Author Archives: patrick

Two Things The Carrboro Comprehensive Plan Must Do

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On September 17th, the Carrboro Connects committee and planning staff released its preliminary draft of the Carrboro Comprehensive plan. At 196 pages, it is a lot of material to absorb. I hope to take a closer look in the days and weeks to come and share more thoughts on detailed sections.

But there are two key things that I hope the Carrboro Connects committee, town and consultant staff, and elected officials will work to address before the final draft is released for a public hearing in November.

Must-Do #1: Describe Goals in Clear Language That Avoid The Need for Interpretation, and Confront Tradeoffs

What do I mean? On page 151, here is the Vision for the Land Use Chapter:

“Promote equitable and sustainable use of land and natural resources that promote the diversity, values, and character of the Town.”

Let’s unpack this. “Promote equitable and sustainable use of land and natural resources.” So far so good.

Next: “that promote the diversity, values…[of the town]” Good. Diversity’s meaning is clear.

Values? This could be open for lots of conflicting interpretations, but at the beginning of the document, the Plan makes itself abundantly clear about its values: “The plan is built on a foundation of race and equity and climate action.” (page 2, top left)

Finally: “…character of the town.” And now we have a problem.

What constitutes “the character of the town” may vary widely, depending upon who you talk to. The phrase is frequently used in public comments opposing the development of new buildings in town at public hearings, by asserting that the character of the town is best expressed in the heights of existing buildings. Others may find that the character of the town is found in the ability to live a life on foot here, a relative rarity in the United States, and particularly in North Carolina. Others may find the town’s character in its live music venues, or in the lively conversations that happen among groups of friends on the Weaver Street lawn/patio.

What if the working definition of “character of the town” assumed in the plan actually prevents the promotion of equitable and sustainable use of land and natural resources? Does that mean we commit to inequitable and unsustainable use of land if we can’t satisfy this elusive “character” requirement?

This plan says it’s about climate action. Here’s Greta Thunberg at Davos:

“We must change almost everything in our current societies”

It’s not “…we must change almost everything in our current societies that promotes many elements of the status quo that we are used to…”

The Carrboro Comprehensive Plan will only live up to its full potential if it finds ways to evaluate tradeoffs in its Vision statements. Here’s a slightly different version of the land use vision that does more to affirm the plan’s foundational values at the top of the hierarchy of values:

“Promote equitable and sustainable use of land and natural resources that promote the diversity and values of the town, valuing outcomes that are informed by the character of the community, but not constrained by it.”

Must-Do #2: Practice Yoda Planning: Do Or Do Not. There Is No “Consider.”

On page 154, you can find strategy 2.2 : Preserve and promote the availability of affordable housing along key corridors and
nodes that are transit-accessible, walkable and bikeable.

Good! Very clear. But then move down to the action step (a):

“Consider proactive rezoning for greater density near transit nodes and Park & Rides,
consider the reduction of parking requirements and consider priority growth and
redevelopment areas in accessible locations.”

This text is a recipe for not taking action. The Town is years, even decades- behind other progressive jurisdictions with less robust transit than Carrboro on reducing parking requirements. Most thriving places have simply eliminated them; this is a basic best practice at this point. The plan should say things like: “reduce and/or eliminate parking requirements within 1/2 mile of downtown Carrboro by 6 months from plan adoption.”

On “considering” priority growth areas in accessible locations, not affirmatively doing so is almost missing the point of doing a comprehensive plan. The Chapel Hill 2020 plan designated Future Focus areas. The Durham Planning department identified Compact Neighborhoods for development. We certainly should come out of this planning process with priority growth areas. In this case, the plan should make a statement like: “Identify priority areas for growth and update the Future Land Use Map upon adoption of the plan.”

Conclusion

Comprehensive Plans are for setting direction and priorities. The more tradeoffs we address and resolve in the plan, the more clearly decisions will be made later. The more equivocation and planning for future study we do, the slower we move towards the foundation of race equity and climate action that we claim is so important. Wherever possible, we should specify actions over considerations. I hope that when the next draft is almost ready, one of the final things the Carrboro Connects team will do is screen each strategy and sub-strategy to get these two things right.

Carrboro Built More Multifamily Homes from 1985 to 1989 Than It Did In The Next 30 Years Combined

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As we approach the Open House for the Carrboro Connects Draft Plan on Wednesday, September 22nd, it’s clear that Affordable Housing will be among the top topics in the plan. With that in mind, I thought it would be worthwhile to look back and attempt to analyze the long-term trends of housing construction in Carrboro.

The big take-away: Carrboro produced more multifamily homes between 1985 and 1989 than it did in the next 30 years combined.

Why does this matter? In Carrboro, with land as expensive as it is, having several households share the cost of living on expensive land is a way to allow lower-income residents to form a “density team” that gives them access to high-amenity neighborhoods at a lower price than a larger, more expensive single-family home. If Carrboro is going to approach the question of affordability seriously, the comprehensive plan must make it easier to permit multifamily dwellings throughout the town.

For each of the tables below, read up from the bottom to see how the percentages for single family homes change over time. The top right cell of data in each chart shows what percent of housing in that decade was single-family homes. (For example, in the 1980s, 47.8% of all homes in Carrboro that decade were single-family homes)

In the 1990s, only 2 multifamily homes were built in the first six years of the decade. 70.3% of all homes built in the 1990s were single family homes.

In the 2000s, over 90% of all homes built in Carrboro were single-family homes.

In the 2010s, Shelton Station added 93 multifamily homes in 2018, but the decade still had single-family housing as 79% of all housing built.

Looking at 2015 – 2019 Census data, we can see that the neighborhoods with the highest percentage of single family homes are north of Hillsborough Rd, particularly north of the intersection of Hillsborough Rd and North Greensboro Street. The three dark blue areas in north Carrboro are all 98-99% single family homes. As the median price for a single family home in Carrboro was $408,000 as of August 2021, this means we have significant portions of the town that only have housing available to those earning over $100,000 per year.

Lloyd Farm Is Only “Doing The Wrong Thing Better” And Should Be Voted Down

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One of Canada’s leading urban planners, Brent Toderian, shares this slide with communities he consults in to spur discussion:

As the Carrboro Board of Aldermen contemplate the Lloyd Farm proposal Tuesday evening (10/23), they should know that they are clearly dealing with a case of Doing The Wrong Thing “Better.”

Despite years of discussion, the principal flaws of the Lloyd Farm proposal remain the same.

A Missed Economic Opportunity

We need to maximize our tax value per acre on parcels in Carrboro to better balance our commercial and residential tax base, and that means building up in a denser format. An urban grid with rectangular or square blocks makes redevelopment much easier in the long run.

Instead, Lloyd Farm gives us the limited value proposition of the Timberlyne Shopping Center and its strip mall-plus-outparcel format. Joe Minicozzi from Urban Three found that suburban Timberlyne produces a tax value of about $950,000 per acre while the taller, urban format Hampton Inn in downtown Carrboro produces over $33 million per acre.

A Missed Design Opportunity

The two most damaging design features of this proposal are the curvilinear road running through the site, and the poorly placed stormwater ponds that will make creating urban blocks on the site financially challenging or impossible for future redevelopers.

One needs only to view Durham’s Patterson Place in Google Maps to see how a suburban site can be laid out in a grid-like fashion to be infilled later. Twenty years after it was first developed, the Durham Planning department is doing exactly that, and a five-story Duke Medical office building and a Springhill Suites hotel are the first signs of a new, more vertical, higher tax-base per acre urban future at Patterson Place.

A Missed Housing Opportunity

Carrboro will not address its housing cost challenges without building significantly more new units, many of which could be built on such a large site. It’s also disappointing to see only senior housing being proposed. While there are housing needs for senior citizens in Carrboro, it is worth noting that older Americans are generally wealthier than everyone else.

Median Net Worth By Age

Furthermore, the Town’s economic analysis indicates that the vast majority of the jobs expected to locate at Lloyd Farm will earn less than $15/hour, and are professions that are generally held by younger people. This proposal could have contained a significant number of micro-units in the 400 to 600 square foot size range so that people who worked at Lloyd Farm could live there, too, and walk to work- helping us be more inclusive in our housing while also reducing traffic.

So Where’s The Better?

The developer has made some changes to the original proposal. Getting buildings on the north side of the grocery store parking field may help that part of the site transform one day, and the addition of more floors of office space is better than those remaining one story buildings.

But while there is also a public gathering space/amphitheater designated, it does not have a real connection to the uses that would help activate it- the restaurants and retail. Instead, it is closest to the parking lot of an office building, and separated from those potentially synergistic uses by the beating heart of this proposal- the massive parking field for the grocery store.

Years of discussions have not changed the fact that the developer is basically following the punch list of a chain grocery store for their preferred suburban layout, where they work from the assumption that everyone always drives to the store, and that there’s no need to push back against that norm to do something better. This is the wrong thing to do in the 21st century.

Carrboro cares about equity, works hard to make transportation choices possible, worries about how to grow the commercial tax base, and proclaims a desire to make a difference in a world where the IPCC just told us we have about 12 years to turn the tide on climate change.

Carrboro can do so much better, and it should. The Aldermen should reject this proposal and immediately get to work on a comprehensive plan to help guide developers toward those better outcomes. If you agree, shoot an email to boa@townofcarrboro.org and let the Aldermen know.

Meetings on The 203 Project – Library & ArtsCenter Space – TODAY!

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The 203 Project

Just a quick note to everyone this morning- the Town of Carrboro has been pushing the word out that there are not one but TWO meetings being held TODAY, August 4th, to collect public input on The 203 Project – which will be the future home to the Orange County Southern Library branch, Town Parks & Rec offices, WCOM Radio, offices for The ArtsCenter and more.

If you’re a parent, I’d particularly encourage you to come and bring kids. The first meeting we went to (scheduled during bedtime for most families) was largely age 50 and up, and Carrboro is a much younger town demographically.

Here are the meeting times and locations:

August 4, 2018
Carrboro Town Hall
301 West Main St., Carrboro NC
12-2pm

August 4, 2018
Oasis of Love Tabernacle of Faith
8005 Rogers Rd, Chapel Hill, NC 27516
4-6pm

Here are some of the things I’ll be sharing if I can make it to one of the meetings today:

  1. The 203 Project needs to focus on the needs of the building program first, and how to get to the building by bike, bus, and foot second, and parking access third. Downtown Carrboro has over 2,000 empty parking spaces at any given time and this project cannot free up more of them; only town leadership at a downtown-wide level can do that.
  2. We have a small downtown with limited land available for economic development. While there is a terrific set of uses proposed for this building, we should also be seeking economic development at this site. Making the building taller, up to 5 stories- would allow for small company startup space on the upper floors. Some of the Alderfolks have talked about having “Affordable office space” for micro-businesses in town, and this building is a great place to do it. I’d like to see if we could get at least 5,000 – 10,000 square feet of such space into the building.
  3. The ground floor should have a strong orientation to the sidewalks on S Greensboro St and Roberson to embrace what we hope will be very lively pedestrian spaces.

 

Hopefully some of you can get to one of these!

Chapel Hill Transit Proposes New System Maps – Scenario 3 Is The Best

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The bottom line: in the past week or so, Chapel Hill Transit has released three potential service scenarios that could inform the transit service we have in the fall of 2019.  Scenario 3 is a major, positive game-changer. The new service concept in Scenario 3 will make it easier for people to use transit for types of trips in Chapel Hill and Carrboro that were not previously possible, while also giving lots of people access to jobs 7 days/week instead of only 5 days/week. This can drive ridership, making positive impacts for equity and helping to slow or mitigate climate change.

But first, here’s the most important map made by the consultant, Nelson Nygaard: CHT Ridership by Stop

This map shows ridership by the size of the circle at each bus stop. Bigger circles = more riders.Within the massive pile of circles on campus, the U, RU, and other campus routes do a lot of business because it is so hard to park at UNC. Whenever you wonder why the consultant might have recommended something, return to this map.

Below is a map of Scenario 3.

Scenario 3

CHT Scenario 3 System Map_V3-01

Scenario 3 Notes:

This is the “Start from Scratch” map where the consults tried to be maximally responsive to where ridership activity is. These routes look quite different from what we have today, and there are some strange bends in the routes here and there. But look closely- you’ll see that the six core routes: EW, J, T, NS, V, and U -do something really compelling. You can make direct transfers from each route to each of the other routes somewhere in one of the two towns or on campus!

CHT As a One-Connection Network

That means you can make ALMOST any trip on these routes with only one transfer. Let’s watch how this works in practice:

  • Live Along the V? Catch the T at Glen Lennox, J, NS, T & U on South Columbia St. Connect to EW at Franklin/Columbia corner, of catch EW again at Carrboro Plaza.
  • Live Along the T? Catch the NS on MLK Blvd or downtown, Catch the EW downtown or near Rams Plaza, catch the V in Northside or at Glen Lennox, catch the U or J on South Columbia St.

The Washington Metrorail system is designed like this. While there are sometimes ways to make trips faster with 2 connections, you can get from pretty much any station on any Metrorail line to any other with one connection if that’s what you prefer.

The EW Route is the Most Needed Route We Are Missing Today

We have had a solid North-South route in Chapel Hill for a long time, the NS. What we’ve been dealing with in pieces across the F, J, CW, D, CL, are all the major East-West movements in town. The EW route is a true game-changer. As the parent of elementary schooler, a bus like EW running from 6:30 AM to 11:30 PM is going to provide great freedom to DC as he gets older. Using ONE bus you could go to the following places on the EW:

  • University Lake
  • Carrboro Plaza
  • Johnny’s
  • Carrboro Farmers Market
  • PTA Thrift Shop
  • Downtown Carrboro
  • ArtsCenter
  • Downtown Chapel Hill
  • Caffe Driade
  • Bolin Creek Greenway (bike on bus!)
  • University Place
  • Rams Plaza
  • New Hope Commons
  • Patterson Place

That’s a lot of freedom! And a lot of places to work. With connections to NS, V, and T, pretty much every commercial center in Chapel Hill and Carrboro is within reach.

Is There Anything I Would Change About Scenario 3?

I have one major quibble with this otherwise really exciting concept- the J route. It has not been adjusted. And what this means is that we continue to have a situation where we have a high density, lower-car ownership area south of town near Carrboro High School and Rock Creek Apartments- that cannot take a bus easily to downtown Carrboro or Chapel Hill for work. The J brings residents from that neighborhood to the bottom of South Greensboro Street, less than 1 minute by bus from downtown…and takes them on long trip on NC 54 through campus before reaching Franklin St and Main St.

It seems like the primary roadblock to doing something like this is making sure CHT can continue to serve the significant ridership east of Greensboro St and west of South Columbia along NC 54. I see two ways to address this.

  1. Turn the JFX into a non-express route to provide additional service to those apartment complexes on weekdays, and move the J off of this stretch of NC 54, sending it north from Rock Creek to downtown Carrboro and then Chapel Hill instead. This helps those apartments during weekday peak hours, but would leave them with no weekend or evening service.
  2. If it is important to provide those apartments all-day service, and it seems to be, what about modifying the J to run like this?
Modified J Route- No Crazier than the Current Version!

Here’s how the modified J would work.

Bus 1 departs Rock Creek Apts following the Green pattern, proceeding first to downtown Carrboro, then turning RIGHT towards Chapel Hill. When it reaches South Columbia Street by the Skipper Bowles building it follows the purple line south to Fordham Blvd /15-501 and then takes that path back to Rock Creek Apts.

Bus 2 departs Rock Creek Apts following the Purple pattern, proceeding first to downtown Carrboro, then turning LEFT towards Collins Crossing/Davie Rd. When it reaches Frat Court by the Ackland Art Museum, it picks up the Green line north to Franklin St, then west to downtown Carrboro and back to Rock Creek Apts via South Greensboro St.

What are the benefits of this change?

  • Every part of the J route now has bi-directional service. No more one-way loop on Jones Ferry Rd, NC 54, and South Greensboro. That’s good! Jarrett Walker, author of Human Transit, has laid down the definitive explanation of why one-way loops are not good for transit here.
  • People boarding the J who previously could go straight to Chapel Hill along Main/Franklin will need to transfer to the EW at the Club Nova bus stop between to make the same trip. But the EW is pretty frequent at every 15 minutes. If CHT schedules the eastbound modified J buses from Collins Crossing to South Greensboro St to pass Club Nova 5 minutes ahead of the EW in the morning, and 5 minutes later westbound in the evening, this will work out smoothly for passengers. Also- now that the J runs along 54 without getting off, riding the OPPOSITE direction from Collins Crossing/Davie Rd probably gets them to south campus FASTER, even if they make stops along NC 54. There’s also the GoTriangle 405 at the same stop.
  • People who used to ride from Rock Creek to campus via NC 54 have had their trips lengthened a bit, but now they have access to both downtowns for work or social opportunities that they can connect to before or after going to campus or on weekends. If they accidentally catch the bus that is going towards Collins Crossing once it reaches downtown Carrboro, they just hop off and catch the EW, or stay on the J and enjoy the ride.
  • Businesses in downtown Carrboro and Chapel Hill who face parking challenges for workers and customers should benefit from this move. It makes the J work as well for the two downtowns as it does for the UNC campus.

Overall, moving to something like Scenario 3 is going to be a significant change in how people use the system. It’s impossible to make these types of changes without some folks losing the service they have today, but we also have to think about how the service improvements in this scenario could potentially make the service useful for more people than currently find the service useful today. I chose to live where I live today in part because it was a certain number of feet from a CW bus stop. Scenario 3 takes that stop away from me, and makes me walk farther to catch a bus in the first place. But the type of service I can walk to will be DRASTICALLY more useful, and I want that kind of service because my family will ride it much more often. I’m betting others will too.

#TeamScenario3

Okay, that’s my take. What’s yours? Leave a comment!

And more importantly, head over to the Chapel Hill Transit Survey and leave your suggestions there!

2017 Year-End Stats for CityBeautiful21

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Carrboro

Compulsory Town Logo Shot

It was a light year of posting on this blog. Only 5 posts in total! I probably worked more hours this year than I ever have at my day job, and I’m sure that had an impact. Quick blog stat highlights for 2017:

  • Total pageviews this year: about 5,100. Down from 10,700 in 2016 where I posted 8 times and also had one piece get picked up by reddit and the national blogosphere. That did not happen this year.
  • Average pageviews per post was 725 in 2015, 669 in 2016, and 1,017 in 2017. So maybe more of you are reading a second piece after the first post when you visit?

 

With only 5 posts, running down a “Top X posts” list seems silly, but my recent piece about the Chelsea Theater’s future was the most popular post of the year.

Thanks to everyone who commented this year- it’s always a joy to have your perspective added.

I hope to write a few more pieces next year. We’ll see what happens. Stay tuned!

The Chelsea Theater’s Future is In Question. Is The ArtsCenter the Answer?

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This evening I caught the Herald-Sun article announcing that Chapel Hill’s Chelsea Theater may be near the end of its run. Having seen many films there and having given my spouse Chelsea gift certificates for many birthdays, this is a gut punch and a sad reckoning for arthouse and related films in Chapel Hill / Carrboro.

The article states:

“Now in the last year of our current five-year lease, with only a handful of months to go, we must make some serious choices about the future of the Chelsea Theater,” the release said. “Given the advancing years of the current owner it might be difficult committing to another five year lease. And yet there may be some interest in continuing the legacy of the Chelsea.”

The theater is asking interested parties to reach out to the theater via email.

Cutting to the chase, unless there is some deep-pocketed film aficionado interested in taking over the labor of love that has been Bruce Stone’s stewardship of the Chelsea (and previously the Varsity), then there is one obvious organization to ask if they are interested in stepping into the breach: The ArtsCenter.

It wouldn’t be the first time an arthouse theater has gone the non-profit route to stay in business. The Coolidge Corner theater in Brookline, MA made the move in 1989. A/perture Cinema in Winston-Salem did, too, in the past 7 years.

What’s different from both of these other situations is that these locations were stand-alone operations without other infrastructure that they needed to develop to execute their plans. The ArtsCenter already has a box office, online ticket sales, a wine/beer permit, and people who know about running a theater, not to mention a non-profit board in place. Clearly there’s a space question to be managed, but 300 East Main has a few spaces that aren’t fully leased and maybe there’s a temporary opportunity that could be figured out while larger programming questions about the ArtsCenter’s footprint downtown could be managed.

So what’s in this idea for various parties?

For the ArtsCenter, it presents an opportunity to open up a new fundraising and stakeholder channel around arthouse films like the two theaters above, in addition to embracing a new level of film engagement.

For Carrboro, it’s a potential downtown economic development opportunity that fits with the town’s brand that is authentic, artistic, and independent.

For film fans, it’s a chance to put their money where their mouth is and support the Chelsea as the community institution it is. Our household currently buys tickets to ArtsCenter events a la carte. I’m certain that if the ArtsCenter made this move, we’d become members, and I bet others would, too.

What do you think?

Comments for Second Public Hearing on Library Site at 203 S Greensboro St

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I sent some comments to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen this evening for tonight’s public hearing. Sorry for not formatting them better, but time was short! Here they are:

First, I appreciate Mr. Spencer’s efforts to capture what was heard last time- I think he got much of the input from the public captured well, and better still- I see it expressed in the new material he created.

Here are my reactions:

1.    On the north side of the block, fronting Roberson Street, remove the drop-off lane. Drop-off-pickup lanes are generally a suburban construct so that traffic can keep moving at high speed. That should not be a purpose that is encouraged on Roberson. Drop-off and pick-up in the urban context should happen at the curb, and these movements help to calm traffic. Removing this zone allows for the extension of the sidewalk to the entrance to the underground parking.

2.    Carrboro has a chance to do real street trees here. If the trees are against the building on Roberson, they do not act as effectively as a traffic control device, and provide less shade in summer. Put the sidewalk between the trees and the building, and it will be easier to look into what I hope will be big windows into the library, while providing more shade for people using the sidewalk.

3.    The parking underground cites 88 spaces per underground tier. I think the project can function with two parking tiers, or even one, meaning either 88 spaces or 176. I suggest dedicating less than 20 spaces to Town Use and leaving the rest as public parking which would be Shared, Managed, Unbundled, and Paid. I talked about what each of these mean in my prior comments.

http://citybeautiful21.com/2017/09/19/development-at-203-s-greensboro-needs-less-parking-startup-space-to-complement-library/

4.    The remote parking options continue to replicate the primary problem with how “parking” issues have been addressed in downtown Carrboro for years, which is the thought that there will need to be parking built, and that it should be a public deck. We ***MUST*** get beyond this limiting mindset and think about DISTRICT parking downtown where public and private lots contribute spaces to a PUBLIC PARKING DISTRICT.

What does this look like? Let’s say you do a one tier underground parking facility at 203 S Greensboro. 15 spaces reserved for the town, the remaining 73 are public. They get added to the Public Parking District. At any time when those 73 spaces are less than 85% full, it is free to park. When those spaces are more than 85% full, a price is added to help free up some spaces. This gets managed with smart parking apps like those in Chapel Hill, Asheville, and Durham.

How do we add private spaces to the Public Parking District? The parking study clearly shows that one of the emptiest lots in all of downtown is the Bank of America lot, right next to 203 S Greensboro. The Town, having set up the Public Parking District, approaches Bank of America and says: “We see you have 35 spaces that are mostly unused during the lunch crush time for restaurants. We have set up a software-managed Public Parking District. We invite you to put ten spaces into the Public Parking District, keeping 25 for yourself. They will be priced to keep them 15% empty. At times of day when they are 15% empty without charging, they will be free. For participating, after covering the cost of managing the system, the Town of Carrboro will provide some of the revenue received from pricing back to your business, and some of the revenue will go to the town to help fund access projects to downtown Carrboro, including Parking Signage and lighting, wayfinding, bike and sidewalk projects, and additional bus service.”

Once you have 10 spaces there, you approach another business- perhaps the lot owned by the folks who own the Clean Machine building. You add the Century Center Lot to the Public Parking District as well, running on the same rules. You keep going from business to business, and others will join. You will *FIND* additional parking it by freeing it from those private lots. Businesses who are open 9 to 5 can elect only to participate after 5:30 pm. Bars that open at 11 am can elect only to participate to 10:30 am.

This is going to cost orders of magnitude less than additional parking construction, and perhaps bring the Town and businesses revenue. It also means that someone in a minivan with 3 kids driving from Lake Hogan Farms who wants to park at 203 S Greensboro will *ALWAYS* find a space. That’s what pricing does. If you’re that parent, are you willing to pay $1.25 to have a convenient, easy place to park to take your kids into the library? If they can pay by smartphone app, the answer is definitely “YES.”

So let’s stop trying to site decks, and work on freeing private spaces by becoming the leader of a downtown Public Parking District, and invite private partners to join.

5.    In terms of the site layout Jim Spencer has created with the space to walk between the buildings, consider whether an upper floor connection for the levels above the ground makes sense. This could provide a sense of enclosure to the space and also make it easier for employees to move around.

6.    We’re trying to do economic development, right? Then this building should be five stories. The Level 3 floorplate should be replicated on Level 4, and again on a 5th level. We only have one downtown, and if we are tapering building height to transition to residents on the south side of Carr Street, we are literally reducing the economic capacity of Carrboro’s (population: 20k plus) most productive real estate to honor the theoretical aesthetic concerns of maybe 10-12 people. Folks who live next to downtown should be prepared for the buildings to get taller over time, and to their credit- those who spoke from the Carr Street neighborhood at the meeting seemed to understand this.

 

Development at 203 S Greensboro Needs Less Parking, More Startup Space to Complement Library

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On September 19, the Carrboro Board of Aldermen will be discussing a proposal to redevelop 203 S. Greensboro St into the Southern Orange County library and several other public uses for Town of Carrboro departments.The current plan significantly over-provides parking and under-supplies useful commercial space in a downtown whose own recent parking study found that there are over 1,280 unused parking spaces in downtown Carrboro (click here, see page 9 of PDF) at virtually all times of day, 365 days a year.

Before moving forward with this plan, the Board of Aldermen should modify the project as follows:

  1. Reduce the overall parking program to 150 spaces, using only the below ground and 1st levels for parking.
  2. Add a minimum of 8,400 square feet to the project on the upper floors that would be leased to private, taxpaying uses
  3. Explore if building more sq footage brings cost per square foot down, especially if building full, flat floors across floors three and four
  4. Pursue a partnership with American Underground to fill some of the space with startups, and/or use a commercial broker to lease the space
  5. Allocate the 150 parking spaces as follows:
    1. 20 spaces for use by Town (all departments combined)
    2. 130 public spaces (can be used by library patrons, artscenter, town workers, etc as long as they follow parking rules)
  6. Price the parking in the deck to keep 15% of public spaces free at all times, adjusting the price by time of day according to demand. If the deck can have 15% of spaces free without charging at some time of day, parking should be free in that time period.

Why The Aldermen Should Take These Steps

Let’s unpack these moves one by one.

1. Reduce parking to 150 spaces. Here’s the ground floor of the proposed building. South Greensboro Street is to the left, Open Eye Cafe is be directly above the building.  The ground floor of our new signature Town building would be a 14,000-odd square foot library and 19,000 or so square feet of parking. As you go up, the pattern remains this way- about 33,000 sq feet of development of which 58% is parking and 42% is everything else. The below ground floor is 80% parking. This is just too much. If you look at the total program proposed, it comes out to 5.4 spaces per 1000 gross square feet (GSF) of building. To put this in perspective, malls and big box stores generally provide 4 spaces per 1000 GSF.  After the administration in Washington signaled its intent to pull out of the Paris Climate accords, Carrboro put green lights up on Town Hall to signal its commitment to climate action. If we are going to build more parking for our public buildings than Southpoint Mall builds for its shoppers, then I would suggest we take those green lights down and stop pretending we’re committed to fighting climate change. A lot of communities don’t even have parking requirements downtown anymore (i.e. Durham) because they are working to help people use more sustainable travel modes by not subsidizing auto usage.

Library Parking Ground Floor

14,390 square ft of Library, 19,000 square feet of parking!

2. If we took out two levels of the parking deck, according to the cost per square foot and cost per space of parking for the Town in the June 20th presentation, we could add 8,400 square feet of space and pay the same amount to build the building as if we built 55,000 square feet and two more levels of parking. However, we would have more space to lease that would hopefully bring a return on investment to the Town over the years.

3. The cost of this building is projected at $250 per square foot. I am not sure if this is high, but the irregular shape of each floor to wrap around the parking deck may be driving the cost up. The Board should seek advice from Jim Spencer, the architect, on whether having more conventional floor plates on the third and fourth floor in lieu of parking would bring the overall cost per square foot down. If so, then the Town could consider even more square footage that could be rented to the private sector.

4. Pursue a partnership with American Underground. For those who don’t know, American Underground is the wildly successful startup incubator in the basement of the American Tobacco Campus in Durham which has since expanded to two more buildings in Durham and one location in Raleigh. Now that Carrboro has direct bus connections to Durham with stop one block from 203 S Greensboro and one block from American Underground(AU), it’s a great time to leverage a lot of the common cultural affinity between Carrboro and Durham and see if AU is interested in establishing a “Western Outpost” for their ecosystem in Carrboro. We may be able to offer less costly expansion than the increasingly expensive office space market in Downtown Durham, while still offering many of the amenities that both downtowns share.

5. Allocate the 150 spaces as follows: 10 for town employees, 140 public spaces. The current proposal has 30 spaces for Parks and Rec. If the Town wants to get businesses in downtown Carrboro to get their employees to stop using up public parking that visitors and customers could use, they should lead by example. Last year, a delegation from Chapel Hill and Carrboro visited a very successful mixed use project in Boulder, Colorado that had multiple users using one parking garage called Boulder Junction.

Boulder Junction in Boulder, CO has its parking Shared, Managed, Unbundled and Paid

Boulder Junction’s parking operates on four principles: it is shared, managed, unbundled, and paid. “Shared” means that any person can use any space; there’s no “parking for XYZ business only” signage. “Managed” means that there is a strategy for how the parking is to be used, and an entity providing policy and enforcement to ensure the strategy is carried out. (in this case, the city of Boulder) “Unbundled” means that if you rent space in the building, you are not automatically allocated a parking space- you must also rent spaces individually as well, whether you rent by the hour, day, week, or month.  Finally, “paid” is relatively obvious. While the Carrboro Parking Study’s chief failure is no mention of the word pricing, the Town actually went ahead and priced the Rosemary Street lot by Carrburritos and Bowbarr recently, so we’ve crossed the Rubicon and now charge for parking in Carrboro. So let’s do it right. Let’s start where we are as a Town, and implement a system that lets the first 2 hours (or 3! or 4! or whatever we decide!) be free, and only thereafter charges the user. This system is deployed in the North Deck at the American Tobacco Campus in Durham, and people can pay using the Parkmobile app. It’s convenient, promotes turnover, prevents park and ride in inappropriate places, and allows for parking to be free as long as it makes sense.

Taking these four principles, a purist approach would put all 150 spaces into this system. But the Town has storage for some departments in the basement, and there are probably some needs for moving equipment in and out of the building for key events that should have those spaces reserved for town staff. But ten spaces should be enough.

Beyond those ten spaces, the Town should be encouraging downtown employees to park on fringe lots and either walking, biking, or busing to the core sites downtown (203 S Greensboro and the Century Center).

On page 20 of the parking study, you can see that VHB documented 151 cars parking for over 7 hours in our “2-hour stay” public lots. VHB estimates that 50 to 60 of these are town employees, and another 90 to 95 belonged to other downtown employees or UNC students stealth park-and-riding to campus.

I’m sure town employees who currently enjoying parking downtown may be disappointed with this recommendation. But hopefully they recognize that if they can park a little further away, they can support vitality for downtown businesses, and get a few more steps in to finish their commutes, or snag a CHT bus from a lot a little further away.

6. Price the deck for 85% occupancy. This is considered a best practice in the parking industry. If you set the price so that 15% of spaces are empty, then you can pretty much guarantee that with people coming and going, you will ALWAYS find a space at your destination. No more circling and hunting for a space. If demand for spaces is such that 15% of spaces are empty even if the price is free, then that’s what you charge – $0. Based on the Carrboro Parking Survey, it appears weekday lunch hours represent the greatest crunch given our current conditions. In this case, the parking at 203 S Greensboro might have a charge at lunchtime, but not earlier or later in the day. We’d have to set up the system and see. That said, once the system is up and running, businesses could opt in, just as they did in Asheville.

If you take these steps together, and only add the 8,400 square feet while reducing to 150 spaces, you still get a parking ratio of 2.4 spaces per 1000 square feet, which is higher than many downtowns like Carrboro require today. That’s a reasonable outcome to transition downtown away from auto dependence and towards greater economic vitality, while also delivering needed Town office space and the library everyone wants to see happen.

It’s time to do parking pricing right, on the Town’s terms, in a strategic way that balances our goals and puts us on a path to unlock the 1,280 spaces that are tied up in 140+ individual lots, while raising money for alternative modes. This worthy project is the place to start that new effort.

If you agree, please let the board know by emailing boa@townofcarrboro.org.

Carrboro Parking Study Gathers Good Data, But We Need to Start Charging for Parking at ONE Lot

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On Tuesday night, the Carrboro Board of Aldermen will take up a resolution to turn the recently completed Carrboro Parking Study into a plan for downtown parking. When they do, they should recommend some additional actions to town staff beyond those in the study.

Those additional actions are:

  • To initiate steps to begin charging for parking at the Rosemary Street lot (on the corner of Rosemary Street and Sunset Drive) as soon as possible, using new parking technology like Asheville already has, with prices that vary according to demand, including the price dropping to FREE when demand will not keep the lot 85% full. A Request for Proposals from parking app/technology vendors may be appropriate.
  • To invite downtown businesses with significant parking capacity and light usage to put some of their private spaces “in play” as part of the public pool of priced spaces. This is also a feature of the Asheville system, which allows businesses to make their spaces public when they are not using them.

 

Why are these actions needed?

There are several good recommendations in the Carrboro parking study conducted by VHB. Those recommendations include making parking signage consistent, and installing Walk Carrboro wayfinding signs to let people know it is a short walk to downtown destinations from less centrally located lots like the Town Hall lot.

The study also clearly states that no new parking needs to be constructed in the next five years because of how underutilized the existing supply is due to so much of it being limited to single use parking within private lots. It’s great that the study made this clear, as it is the most important finding.

However, the primary recommendation, which the VHB staff called out in bold, saying “The significance of this initiative cannot be understated,” – is encouraging shared parking arrangements among downtown businesses. There’s only one problem with this key strategy- it’s been available to us for decades, and basically nothing has happened. There’s nothing about this study that makes it more likely to happen. Will the town Economic Development director spend more of their time trying to establish these agreements? Will the town transportation planner, a position that has just been vacated? Unlikely. Both of those positions have a big purview already.

The town of Carrboro should not waste time trying to play matchmaker between business A and B, or businesses C, D and H. Instead, it should establish a paid parking system that works for public lots that allows individual businesses to add some number of their private spaces to the public system. This expands the number of spaces available to the public without needing to build new public spaces.

But Carrboro Just Isn’t Ready to Charge for Parking!!

I’ve heard this, over and over again, for the 16 years I’ve lived here. But then DC, DW and I went to eat at Al’s Burger Shack last week and saw this:

Yes, Chapel Hill has put in a new parking lot, right next to the Rosemary Street Lot owned by Carrboro.And here’s the kicker:

Yup, Chapel Hill is charging hourly. 3 feet from the free Carrboro lot. Guess how full the Rosemary Carrboro lot is going to be if we don’t put a price on it? Spoiler: VERY. This lot was among the fullest in the data from VHB, but with a new paid lot from Chapel Hill immediately adjacent, everyone who wants to park in that lot will try the Carrboro one first unless we equalize the pricing. This is why moving to a parking pricing program for Carrboro that allows businesses to put spaces into a public pool makes more sense than ever.

It’s time to charge for some of our parking, and provide a system that businesses can join. This is evidence that our downtown is a valuable and cherished place where people enjoy spending time.