CHAPEL HILL - Greenbridge, a $50 million eco-friendly condominium tower planned for downtown's West End, has support from prominent merchants and some black community leaders.

But some residents in the historically black section of town see the project as another step toward erasing their community.

"We're just disappearing," said Velma Perry, a long-time activist in the Northside neighborhood, which lies just north of the Greenbridge project.

"It's going to be a white town," she said. "Chapel Hill's going to be a lily white town."

The Chapel Hill Town Council could approve the Greenbridge project as early as Monday night.

Perry, 86, was one of a few black elders featured in a promotional DVD commissioned by the Greenbridge partners to preserve the legacy of the local black community.

The DVD foreshadows an on-site learning center, where visitors could learn about Northside's history and Greenbridge's sustainable design elements. Greenbridge also would include a public plaza, retail jobs, and storefront space to grow local businesses.

"We haven't even scratched the surface with the opportunities for the neighborhood," said Tim Toben, one the Greenbridge partners.

Yet some residents oppose the 10-story project because they think it's too tall and because no one in the neighborhood will be able to afford to buy the condominiums.

"The people that have grown up in the neighborhood are just being pushed to the side,' said Marilyn Chaplin, whose family owns the Midway Barber Shop building. 'I just think that the progress should include the people."

In opposing Greenbridge, Perry is also opposing her own pastor.

The Rev. Thomas Nixon of St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church recently wrote a letter to the Town Council calling Greenbridge "an asset to the Northside community."

Greenbridge would be between North Graham and Merritt Mill Road, almost right across the street from the church.

The council has also received a letter of support from the Rev. Troy Harrison, pastor of St. Joseph Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, located opposite the Greenbridge site on Rosemary Street.

The Greenbridge DVD also features Esther Tate, whose family and nonprofit organization Abundant Life Center sold the 1.3-acre Greenbridge site for more than $3 million, according to Orange County tax records. On the DVD, Tate talked about the cultural events and social services she once offered on the site and how it later became blighted.

"Nobody would ever know that there was life there on that corner," Tate said. "To see that type of building come into Chapel Hill will benefit us all."

The Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership and the West End Group merchants association have also endorsed the plan.

At a public hearing last month, Greenbridge received additional support from local black leaders such as Angela Lee, president of CarolinaPros Inc.; Henry McKoy, CEO of CASS Intelligence Networks Inc.; and Mildred Council, proprietor of Mama Dip's restaurant.

Interviewed later, Council said she wished local blacks had the money to invest in the neighborhood, but if they can't, someone ought to, in order to continue the commercial renaissance that's already happening on Rosemary Street.

"It's sad to see how we're not financially able to buy this property," said Council, who lived in the Northside neighborhood for about 30 years until 1974 and still has her restaurant there. "It's not what color their skin is. It's who can purchase it."

Also speaking in favor of Greenbridge was Virginia Mason, daughter of Charlie Mason, a prominent black businessman who built a grocery store, motel and the Star Lite Supper Club at Rosemary Street and Merritt Mill Road. The buildings became the Abundant Life Center and now form a ramshackle complex that could soon give way to Greenbridge.

"I'm sure he'd be proud," Mason's daughter said. "This is what [he] started, and it's continuing to grow."

None of the African Americans who spoke in favor of the project at the hearing Jan. 17 actually lives in Northside.

North Graham Street resident Delores Bailey, executive director of Empowerment Inc. and Northside's most vocal advocate, has tepidly endorsed the project.

Northside has been changing for a long time, as older black people die off and investors turn their homes into student rentals or owner occupants expand small homes or replace them with large ones.

"If it's not Greenbridge, it's going to be somebody else," Bailey said. "Northside will not lose its heart and soul because of a building."