Ephesus-Fordham
I attended the January 13th forum on the future of the American Legion Post 6 property, hosted by Woodfield Properties. As a resident who lives within walking distance of Post 6, I wanted to go beyond the headlines and see and hear for myself the details of Woodfield’s vision for the site.
Here are eight observations and perspectives from the forum:
Last week, you might have read a Gizmodo article about how millennials will live in cities unlike anything we've ever seen before. If you haven't read it yet, I highly encourage you to, because, unlike so many articles in the media today, this one does an excellent job of capturing the nuances of why we are seeing certain behavioral patterns among millennials when it comes to where we live.
The critical takeaway from this article is one that has major implications for us in Chapel Hill/Carrboro: Millennials are choosing to live in urban neighborhoods, but not necessarily in urban downtowns.
This behavioral pattern shows that what millennials value is not the big city life itself, but having easy access to amenities like walkability and public transit. For suburbs around the country, this means attracting the next generation of Americans requires urbanizing to provide these kind of amenities.
Parking, like traffic, is a recurring theme in local conversation about growth and development. We often hear from some community members that there is nowhere to park in downtown Chapel Hill/Carrboro, that a lack of parking is hurting local businesses, and that the parking minimums required for the Ephesus-Fordham renewal district are insufficient.
But the facts simply don’t support these claims. The reality is that providing more parking – especially surface parking – is fundamentally incompatible with urban land uses.*
Numerous urban planning scholars have researched parking, and their research has consistently confirmed that more parking is not desirable on any metric – unless, that is, you want more people to drive and create more traffic.
The Town of Chapel Hill has approved Vilage Plaza Apartments, the first development proposed under the new form-based code implemented in the Ephesus-Fordham District.
Village Plaza Apartments will be constructed on the vacant site located between the Whole Foods shopping center and the ABC Store on South Elliot Rd. The development will bring 265 apartments, ground-floor retail space, a parking deck, greenway improvements, and roadway improvements. Rent for a 1-bedroom apartment will be approximately $1,150/month while a 2-bedroom apartment will rent for about $1,600/month.
Full information about the approval and the development is available on the Town's website here.
Walkable, dense neighborhoods are good for us. That’s what this recent CityLab article concludes, citing numerous peer-reviewed research studies. And not only are these kinds of neighborhoods good for us, they’re good for the sustainability of our communities long term. For example:
At its meeting last night, the Chapel Hill Town Council voted unanimously to approve three developments: the Graduate, an apartment complex targeted to graduate students to be located behind the Franklin Hotel between Mallette and Kenan Streets; the Courtyards of Homestead, an age-restricted, single-family home development to be built off of Homestead Road; and New Life Fellowship, a church to be built between Sage and Weaver Dairy Roads.
Rendering of the proposed Village Plaza Apartments
Yesterday, the Town of Chapel Hill received its first application for a development under the new form-based code rules it approved for the Ephesus-Fordham area earlier this year.
The proposal, called the Village Plaza Apartments, is a mixed-use development proposal for 266 apartments and 15,600 square feet of retail space. The development will be located on South Elliot Road between Whole Foods and the ABC Store in what is known to some as the old theater site. The application was submitted by Scott Murray Land Planning, Inc.
In November 2013, the Chapel Hill Town Council voted 7-1 to sell 8.5 acres of town-owned land on Legion Road to Durham-based affordable housing developer, DHIC, Inc, for $100 (the property was valued at $2 million) for the development of 170 units of affordable housing. One of the steps in that development was the need for DHIC to apply for tax credits from the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency to assist with funding for the development.
On Monday, DHIC president Greg Warren announced that, because a document was missing from the application, the application had been eliminated from consideration. Because of the incomplete application, DHIC must wait until 2015 to apply for the opportunity again, delaying the completion of an important affordable housing project as we continue to face a housing crisis.
Friends and allies for affordable housing in Chapel Hill---
Unless you watched the Chapel Hill Town Council meeting on Ephesus-Fordham last Monday from start to finish, there’s a good chance you haven’t heard the most bizarre thing said at that meeting.
That comment came from Councilmember Ed Harrison during the discussion on whether or not to apply the freshly-approved form-based code elements of the Land Use Management Ordinance (LUMO) to the areas of the Ephesus-Fordham district.
As a recap, you may recall that the Council approved the form-based code addition to the LUMO by an 8-1 vote (Matt Czajkowski voted no), but only approved applying those LUMO additions to Ephesus-Fordham by a 6-3 vote (Ed Harrison and Jim Ward joined Czajkowski in voting no here).
Last Monday, the Chapel Hill Town Council approved the Ephesus-Fordham renewal plan. Depending on what news sources and opinion columnists you read, you might have some understanding of what this plan actually is and does, or you might not. Since there has been so much spin around the plan, here's our guide to what the Ephesus-Fordham plan includes - and what the Council passed last Monday.
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