Does Chapel Hill need more student apartments? Council weighs plan, needs of workers.
The town’s desire for more workforce housing tripped up a developer Wednesday night who wants to build a student apartment building on a major bus line that already links thousands of students to UNC’s campus.
Texas-based Aspen Heights Partners wants to build 112 apartments in an 81-foot-tall building at 701 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., across the street from the Grove Park and Union Chapel Hill student apartment complexes. The new building, Aspen Chapel Hill, would step down to three and four stories at the rear of the roughly two-acre site to blend in with existing duplexes.
The project would have a parking deck, but also sits on the town’s future North-South bus-rapid transit line.
Aspen Heights has offered to include 14 affordable apartments or provide $1 million toward affordable housing elsewhere.
If the affordable apartments were built on site, four would be priced at a rate affordable to someone earning up to 80% of the area median income — $53,520 for an individual or $68,800 for a family of three, documents showed. Another 10 apartments would be priced at up to 65% of the area median income — $43,485 for an individual or $55,900 for a family of three.
The developer also could agree to set a 21 and up age limit, with an exception for tenants whose 21st birthday falls during their lease.
The project, at the corner of East Longview Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, would replace two vacant homes and the long-closed Johnson’s Garage and auto parts store, built in the 1950s. The former garage use means the developer will work with the state Brownfields Program to redevelop the site, project officials said.
A stream crosses the site near the street corner, and parts of the site have steep slopes, town planner Corey Liles added.
The town’s future planning documents have designated the area for dense multifamily housing, such as apartments, condos and townhomes, with buildings ranging from four to eight stories. Aspen Partners is asking for a zoning change and modifications to town rules that would allow more density, a taller building, more land disturbance, and construction in an undeveloped stream buffer.
“Really, the only developable area of this site, outside the RCD, is steep slopes, so if we don’t modify that, then really you can’t do anything on this site, or if you did, it would be a very small project and probably no density,” said Jessica Hardesty, a planner with the McAdams project engineering company.
Housing, community needs
Council members initially reviewed Aspen Chapel Hill in May 2021, and said they weren’t excited about more student housing, but they suggested to the developer that it would depend on the project’s community benefits. Council members also urged the developer to work with the affordable housing coalition and the town’s urban designer to refine the details.
On Wednesday, council members were adamant that housing should serve town staff, UNC employees and workers who could fill new offices coming to downtown. Council member Amy Ryan said she could not vote for any student housing at that location.
“I think it’s a good site for housing, it’s a good site for housing with significant density, and we love our university and we love our students, but there is a big opportunity cost for this kind of purpose-built student housing in town, especially in spots like this,” Ryan said.
Council member Michael Parker, in response to the developer’s question, suggested adding community meeting or recreational space, such as a play area in the courtyard planned for the corner of East Longview Street and MLK Jr. Boulevard.
“Even if you created a space in your courtyard where perhaps there would be the availability of a coffee cart to come in the mornings or something, create some community gathering spaces,” Parker said. “Take that space that you’re creating, by creating that courtyard, and make into again more of public community space with benches, where people can sit, talk, meet each other.”
Council members also questioned how much student housing is really needed and if the project would free up rental homes now occupied by students for families. A recent consultant’s report said Chapel Hill could meet its student housing need with just 45 new units added each year for the next 20 years vs. 440 new housing units each year for families, seniors and other working-age people.
UNC enrolls 19,743 undergraduate students and 11,796 graduate and professional students, about 8,500 of which live on campus. David Helfrich, president of development for Aspen Heights, said his team’s analysis found another 3,000 student beds in privately built apartments around town.
More apartments are under construction but only one, on West Rosemary Street, has been identified as intentional student housing. That leaves the remaining students to find housing in neighborhoods and surrounding counties, Helfrich said.
The town can’t ignore the student housing need, while trying to get more housing for permanent residents, Council member Camille Berry said.
“The reality is that there is a dearth of student housing, there is a dearth of housing, period, in this community,” she said.
Council members Tai Huynh and Paris Miller-Foushee were skeptical that more student apartments would relieve the pressure on neighborhoods near campus.
“The idea that building this purpose-built student housing will relieve pressure on some of our home rentals in the Northside community and around there is a fantasy,” Huynh said, noting that students who rent houses and those who rent student-oriented apartments “are very different.”
“I just don’t think this aligns with my vision as we try to expand downtown up MLK. We’re bringing thousands of jobs to downtown … it seems to make perfect sense for downtown staff, workers, employees to be able to live in a place where they can walk, take transit, etc.,” Huynh said.
Miller-Foushee said she’s not opposed to student housing, but the project does highlight the need for a town-gown partnership to address the problem. She lives in Northside, a neighborhood near campus that is popular with student renters.
“We need the university to be a real partner with us in this, because as a town right now, student housing is really gobbling up a lot of the affordable housing that we do have for the workforce,” Miller-Foushee said.
The council is scheduled to continue the public hearing on Dec. 7.
This story was originally published October 21, 2022 at 5:40 AM.
