CORRECTION

A story on Page 3B on Monday mistakenly said that the Carolina North campus in Chapel Hill covers almost 1,000 acres. The campus site contains 1,000 acres, but development is planned for only 250 acres.

******

CHAPEL HILL -- Building a law school on the Carolina North campus is now a top priority for UNC-Chapel Hill.

At a meeting Sunday of the Chapel Hill Town Council, UNC-CH Chancellor James Moeser, board of trustees members Roger Perry and Bob Winston, and Carolina North Executive Director Jack Evans, Moeser said the university is planning to open a 200,000- square-foot law school by the 2010-11 academic year.

Carolina North -- where the university plans to develop a research, corporate and residential campus -- covers almost 1,000 acres and is two miles north of the main campus.

"We want to expand the [law school] enrollment. We need more faculty offices, " Moeser said. "We have a [current] building that's filled with asbestos that requires abatement."

He said the university will need $30 million in planning funds for the new law school, which will include costs for the infrastructure.

Renovating or expanding the current building would cost the university $85 million to $90 million, Moeser said, and take five to seven years to complete.

"For us, this is a no-brainer," he said, adding that a new building would not disrupt classes at the existing building. "For us, it's enormously practical."

On Sunday, university officials said they plan to develop 65 acres of the Carolina North site within the first 15 years.

The campus will eventually be a center for university research programs, start-up businesses, a public school, housing, retail and recreation facilities. It will also house some of the university's graduate school programs.

Carolina North has been in the works for about 12 years. The university began looking at uses for the Horace Williams tract in the mid-1990s.

The first building, an Innovation Center business incubator, is to be built by a private developer who will collect rent from tenants. The concept plan for that building will go before the town council later this month.

The first phase of the development will be centered where the Horace Williams Airport runway now sits, off Municipal Drive and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

The UNC-CH medical school's air operations are now based at the Horace Williams Airport. But medical flights make up fewer than one in four flights, records show. The airport is used primarily by private pilots.

The university is planning to move its medical air operations to Raleigh-Durham International Airport. The board of trustees plans to vote in two weeks to approve a lease with RDU for a medical hangar there, at an estimated cost of around $3 million. The vote is set to then go before the UNC Board of Governors in March.

Town and university leaders also discussed the new public transit system that could transport the faculty, staff and students between Carolina North and the main campus.

Get $150+ in coupons in every Sunday N&O. Click here for convenient home delivery.