Observation 1: What may have been the largest discussion of density in the town of Chapel Hill wasn't organized by the town of Chapel Hill, but by neighborhood residents concerned about what they are seeing.
Observation 2: The conversation was exceedingly polite -- and vague. Planning professor William Rohe gave a good overview of the pluses and minuses of increasing Chapel Hill's population: It's not the numbers, but how you fit them in. But he rarely shared what he thought Chapel Hill was doing right and wrong (perhaps he wasn't asked to).
"As density gets higher the design of these buildings becomes more critical to their success,' Rohe said. He then listed five key design features: stepbacks, facade treatment (There are "some really bad examples on Rosemary Street," he said.), setbacks, transition zones and parking.
My guess is 100 people filled that room because they have concerns about how some of those five principles are playing out. Which project was Rohe referring to on Rosemary Street? Was he talking about the steel frames of East 54 when he mentioned setbacks (or the lack of them)? And while he did cite Carrboro's West Main Street condos as a project that fails to transition to its one-story surroundings, others have raised the same concern about Greenbridge and Chapel Hill's Lot 5 project.
There were other good comments related to affordability, rental housing and the elimination of whole populations as Chapel Hill redevelops its older, and still affordable rental neighborhoods. We'll have more from the meeting in Sunday's Chapel Hill News. But what do you think? What's Chapel Hill doing right and wrong?
Comments
Density
Fri, 12/12/2008 - 18:14 — elvisboy77Is just the latest "solution du jour" to some problem no one really can define, but boy it needs to be solved!
Next year it will be greenspace preservation or something.
Meantime, no one is looking at whether the infrastructure can handle densification.
Can't wait till the million dollar condos are done in Greedbridge.....
Density in Chapel Hill
Fri, 12/12/2008 - 14:10 — Del318NRG wanted to start the community conversation about the future of Chapel Hill in the face of increasing density. We never really thought that it was our job to come up with specific solutions-that is a task for ALL of us, working in partnership with the Town Council, to determine together. The point that we did try to make is that approving dense developments on a piece meal basis could, in the end, leave us with a disconnected, congested, and uncoordinated mess. The impacts on (and solutions for) our infrastructure must be examined BEFORE we commit to it. Additionally, we need to have the public conversation about if this the way Chapel Hill should go and grow.
I'm sure everyone is looking forward to your timely, necessary, and hopefully continuing coverage of Chapel Hill's growth options.
I thought the meeting was
Fri, 12/12/2008 - 09:33 — anitabadrockI thought the meeting was well done and with an effort to be inclusive and informative.
One thing I would like to see is more of an efffort to understand the economic impacts of proposed developments. We ask for environmental studies, storm water studies, but we don't consider economic impacts in the way I think we should. About the only "economic impact" we consider is affordable housing.
I want to know what will this development do to improve the town's ability to provide services, or what will it do to further strain the town's ability to provide services? Is it a net positive to the town and county budget or a net negative? Dwight alluded to this when he talked about how the mix of residential/nonresidential is shifting, but the bulk of the conversation seems to always go to residential. Getting some more net revenue positive development will go a long way to helping us better fund schools, other public services, and provide local jobs.