Votes on Orange County woodland called 1st step to right ‘a grievous wrong’
Local governments took steps this week to preserve 60 wooded acres north of Chapel Hill, leaving another 104 acres for a community conversation about future development.
The Chapel Hill Town Council cast the final, unanimous vote Wednesday to approve a map identifying the most environmentally sensitive acres of the Greene Tract. The Orange County Commissioners and the Carrboro Town Council voted Tuesday.
Orange County will put its 60 acres — the Headwaters Preserve — into a permanent conservation easement. The rest, jointly owned by the county and the towns, has been the focus of a community debate about affordable housing, environmental preservation and racial justice.
The governments bought the Greene Tract for a planned Orange County Landfill expansion. The landfill exposed residents of the historically African-American Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood to traffic, noise and odors for 40 years until it closed in 2013.
The Greene Tract is not a park, a preserved forest or “an accessible, equitable space,” Chapel Hill Town Council member Tai Huynh said, noting “misinformation that’s been rampant in the community.” He thanked Rogers Road residents for their decades of advocacy.
“The burden of educating our community on your experiences and needs, and correcting misinformation, should not fall on you, and yet you have carried it for decades,” Huynh said. “Even now, Minister (Robert) Campbell is giving tours of the Greene Tract to community members and teaching them of its historical significance. You all have fought not only for your neighbors, but for every single person in our community that serves and works here, and yet cannot afford to live here.”
This week’s decision sets the stage for more public input and planning.
The new map loosely defines 82 acres of the jointly owned space for potential development: 45 acres for affordable housing and limited community commercial use; 16 acres for a school and recreation; and 21 acres that would be left undeveloped but could be discussed again in 20 to 30 years.
The governments must agree to how the land will be developed and will hold public meetings to get feedback. The land, because it is outside town limits but in Chapel Hill’s planning jurisdiction, will go through Chapel Hill’s development process. The governments will use their most strict environmental standards for any development.
Chapel Hill Town Council
A number of residents have weighed in on the future of the tract this week.
“We actually agree more than we would like to admit,” Council member Hongbin Gu said, urging everyone to “really understand” what the Rogers Road community wants. The council should not delay the decision any longer, she said.
“Voting on this resolution is not a declaration for development; especially it is not a declaration to turn this 66 acres into the next Blue Hill District,” Gu said, referrinbg to the town’s redevelopment area along Fordham Boulevard. “If these are the visions people are having, this is vastly different from what the ‘Mapping Our Future’ document talks about.”
Council member Michael Parker said framing future decisions as a choice between environmental responsibility and affordable housing is “false and is just designed to divide our community, rather than bring us together.”
“What we’re doing ... to help create a larger, wonderful community there is but the merest downpayment on the enormous debt that we owe this community,” Parker said. “We have an opportunity tonight to begin to right a grievous wrong, and I hope that we can do so and then keep moving at a pace that sees actual accomplishments that doesn’t take another 20 or 25 years.”
Carrboro Town Council
Carrboro Council member and Mayor-elect Damon Seils also emphasized the lack of a development plan before joining his colleagues Tuesday in voting unanimously to approve the new map.
“I’m very comfortable moving forward with this resolution. It reflects the next step in the process that we outlined we would be using in the interlocal agreement. There are no surprises here, and it’s an important step to keep this moving along,” he said.
Council member Sammy Slade, who often takes a stronger environmental position than his colleagues, said he was excited about the possibilities.
“It’s rare that we have an opportunity as owners of a property to develop something, and we’re so much at the behest of developers and the violent way in which they just plop something down that’s cookie cutter,” Slade said.
He also urged taking the time to look carefully at the latest environmental study and the native species, such as the salamander, and land that it recommended protecting.
“We’re not choosing between affordability and/or preservation of nature,” Slade said. “There’s some opportunity to address both, and there’s still remaining questions.”
Council member Susan Romaine echoed his remarks.
“This should really be a celebration,” Romaine said. “We are taking 164 acres, and we are preserving green space, we are building affordable housing, we are creating jobs, we are providing schooling for young people. We are building community right there on that 164 acres.”
Orange County Commissioners
Several Orange County commissioners expressed a concern about the timing of Tuesday’s vote before approving the map. The Greene Tract conversation restarted last week with two public information meetings after a 21-month COVID delay.
Some commissioners said they learned about Tuesday’s scheduled vote from residents. Commissioner Anna Richards apologized for mistakenly telling residents at one public meeting that the board wasn’t going to vote this week.
The short turnaround also didn’t leave staff time to respond to the questions and concerns raised, Commissioner Jean Hamilton said. She unsuccessfully suggested the board delay the vote to Dec. 14.
“There are new people moving into Orange County every day. They deserve to get the information and be part of the community, just like everyone who’s been here for a long time,” Hamilton said.
She also argued for a change in how Greene Tract decisions are being made outside of public meetings and how information is released to the public, saying local government should go “above and beyond” to get people engaged.
The commissioners also acknowledged what Richards called a “lack of trust” in the community.
“Affordable housing is something, as well as conservation, that I think Orange County has proven itself to be committed to, and some of the — I’ll say flat out — accusations and misinformation have been deeply troubling to me in terms of what the expectation is for this board,” Richards said.
Commissioner Jamezetta Bedford suggested saving money now to build affordable housing and noted as a former school board member that the proposed school site is the only land left for that in Chapel Hill.
This story was originally published November 18, 2021 at 8:13 AM.
