the community meetings held over the past year, have been aimed at developing community consensus and engagement to help expedite town approval and begin construction quickly.

During the committee discussion, trustee Nelson Schwab asked Evans if there was a timetable in place for approval of the master plan and special-use permit.

Evans said he hoped the permit for the Innovation Center could be approved by October so that construction could begin by early 2009. “We have plotted that out on the calendar, but things have to fall in place in a rather timely way for that to happen,” he said.

Approval of the master plan, however, is far more complex, Evans said. During informal talks between University and town leaders earlier this month, town officials requested that the University not submit any more requests for special-use permits.

Evans said University officials viewed that request as reasonable, provided that approval for the Carolina North master plan proceeded in an orderly and progressive way.

Many council members, however, suggested that the time for talk was only beginning and stressed the importance of establishing, then following, a review and approval process.

Seeking careful, deliberate process
Mayor Kevin Foy stressed the council’s plan to move with careful, deliberate speed and said that no decisions would be made that night to approve the projects or even set a timeframe.

Foy said one of the first tasks was to decide the kind of approval process needed.

Foy emphasized that the University had not yet submitted the special-use permit for town approval and that the presentation of the Innovation Center served as an opportunity for council members and residents to offer constructive criticism that the University could use to make needed improvements before the formal approval process began.

During his presentation, Evans reviewed sequential plans for Carolina North for five, 15 and 50 years while emphasizing that most of the 250-acre section where development would be concentrated is a “brownfield site” that once served as Horace Williams Airport, the town’s closed landfill and recently closed municipal yard.

The term “brownfield site” refers to land once occuppied by a permanent structure that has become vacant or underused but has the potential for redevelopment.

In her review of the site plan for the Innovation Center, Wu stressed that modifications had been made in response to the town’s Community Design Commission review and the community meetings.

Mixed reactions
Some forum speakers and council members raised questions about why the University would seek a special-use permit for the Innovation Center before the master plan was approved.

Others defended the idea and backed the University’s sense of urgency to build the center.

A resident said she was “shocked” by the special-use permit request, while another resident, Scott Radway, suggested that the Innovation Center could serve as a valuable test case for future projects.

“The purpose of a master plan is not to design individual buildings, it is to design a framework so you can make better decisions in the future,” Radway said.

On that score, Radway noted that Carolina North already had seen more scrutiny than two major private developments, Meadowmont and Southern Village, approved by the town.

He also noted dramatic advances over the past decade in energy conservation, carbon footprinting and environmental sensitivity that planners for Carolina North have incorporated into their thinking.

Sense of urgency
University officials have emphasized that building the Innovation Center has a growing sense of urgency for a number of reasons, chief among them the increasing need for University researchers to be able to move their discoveries from “the bench to the bedside.”

Joel Marcus of Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc., the company that would build and own the Innovation Center and lease it to University researchers, spoke briefly about the role the center would play.

Marcus said the center would be an accelerator for life sciences and information technology. He explained the idea of “translational medicine” and how Alexandria creates the kind of working environments that develop new drugs. Marcus said his firm was also committed to sustainability.

Some of the University’s leading research experts including Shelton Earp, director of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, also came before the council.

“It turns out that applied science is really what will affect people,” Earp said. “If we want to become the best, we need the Innovation Center.”

Some concerns expressed
In addition to these overarching themes, various council members posed a range of concerns.

Council members Jim Ward and Ed Harrison spoke about the undeveloped acreage and how it could serve as an outdoor classroom for stormwater and other research.

Mayor Pro Tem Bill Strom raised a concern about water availability, suggesting that the University become part of the town’s stormwater utility. Strom said he was also concerned that the amount of housing currently envisioned would be insufficient.

Two people, a private pilot and a representative of a private pilots’ group, challenged the planned closing of Horace Williams Airport, where the University’s medical operations and private pilots have been based for more than 70 years.

Moeser has said he believes the Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) program can remain strong without the airport. Medical Air Operations, the transportation arm of AHEC, would remain at Horace Williams until the Innovation Center was ready for occupancy, Moeser has said. After that, MedAir would move to a new hangar built for it at Raleigh-Durham Airport. The University has also pledged to work with local, state and federal agencies to help create a general aviation authority in southern Orange County that could serve AHEC.

One area of agreement between trustees and council members emerged during the course of the day: Both are interested in seeing the Innovation Center make a bold statement. Trustees want a design for what has been described as Carolina North’s “front door” that leans more toward the dramatic than the nondescript.

Perry, for instance, said he loved the soaring glass entrance to the building and the courtyard that blended interior and exterior space. On the other hand, he thought the flanking office wings lacked the kind of pizzazz that a signature building called for.

The full board also devoted nearly an hour to reviewing and critiquing the current design. The discussion ended with a call for University planners to put in place unifying guidelines for all of Carolina North.

To view the meeting, refer to chapelhill.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=3&clip_id=250.