CHAPEL HILL - Reaction was mixed Wednesday night as 20 residents spoke out on preliminary plans for the proposed Innovation Center, a business incubator slated to be the first building on UNC's Carolina North campus.

The center is to be built by a private developer to whom tenants will pay rent. It is planned to go on land now occupied by the Horace Williams Airport runway, off Municipal Drive and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Many speakers Wednesday praised the proposed center, saying it will provide jobs and help the town and UNC-Chapel Hill compete with other business incubators all over the world.

Other speakers chided university officials for not presenting a master plan for the entire Carolina North campus first, so they could see the Innovation Center in context with the rest of the campus. Some said they felt the university was pushing to have the project approved too quickly.

The closing of Horace Williams Airport, a small runway where the university's medical air operations and private pilots are based, was a sticking point for others.

"There is no expectation that this is going to be a rushed project," said Mayor Kevin Foy at the beginning of the meeting, anticipating some residents' concerns.

Jack Evans, executive director of Carolina North, showed the council a list of projects that could get started during the first five-year segment -- 2010 to 2015 -- of Carolina North's planned buildout. Among them: the Innovation Center, a School of Law, graduate student housing, faculty and staff housing and retail.

Scott Forrest, who said he is a professional city planner who has worked in several university communities, said he was excited about the Innovation Center. He responded to others' concerns about the center's concept plan being presented before the master plan is ready. He said the Innovation Center could help planners understand how the rest of Carolina North might function on the tract.

"The Innovation Center is a framework [for the master plan]," he said. Forrest said the way "to see if it really works or not is to put a real live project on the ground to see if it provides the wanted landscape."

Joe Capowski, who was involved with the Carolina North and the Horace Williams Tract committees, said the center has "awesome potential," but he raised similar concerns to the ones expressed by Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton -- primarily that there is what he called "woefully" insufficient housing included in current plans for Carolina North.

"The university considers only its employees, and many will move to Carolina North from rented space in Chapel Hill and Carrboro -- a narrow but valid view," Capowski wrote in his PowerPoint presentation.

Evans explained the Horace Williams Airport will stay open while a new medical air operations hangar is being built at Raleigh-Durham International Airport and while the Innovation Center is being constructed. But once the medical operations flights move to RDU, Horace Williams will be closed, he said, and the university will try to find an alternative site for private pilots in southern Orange County.

Carl Tatum, a pilot and UNC-CH, said closing Horace Williams Airport would be a mistake. "You have an asset you will never be able to restore once you lose it," he said. Tatum said moving the medical air operations will prevent the doctors at the university from doing their jobs.

The university began looking at alternative uses for the Horace Williams Tract in the mid-1990s. Records show that the medical air operations account for fewer than one in four flights from the airport, which is used primarily by private pilots.

Former Town Council member Dave Godschalk said he was optimistic about the center, but he warned the council to make sure the university builds a sustainable center. "Our landscape is littered with relics of past mistakes," he said. "The Innovation Center has great potential to contribute to human well-being."

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