Neighbors protest plan for 5-story residence hall

Methodists want room to live and learn

CHAPEL HILL -- The Methodist campus ministry at UNC-Chapel Hill is planning the East Coast's first large-scale Christian residence hall at a state university.

And the neighbors don't like it.

The UNC Wesley Foundation, a private nonprofit student ministry, has proposed a five-story building with 22 apartments for about 160 Christian students seeking a "learning/living" community. The 70,000-square-foot building also would have worship and program space.

"It's a wonderful opportunity and a unique opportunity to minister to the whole student," said the Rev. Dr. Jan Rivero, Methodist campus minister.

Rivero, who also serves as president of the National Campus Ministry Association, said Westminster House, a Presbyterian residence hall at the University of California, Berkeley, is the only large-scale learning/living community in the United States. It serves about 130 Christian students.

Last week, the Wesley Foundation presented the town's Historic District Commission with a plan to tear down its 1966 building at 214 Pittsboro St., across from the Carolina Inn, and replace it with the new apartment building and student center.

"There are so many religious groups on campus, and this is a need that's not being met adequately, and we have a really good location to do it," Rivero said.

The site sits between the western edge of the UNC-CH campus and the Cameron-McCauley Historic District. Neighbors have long complained about the university encroaching into the historic district, and the Methodists' plan provoked a similar protest before the commission last week.

"We really like the Wesley Foundation," said former Town Council member Joyce Brown, a neighbor. "All of us hated not to support it."

In response, Wesley Foundation board member Nick Didow, a faculty member at the Kenan-Flagler Business School, said that the board is considering a four-story building serving fewer students.

The board first has to make sure the smaller building could support itself, he said. Reducing the number of beds could require the foundation to raise an additional $2 million to $3 million.

The feedback wasn't any better for the foundation's alternate plan to swap its two-thirds of an acre on Pittsboro Street for half an acre on East Franklin Street across from the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center, the site of the 1930s Coates Building owned by UNC-CH. Stephen Rich, vice chairman of the commission, said members had the same concerns about height.

Didow said the foundation would like to hear from the Town Council before making a final plan. The Wesley Foundation will take its revised plan to the Town Council in March. "Our preference would be to do it where we are now located," Didow said.

The proposed five-story student center would rise as high as 75 feet above Pittsboro Street, rivaling the Tate-Turner-Kuralt School of Social Work farther south, though not as tall as the nearby Granville Towers.

The building would top the Carolina Inn and even the new four-story FedEx Global Education Center farther down Pittsboro Street.

"Everybody on the commission was all skeptical about the size of it in relation to what's across the street and what's next door," Rich said.

But Creston Woods, general manager at the three-story Carolina Inn, isn't worried about the height.

"It's fine," he said. "We're surrounded by tall buildings."

'... just very big'

According to the Wesley Foundation's Web site, the architects at Corley Redfoot Zack Inc. have tried to mirror the architectural design of the Carolina Inn.

"I thought it was a very nice looking building," Rich said. "It was just very big."

As an alternative, the Wesley Foundation is in talks about swapping its Pittsboro Street lot for the Coates Building at 223 E. Franklin St. The Wesley building already backs up to a university parking lot on Wilson Street and abuts the UNC News Services building on one side.

"We would be interested in it because it's a strategic location," said Bruce Runberg, UNC-CH's associate vice chancellor for facilities planning.

The Wesley property is assessed at $1.9 million. Runberg said university planners have no specific ideas about how to use either the Coates or the Wesley site.

"We really haven't looked at any options other than to say that the [Wesley] location is strategic," he said.

The antique brick Coates Building, with Colonial columns and arched windows, currently houses the Office of Undergraduate Education and academic advising offices. It is named for Albert and Gladys Coates, who founded the UNC Institute of Government there in 1931. It is almost 11,000 square feet.

At 17,000 square feet, the current Wesley building lacks the architectural features of the Coates Building but has a long history in Chapel Hill. In the early 1970s, a soup kitchen there gave birth to the Inter-Faith Council, now the key social-service organization in Chapel Hill and Carrboro.

"Our existing facility is showing its age," Didow said. "We are renewing Wesley for the next 50 years. That's what this is all about."