Chapel Hill heard half of the plan for this land last year. Here’s the other half.
A second developer is proposing a neighborhood of townhouses and apartments for an undeveloped tract of land that parallels Interstate 40 in northern Chapel Hill.
Aspen Heights Partners, a developer specializing in multifamily and student housing, submitted a concept plan to the town in December to construct 286 apartments in a four- to five-story building and 51 townhouses with attached garages on roughly 20 acres.
The developer also has applied to build a six-story, 112-unit student apartment building for the corner of East Longview Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The site is near downtown and both the Grove Park and the Union Chapel Hill student apartment complexes.
Aspen Chapel Hill is not a student apartment project, Chris Foley, development manager for Aspen Heights Partners, told The News & Observer in an interview.
A concept plan is not an official application. It is a rough draft that lets the developer seek feedback from the Town Council and town advisory boards that then can be used to craft an official application.
The town’s Community Design Commission is scheduled to review Aspen Chapel Hill on Tuesday. A Town Council review has not been scheduled yet.
The project would cover only a portion of the 44-acre tract. Lullwater at Chapel Hill, a similar apartment and townhouse project, was submitted last year for the remainder.
Other project details
▪ A two-story “porte-cochère,” or covered driveway, through the apartment building accesses more parking, helps to reduce the building’s visual size, and creates an amenities area with a fitness center, clubhouse and pool.
▪ Roughly 15% of the apartments and townhouses could be priced affordably for 30 years: half for people earning up to 65% of the area median income and half for people earning up to 80%. That’s an individual earning up to $53,600 a year and a family of four earning up to $76,550 a year.
▪ The town’s urban designer reviewed the project and suggested, among other ideas, more details to minimize the building’s visual size, less surface parking, and trails to increase pedestrian connections and also serve nearby Carol Woods residents.
▪ A new street that would intersect on the east with Weaver Dairy Road, between the Kensington Trace and Coventry neighborhoods. On the west, the street would connect the Lullwater development and exit onto Adair Drive behind Chapel Hill North.
Plans for Lullwater include up to 310 apartments, flats and townhomes on 20 acres, including about 40 units priced for families earning from 80% to 120% of AMI.
Traffic and pedestrian safety could be part of the conversation. The proposed site is within walking distance of two shopping centers and two bus routes, in addition to a future stop on the North-South bus-rapid transit line. It also will add more drivers to Weaver Dairy Road and at the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard intersection, both of which are busy, with multiple lanes of traffic, speeding drivers and difficult pedestrian crossings.
Lullwater apartments next door
Other issues could include stormwater, environmental effects, and how the last large, wooded tract in the town’s North Chapel Hill Area is developed. A subdivision approved about 30 years ago for the site was never built, in part because of utility, highway and stormwater constraints, officials have said.
Interest in the 44-acre site was reignited in recent years after a developer proposed building apartments on 10 acres immediately to the south. The land includes the five-acre Lakeview Mobile Home Park on Weaver Dairy Road.
In 2018, the council worked with staff to draft a plan for the 44-acre tract that included up to 300 apartments, 174 townhouses, 20,000 square feet of retail and 60,000 square feet of offices.
The council has never adopted the plan or rezoned the land to allow those uses, so both Aspen and Lullwater would need conditional rezoning approval to advance. The conditional rezoning process gives the council more opportunities to negotiate for stormwater controls, traffic improvements, affordable housing and other conditions.
