Chapel Hill mayor lashes UNC trustees over project

CHAPEL HILL -- Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy feels "blindsided" and "angry" at UNC-Chapel Hill trustees' implication that town officials are responsible for delays in planning the university's proposed research campus.

"I'm just shocked that now we're being accused of obstruction somehow," Foy said Thursday. "I just don't think it's either fair or productive."

The UNC-CH trustees voted Thursday to set an Oct. 1, 2007, deadline to file applications to develop the Carolina North research campus.

The vote came a day after trustees complained that the project is moving too slowly. In particular, they expressed frustration with the work of the Carolina North Leadership Advisory Committee, a group of university and community leaders charged by Chancellor James Moeser with outlining guiding principles for the project.

The group, which is scheduled to meet through March, has spent most of its first three meetings outlining its work process rather than discussing the project itself. The resolution passed Thursday calls for the committee's work to be complete and presented at the trustees' March meeting.

"I think what the town should interpret out of that is there is a very strong sense of urgency about Carolina North and it is time to deal with Carolina North," said trustee Roger Perry. "The time for talking about it and trying to build consensus is coming to an end."

Although Perry said the board wasn't assigning blame, several trustees specifically criticized Town Council members who serve on the committee. They said the council members' position that they are there to represent the official town policy precludes them from engaging in meaningful discussion.

"What do they want if they don't want the town's position?" Foy said.

Plans for the research campus, which would straddle the Chapel Hill-Carrboro border, call for 8 million square feet of labs, offices, homes and retail space to be built over 50 years.

In the resolution, board members cited an urgent need to build the campus to boost the university innovation and the state's economy. As federal funding that makes up the bulk of UNC-CH's research money begins to dwindle, trustees said, the university badly needs new facilities to lure more private research money.

An obligation

Trustees said that pushing to get the campus built is part of their obligation to the people of North Carolina. Perry called the project "the single most important thing over the next 50 years for the state of North Carolina."

Foy said the Town Council has obligations, too. The town's concerns about the project focus largely on the increased traffic it would generate, the fiscal impact of providing town services to the site and the impact of the project on the environment and established neighborhoods that border the property, Foy said.

"I'm tired of hearing the university has a statewide mission and the town has a narrow mission and that somehow any effort to protect this town is narrow-minded and selfish," Foy said.

"The fact is that Chapel Hill is a jewel that everyone in this state wants to protect, and we have an obligation to make sure it doesn't turn into a mess," he said. "I don't want to hear any of this one-upmanship about who has an obligation to who. To diminish our role in this is insulting."

The leadership advisory committee's next meeting is scheduled for Thursday.