Carolina North building gets design approval

Innovation Center drawing revealed

CHAPEL HILL -- The first building on UNC-Chapel Hill's Carolina North campus will have three-story glass facades, solar panels and metal curtain walls with vertical sun shades to reduce energy costs.

The planned $20 million Innovation Center will also have a touch of the traditional, historic Chapel Hill campus with a brick entrance.

The UNC-CH Board of Trustees unanimously approved the design at a special meeting Thursday. It had rejected an earlier design as too plain for the new campus's main entrance off Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

At Thursday's meeting, board secretary Russell "Rusty" Carter of Wilmington expressed concern over the lack of architectural guidelines for the entire campus.

"The process is out of step," he said, adding the board is approving one building at a time without an idea of what each building will look like and how they will all fit together. "We need to do due diligence and come to a consensus that we can present to the University of North Carolina constituents."

Plan called complete

Board Chairman Roger Perry said the Carolina North campus design is complete -- including building layout and landscaping -- except for architectural decisions. But Perry, a Triangle developer, said he's OK with that because the existing Chapel Hill campus doesn't have architectural guidelines and features a wide range of styles.

"You can't build a lab in an 'Energy Star' building that looks like McCorkle Place," Perry said.

Perry added that not having specific guidelines gives the board flexibility for building the Carolina North campus.

The Innovation Center will be an 85,000-square-foot, three-story building with lab and office space designed to boost university research in the private sector. It will be built and operated by a private company, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, and was designed by Flad Architects.