Chapel Hill board rejects plan for Breadmen’s site. ‘Procedural trickery,’ says one.
A Chapel Hill developer’s plan to replace the former Breadmen’s restaurant downtown — this time, with apartments, retail and offices in five buildings — was rejected Tuesday.
But that’s not the end of the project.
Developer Larry Short proposed five 19,999-square-foot buildings — just below the 20,000 square feet that would require special-use permits and Town Council hearings — after three years of negotiations with neighbors and the town.
Each 45-foot tall building would have commercial space on the first floor, atop a shared driveway and under-building parking lots. The top two stories would be residential, with roughly 20 apartments per building.
The buildings would be adjacent but not connected, project representative Jeremy Anderson told the town’s Planning Commission Tuesday. Pedestrians would access a walkway linking the buildings via an elevator, stairs or a ramp off West Rosemary Street. Each walkway section would be independently built and separated from the others by a paper-thin gap, Short said Wednesday in an interview with The News & Observer.
Commissioner Louie Rivers, who lives in the adjacent Northside neighborhood, called the plan “procedural trickery.”
“I would like to highlight that the community has been deeply involved in this process for the last three years, and this is the worst nightmare of what the community wanted,” he said, before the board voted 5-2 in five separate decisions to deny all of the buildings.
Commission Chair John Rees voted against the motions.
“This site plan is a by-right measure, and as much as I am not a fan of this, a site plan does not ask of me if I am a fan of this project,” Rees said. “It’s simply asking me to determine whether or not this meets the appropriate stipulations of it.”
A by-right development meets current zoning requirements and only needs approval by the Planning Commission. The council does not review or vote on those projects.
Commissioner Stephen Whitlow, who also voted against denying the projects, said the town’s Board of Adjustment will overturn the decisions and the commission will lose its chance to ask the developer for specific conditions.
An appeal to the Board of Adjustment is likely, Short said Wednesday. If the Board of Adjustment overturns the commission’s votes, the projects could move forward to the final staff reviews early next year and then construction.
Amity Station negotiations
Short has been trying to redevelop Amity Station, the lots at 318-326 W. Rosemary St., in partnership with former Breadmen’s owners Roy and Bill Piscitello, since 2015. The first concept plan proposed a 10-story apartment building with up to 175 apartments, a small commercial space and a pool fronting Rosemary Street.
As negotiations with the town progressed, the building got shorter — at last count, it was five stories — but had more apartments.
In 2017, the town, neighbors and the developers started working toward an agreement that would address affordability, size, parking and other concerns. But council members became frustrated, and the talks ended in 2019.
Short, who told the council he would build by-right if there wasn’t an agreement, submitted plans for the latest proposal last year. Breadmen’s closed this year and will be demolished soon. The Piscitellos sold the restaurant to Omar Castro and his family, who worked there most of the last 25 years.
The new restaurant is under renovation at 261 S. Elliott Road in Elliott Square and expected to open this fall as “Breadman’s.”
Student housing, Northside worries
Short said he is not trying to go around the town’s rules, but after four years, he hasn’t been able to get a project approved. The last deal with the town left permanent affordable housing, space for startup companies and other businesses, and a $1 million donation to the Northside Neighborhood Initiative on the table.
The land lies within the Northside Neighborhood Conservation District, which limits what can be built.
“I would have loved to have gotten an SUP. We could have brought the community and the Northside so many more benefits,” Short said. “The tax base would have been greater. But there was so much resistance from the Northside.”
George Barrett, executive director of the Marian Cheek Jackson Center, told the commission that neighbors are resigned to the latest projects after spending years planning for the future of West Rosemary Street on Northside’s southern border.
“For the past five years, it’s been a very honest process, but I think people are (left) with a feeling now of disappointment,” Barrett said. “Disappointment in the project, disappointment in the process, and also just disappointed that again and again they’re being asked to give input on development without being listened to.”
The proposal is “not adding to the Northside community in ways in which the permanent residents can benefit,” said Kathy Atwater, who has watched investors and student rentals replace the African-American homeowners and families around her for 20 years.
“My concern is who is going into this development, because we already have our share of students — more than our share of students in our neighborhood — and our concern as neighbors is that this development is bringing more students into the neighborhood,” Atwater said.
The new apartments won’t be age-restricted to weed out undergraduates, Short said.
“We’re doing a market study to see what is the highest and best demand,” he said. “We would certainly consider students, but we’ve also been awakened to the market for graduates and young professionals, and then those related to the Launch (business incubator) across the street, who might want live-work space.”
Planning question remains
Commission member James Baxter said he’s not sure the projects can be built as planned under the current zoning. The concrete platform between the parking and the upper stories covers all five lots, making it appear to be one building subject to the town’s special-use permitting process, including council hearings, he said.
The question is whether the divide between the buildings is sufficient to make them independent of each other. The commission’s votes Tuesday give Baxter and the town’s technical review team time to research the answer.
Town staff also could make that determination after getting the final building plans, which would invalidate the by-right application and require the developer to go to the council for approval.
Commissioner Whit Rummel, who proposed denying the project Tuesday, said he feels like they have let Northside neighbors down.
“Just letting this sit here without any council comment on this project, I feel that we let the community down, but I understand that we don’t really have a choice here,” Rummel said.
This story was originally published August 19, 2020 at 3:45 PM.
