Soil cleanup report seals condo deal

Chapel Hill learns that contamination on the site won't be as expensive as could be

CHAPEL HILL -- Town Manager Roger Stancil signed a final contract with Ram Development Co. on Tuesday to build a $75 million condominium complex on West Franklin Street.

On the same day, the town received an environmental report showing soil contamination on the site will cost the town an estimated $232,000 to clean up, a number that came as no surprise to Stancil.

"From the very beginning, we knew there was contamination on the site," he said.

In February, Town Council members Jim Ward and Laurin Easthom cast dissenting votes in the council's 7-2 approval of the project, saying the cost of cleaning up Parking Lot 5 might be more than the town should spend.

The town was already investing $7.25 million in the project, plus the value of the 1.7-acre parking lot. Without a definitive environmental assessment, the potential extra costs were a big question mark.

Environmental Consulting Services drilled 30 holes in the pavement and used radar to rule out the presence of underground fuel tanks. Late last week, Stancil received a verbal report from ECS indicating that about 12,000 tons of soil will need to be removed and decontaminated.

At that point, Stancil knew the cleanup would not be so expensive as to endanger the Ram project; he moved forward to execute the final contract with Ram.

"If the verbal report had told me that there were bigger issues, then we would have had a different decision to consider," Stancil said.

As part of the final contract, Ram agreed to achieve an energy efficiency level 20 percent better than standards established by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.

Ram also agreed to include enough design features to qualify for basic certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, though the project will not go through the formal certification process. Stancil said the actual building features were more important than the certification.

"That was the basis of my negotiations," he said.

Ram also agreed to provide five parking spaces in an underground parking lot that had been dedicated to the owners of market-rate condominiums in the building.

Easthom had complained that the owners of 21 subsidized units would have to park outside the complex in one of a few town-owned lots nearby on West Rosemary Street. The town plans to provide the remaining 16 spaces from among 161 underground spaces it will own and make available to the public.