Could smaller be better in Chapel Hill’s Blue Hill district? A consultant says yes.
A consultant has some ideas for getting different housing, green space and other benefits in Chapel Hill’s Blue Hill redevelopment district, instead of more, massive apartment buildings.
How small a building can be while still being financially viable is a difficult question, because each parcel in the Blue Hill District has its own constraints, consultant Tony Sease told the Town Council.
The question has dogged the district — located along Fordham Boulevard and Elliott, Franklin and Ephesus Church roads — since before it was created in 2014. The town’s goal was to gradually replace older, suburban-style shopping centers and busy roads with more walkability, commerce and residents.
Projects in the district follow a form-based code for how buildings should look and fit, and the town’s Community Design Commission and town manager have the final say. Projects do not face council hearings or votes to move more quickly through the town’s approval process.
However, many consider what’s been built so far to be too big, too tall and too residential.
Berkshire Chapel Hill covers nearly all of a 3-acre site between Whole Foods and Elliott Square shopping center. It sits just feet from Elliott Square’s north wall, with a short fence and no room for pedestrians.
On the other end of South Elliott Road, The Elliott (formerly Fordham Apartments) also covers nearly all of a 3-acre site. Trilogy Chapel Hill (formerly Hillstone), located to the east off Fordham Boulevard, covers most of 6 acres.
Better buildings, benefits
The form-based code has been revised before, including in 2017, when the council set a maximum wall length for buildings and identified where alleys and walkways should break up longer buildings.
In 2018, council members Hongbin Gu, Rachel Schaevitz and Jessica Anderson asked the council to do more to bring commercial projects, make buildings less imposing, and attract affordable housing, green space and other community benefits.
The council then approved changes requiring every new project to have at least 10% commercial space and added the Blue Hill design guidelines, which elaborate on the district goals. Sease, founder of Durham-based Civitech, was asked to recommend other steps.
To do that, Sease used a market analysis by Noell Consulting to study four district sites with redevelopment potential. It found the cost of land in the district — estimated at $800,000 to $2 million an acre — makes certain types of development, such as steel and concrete frame, too costly.
It also found residential projects had the best chance of bringing benefits, such as affordable housing, and that the potential for more hotels, stores and offices is limited.
Smaller housing, commercial projects
The analysis showed potential for two- and three-story micro, urban, detached and luxury townhomes; buildings with 150 or more apartments; and mostly residential mixed-use buildings with attached parking decks.
Eliminating the 10% commercial space requirement is one way to get those smaller housing projects, including row houses and stacked townhouses, which feature two- and three-story units stacked up like apartments, Sease said.
“The value of it from an urban design perspective would be both allowing yet another form of development and investment in the district but also helping to address the need for ‘missing middle’ housing,” between apartments and single-family homes, Sease said.
He noted that smaller housing and commercial projects also are possible if the town lets developers decide how much and what kind of parking they need. Developers also could pay the town a fee instead to help build a public parking deck, he said, or build standalone parking decks. Standalone decks built along street frontage could include stores and other uses to be more pedestrian friendly, he said.
Other proposed changes could set maximum building wall length and require a 30-foot separation between buildings to leave more room for landscaping and other pedestrian-friendly details, like awnings, balconies, adequate lighting and elevated walkways.
Gu welcomed the changes, noting that a more intentional design for spaces that aren’t occupied by buildings or streets could create a viable, green environment in the district.
“The reason that we keep on tinkering (with the code) is, first of all, we need a better balance,” Gu said. “The (development) we have now is mostly expensive apartments, so I think we need more commercial development ... and now if we can add the missing middle (housing) to it, I think that would be a great addition.”
Height, climate change concerns
Residents who spoke at Monday’s council meeting took issue with focusing on what is financially good for developers and asked the council to reduce the size of buildings. Most of the land is zoned for seven-story buildings — up to 90 feet — but some residents have argued for almost a decade that the community only wanted three to five stories.
“There is broad community consensus that the new buildings are unattractive, too tall and too big for Chapel Hill,” said Julie McClintock, a former council member and co-founder of the grassroots Chapel Hill Alliance for a Livable Town. She also noted the town’s need for more affordable townhouses and commercial space, as well as its goals to combat climate change.
“Granted, there is a minority of folks who think large size, tall buildings put together closely will mitigate climate change in some way,” she said. “We believe that in fact a reduction in the allowable heights and size of buildings in the current code will best support your goals of addressing climate change.”
Resident Ken Brooks expressed shock at the tall buildings he found when he moved back to Chapel Hill after years away. The Berkshire is out of place in the Blue Hill District, he said, and The Elliott is going to overshadow the highway.
“Really I want to address the bigger issue of what are we becoming as a town, and there’s a lot of forces that say we have to become bigger, we need to become urban and high rise,” Brooks said. “I don’t believe it. We get to vote for what we want to vote for. I don’t want to vote for that. We don’t need to let big, out-of-town money define us.”
The council continued the public hearing Feb. 19, when it could approve changes to the form-based code.
