Chapel Hill wants to see ‘wow’ factor in apartments, lodging planned for prime corner
An apartment building planned for Ephesus Church Road and Fordham Boulevard lacks the “wow” factor that a project on one of Chapel Hill’s busiest corners needs, town advisory board members said Tuesday night.
As proposed, the Millennium Chapel Hill apartment building at 1301 Fordham Blvd. also lacks street and pedestrian connections and the commercial space the town needs, the Community Design Commission said.
The five story project would have roughly 298 apartments and short-term lodging units. The lodging, along with the leasing office and other residential amenities, replaces a previous planned 18,450 square feet of retail space.
The developer’s representative, Adam Beck, could not tell the commission how many units might be for short-term lodging. He agreed to return with more details at its Feb. 23 meeting.
The 3.9-acre Millennium project would replace a two-story University Inn that closed in 2019. The apartments would wrap around a six-level parking garage and also include a clubhouse, fitness center and a rooftop terrace overlooking the pool at the rear of the building. It includes public access to a pedestrian pass through the building on Ephesus Church Road and a courtyard on Fordham Boulevard.
The project has been beautifully designed for its residents, despite the constraints of a triangular-shaped site on a prominent corner, commissioner John Weis said, but it’s not as friendly as it could be for pedestrians and the building is predictable.
The most interesting part includes the pool at the back, he said, before suggesting the developer consider a Flatiron-style building.
“I think this building could be a wow, and that corner could be a wow,” Weis said.
More apartments, commercial questions
The site sits between the Ram’s Plaza and Eastgate Crossing shopping centers, at the heart of the Blue Hill District, which runs from roughly Franklin Street to Fordham Boulevard, and from South Elliott Road to Legion Road.
Projects in the district go through a faster approval process if they meet a form-based code for how buildings should look and blend in with their surroundings. Permits are issued by the Community Design Commission and the town manager.
The Dinerstein Cos., a developer based in Texas, is asking the commission to consider several design options for its project, such as eliminating a required setback of the top two floors. It’s also pushing the boundaries of the community vision for commercial space.
Since 2018, the Town Council has revised the district’s code to encourage buildings that appear less massive, are more pedestrian friendly and have at least some commercial space to counter the construction of apartment buildings.
The Millennium would be the district’s sixth apartment building if approved, adding to the nearly 1,500 apartments completed or under construction in an area once dominated by strip malls and parking lots. The district is on pace to have over 2,400 apartments by 2029, town staff reported in November.
Developers, meanwhile, have added less than 50,000 square feet of new retail, office and hotel space to the district.
Millennium project engineer Justin Brown noted the town’s rules define overnight lodging as a commercial use if guests stay under 30 days. The developer also thinks lodging would be a better, longer-term use than retail or offices, said Beck, who is vice president of acquisitions and development for The Dinerstein Cos.
But those are still apartments, and the district’s goal is to have a mix of uses, so it “feels disingenuous” to offer short-term lodging, commission Chair Susana Dancy said. She suggested building a hotel instead, or using the first two floors as commercial space.
“If you want it to be lodging, then make it look like lodging. Don’t make it an apartment that’s Airbnb, don’t short-term rent it,” Dancy said. “If you want it to be lodging, then take the corner and turn it into something that looks like a hotel, that looks like a commercial building.”
A hotel also could include space upstairs for the public, as well as a restaurant, commissioner Susan Lyons added.
Stormwater, pedestrians, green buildings
The board and residents who spoke at Tuesday’s hearing also raised concerns about pedestrian and street connections, whether the building could include any environmentally friendly features, and how the developer will handle stormwater runoff.
The project includes underground stormwater measures, but that won’t address the ditch between the building and the highway, which channels runoff from the northern part of the district to Booker Creek and fills up quickly during heavy storms. Flood waters have backed up to the hotel in the past, said Julie McClintock, a member of the town’s Environmental Stewardship Advisory Board.
McClintock, Lyons and Elizabeth Losos, a member of the town’s Planning Commission, also voiced support for solar panels, a green roof or landscaped terraces.
“I would love to see the CDC approve beautiful buildings using sustainable materials and be a model for energy-efficiency,” McClintock said. “It’s disappointing that we get this great big building, and it doesn’t do any of that.”
She also bemoaned the lack of a true Legion Road Extension between Ephesus Church Road and Fordham Boulevard, which is what the town envisioned for the site when it created the district.
The developer has offered to leave a right of way in place for a future connection, which town planner Corey Liles said could be made to the south on Fordham Boulevard when an adjacent office site is redeveloped. The N.C. Department of Transportation does not support a connection where the road currently ends, town staff has said.
While the project does make pedestrian connections, including through the courtyard and the ground-floor passage, the building is still very large and uninviting, commission Vice Chair Christine Berndt said. The one-story passage would be wider but shorter than the two-story passage required under town rules.
The passage is “more like a tunnel,” Berndt said, as she and others questioned what would bring people to the site.
The passage, as well as the lack of traditional commercial space, Lyons said, represents “a lost opportunity to make some great, glass entryway and to use different surfaces and lots of excitement to come toward the building.”
“This is a critical corner, and this is a critical building. I think there’s lots of opportunity for improvement and a real difference in setting this up as not just an apartment building, but the Fordham-Ephesus Church corner,” she said.
This story was originally published January 27, 2021 at 12:13 PM.
