Chapel Hill has a new location for its police headquarters. Here’s where it could go.
The story was updated at 9 p.m. Wednesday, June 12, 2024.
As the door closed this week on plans to move the Chapel Hill Police Department to Fordham Boulevard, another opened on the northern side of town.
The Town Council talked Wednesday about leasing 58,000 square feet of commercial space at 7300 Millhouse Road for up to 15 years. The rent could start at roughly $1.3 million a year, plus fees, additional costs and regular increases.
The town is still negotiating with Merritt Properties, which owns the building, town spokesman Alex Carrasquillo said Tuesday. The council is expected to approve the lease as part of its consent agenda Monday.
Last week, the council voted to spend $1.7 million renovating a future space and buying furniture and fixtures for the Police Department. The town could also house its emergency operations center and some IT employees on Millhouse Road while cleaning up the coal ash buried under the existing headquarters at 828 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
The council wants to build a new police department as part of a municipal services center on the site. A previous deal to build the center on UNC-owned land on Estes Drive Extension after years of looking for a site fell apart at the last minute.
The current building is 42 years old, “in significant disrepair and in dire need of costly maintenance,” Police Chief Celisa Lehew said.
Leaks and overflowing toilets have stained the carpets and fed mildew on the walls, buckets sit on desks to catch the rain, metal plates cover holes in the floor, and plastic tarps protect computer servers, she noted.
“We affectionately call the first floor “the jungle” because of the humidity, and the top floor “the icebox” because the failing HVAC system no longer allows us to regulate the temperature,” Lehew said.
The Millhouse Road location would alleviate cramped conditions and open within eight months of signing a lease, Deputy Town Manager Mary Jane Nirdlinger said.
Didn’t the town already sign a lease?
The town started negotiating a lease last year with the State Employees Credit Union, which owns The Parkline building (formerly Blue Cross and Blue Shield) on Fordham Boulevard near Interstate 40. That lease would have been for 10 years and started at $1.5 million a year.
That deal also fell apart before being signed when “it became clear that the property couldn’t meet the needs of a police department,” Carrasquillo said in an email Tuesday.
The department, which is open to the public from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, needs ample parking for vehicles, office space for over 100 sworn officers and staff, and a secure area to hold suspects before taking them to the Orange County Detention Center in Hillsborough.
The Millhouse Road building is almost three times the size of the current Chapel Hill Police Department.
What else is on Millhouse Road?
The buildings at 7300 Millhouse Road are located in the town’s light-industrial conditional zoning district, which was created in 2017 to attract industrial, research and commercial uses generally not allowed in other parts of town. Projects in the district can be rezoned and approved in five months, compared to the town’s typical 12- to 18-month process.
Only one other project has been built in the 60-acre commercial district. HonorBridge — formerly Carolina Donor Services — moved its headquarters, including office, clinic and lab space, into a new building in 2023.
Merritt Properties also completed both buildings on its property last year. A pickleball center, Pickles and Play, opened in one building earlier this year.
Chapel Hill’s Public Works Department, regional fire training facility and Chapel Hill Transit are on Millhouse Road near the site. The Carraway Village mixed-use development and a Chapel Hill Transit park-and-ride lot are around the corner on Eubanks Road.
What happens next?
The council will vote Monday to authorize the town manager to sign a lease. State law also requires the town to get the lease approved by the N.C. Local Government Commission, which is part of the State Treasurer’s office.
The police department could move into the new building by early 2025.
The town will continue to work with the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality on a Brownfields agreement for cleaning up the coal ash on MLK Jr. Boulevard.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency contacted the town earlier this year in response to a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity. The town provided The News & Observer with a follow-up letter on Wednesday. The letter, which was sent to the center on May 1, said the EPA would leave future activities at the site to the state and its Brownfields process.
A draft Brownfields agreement is expected soon, Nirdlinger said.
This story was originally published June 12, 2024 at 8:22 AM.
