Carrboro Advisory Boards Should Push For Gathering Space at Lloyd Farm

Posted on June 2, 2016 by patrick

Tonight, at 7:30 pm in Town Hall, the various Carrboro Town Advisory Boards will meet to review the Lloyd Farm rezoning proposal before it goes to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen later in June. This site represents a significant opportunity to do something compelling or make a lasting mistake for Carrboro.

All in all, Lloyd Farm is a mildly better than average suburban strip mall concept with a bunch of single story buildings surrounding a large parking field fronting a Harris Teeter. The “better than average” points come for significantly more attention to bike/ped mobility through the site than is usually present in proposals like this. That said, here are the key problems with it:

The layout is driven first and foremost by traffic engineering concerns; the two drive-thru parcels are particularly awful.
The green “Plaza Lawns” are located in places that almost guarantee they will never be used as public spaces.
No multi-story buildings on a large site that could accommodate them and surface parking
Too small a residential component for a town struggling with increasing housing affordability challenges

I’m not sure the last two are going to be addressed at this point in the game, so I’m going to focus on ONE MEANINGFUL CHANGE that could significantly improve this project.

Re-Configure the Lawns and Parking to Create a Gathering Space, So That There is An Urban Core to a Suburban Site

The image above is the most recent site plan with a few minor changes:

It removes the 7,810 square foot building in the curve of the road, and places parking there instead. (Blue circle)
It moves the square footage of those buildings into two buildings that front a place reminiscent of the the Weaver Street Market Lawn among several buildings. Just as people can walk into the center of Southpoint Mall’s primary walkway between Barnes & Noble and the Apple Store, you could do the same between these two buildings. Harris Teeter would still have a massive parking field out front, albeit in a slightly different shape than they are used to. If they can build a two-story Harris Teeter at North Hills, they should be able to handle this.
The public space allows for more urban cafe-style dining fronting a space for people rather than a space for cars. This could be accomplished with greenspace, hardscaped space like a brick plaza, or both. Ideally I think the developer could steal brick and planting design cues from the UNC campus, and then allow for dining along both sides of the space. The Piazza at Schmidt’s development in Philadelphia strikes this balance well, see below:
This closes the movement of trucks from behind Harris Teeter to the road with the bus pull-out closer to the apartments. Trucks will then need to make a 90-degree turn in front of Harris Teeter and then head north to the road to go left towards Old Fayetteville Rd, or somehow move south of the public space and adjacent retail and exit that way.
Finally, this move does take some retail away from the terminus of the greenway coming from Carol St. I understand how if I was coming from Carol Street, I would find this a bit of an aesthetic loss. However, I think that transition by walking and biking can be made reasonably well if there is also a greenway east of the bioretention area (PURPLE dotted line) that leads to the crossing near the proposed bus pullout. This consolidates crossings from the two directions that pedestrians and cyclists may arrive near a potential bus stop, and give them the smallest amount of parking lot/road combination to cross to reach the stores and the public space.

This Site Needs More Housing, For ALL Ages

It’s also worth noting that there’s just not enough housing being built on such a large site. Carrboro is not going to be able to address its rising housing cost challenges without building new units. Although there are 200+ new units here, this site can accommodate many more, and more stories of height over podium parking. Additionally, it’s disappointing to see only senior housing being proposed. While there are clearly needs for housing for senior citizens in Carrboro, since the Board of Aldermen proposed to look at every decision through the prism of equity at their annual retreat, it is worth noting that generally speaking, older Americans are generally wealthier than everyone else. The chart below shows the median net worth by age in the USA. The data is from the Census Bureau in 2015 via an article at the financial planning website fool.com. Given this distribution, it is hard for me to see how we can talk about equity in a complex that doesn’t allow people under 55 to live there.

One Chance to Get This Right

In closing, I strongly recommend that the advisory boards to be energetic in encouraging the Lloyd Farm development team to use this opportunity to provide a special place on the edge of Carrboro. Not only do I think this concept of a gathering space would garner them more support for approval, I think they’d actually get higher rents! I suspect that the primary pushback will be about their anchor tenant (Harris Teeter) and expectations regarding parking. If they are getting roughly the number of spaces they expect in view of the front door of the store (as my proposal above provides) I think they should be willing to compromise.

Chapel Hill News Describes Very Typical Carrboro Infill Project as “Unusual Density”

Posted on May 31, 2016 by patrick

There are a few rezoning hearings coming up at the Carrboro Board of Aldermen meetings in June. One of them is a project called Inara Court, slated for 102 to 104 Fidelity St, which is right behind the O2 Fitness property, on the same side of Fidelity Street. I am very familiar with the area as I previously lived at two different addresses on Fidelity.

CH News Reporter Jean Bolduc’s description of the project in the paper was strange, stating:

The Board of Aldermen will hear from residents this month about a plan to build six homes on about a half-acre on Fidelity Street, behind the O2 Fitness Club. The infill project offered by Yates-Greene, LLC is classified as an “Architecturally Integrated Subdivision,” which would allow for the unusual density of so many homes on so little land.

The math here is pretty straightforward – six units on 1/2-acre of land yields 6/.5 = 13 dwelling units per acre. Is this “unusual” in Carrboro? I did some quick checking in Google Earth with the polygon tool to measure acreage, then counted units using Google Streetview.

Literally directly across the street is White Oak, a condo complex built in the early 1980s with 96 units on about 6.1 acres, or roughly 16 dwelling units per acre.

Immediately next to White Oak, also on Fidelity Street, is Village Square, with about 26 units on 2.4 acres, or roughly 11 dwelling units per acre.

At the end of Fidelity Street at the intersection with Davie Rd, there is Fidelity Court- with 72 units on about 4.5 acres or again, 16 dwelling units per acre.

Just north of the O2 Fitness and Looking Glass Cafe, there is the 605 West Main building, which if you ignore the two floors of commercial above the parking, sports 7 units in about 0.26 acres, which is about 27 dwelling units per acre.

Nothing Unusual About This Density

At 13 dwelling units to the acre, the Inara Court project fits in very consistently with residential projects in its immediate vicinity, as well as being consistent with density found at places such as Cedar Court or The Flats on North Greensboro Street. While the “Architecturally Integrated Subdivision” may be a new way of delivering 13 units/acre in town, this is a very commonplace residential density in Carrboro, and has been for nearly 4 decades.

Hopefully in the future, the Chapel Hill News will use simple comparative techniques to describe the relative density of a project as accurately as possible.

Carrboro Should Aim Higher for Infill

While I think this project has a nice aesthetic if they turn out looking like the rendering, I’m also somewhat disappointed that there was not a proposal to combine these properties with the O2 Fitness site for a larger redevelopment project. Having vacant land next to a mostly past-its life suburban strip mall that used to be ~~Piggly Wiggly~~ [correction: an A&P grocery store] way back when would have been a terrific opportunity to get at least this many housing units, maybe many more on both the market rate and affordable side, **AND** also build some new office and commercial space in downtown.

The rezoning to the higher density is certainly better infill than the two single family houses that have gone in on Poplar just behind the proposed Inara Court project, but I think we could have done even better here for the tax base, for affordable housing, and for economic vitality if we had positioned this site as a true redevelopment opportunity and put appropriate zoning in place. This is another reason Carrboro needs a comprehensive plan.

Filtering, Housing Supply and Changes In Rents: The Evidence

Posted on March 5, 2015 by patrick

Over the past two weeks, I have highlighted how housing prices and rents increase without new development- through filtering at large multifamily properties and at smaller rentals as individual landlords decide to upgrade their units one at a time. The flip side of this phenomenon is the question: Is there is evidence that expanding the supply of housing can put downward pressure on rents, and can prevent mid-market housing from filtering up to become higher-end rental property?

The answer is an overwhelming YES. But don’t take my word for it, just read a whole bunch of newspaper articles with data below. None of them use the word “filtering” explicitly, but virtually all of them reference filtering in housing markets in one way or another. I’ll make some brief comments after a few articles.

Austin, TX – 2/2/2015 (Austin American-Statesman)

The boom in apartment supply dropped the area’s occupancy rate to 94 percent in the last half of 2014 — the lowest occupancy level in more than three years, and nearly 4 percent below the recent high of 97.8 percent in June 2012…With all those new units entering the market, supply is catching up to demand. And that means apartment rents are stabilizing after rising rapidly — sometimes as much as 7 percent per year — from 2010 through 2013. The average rent in the metro area was $1,107 a month in December — an all-time high, but an increase of only $8 from the average rent for June, Heimsath said.

Comments: This article notes how the expansion of supply in Austin has increased vacancies, which is another way of saying there are more multifamily properties with idle income-producing units each month, who are now more likely to make deals on rent. Here the supply of new units has cut rent increases from 7% to 0.7%- or $8/month on a unit that rents for $1,107.

Washington, DC – 1/4/2015 (Washington Post)

This new supply forced landlords at some four- and five-star buildings to reduce rents in order to fill their units. As a result, rent growth dipped into the red briefly in 2008, and then again for most of 2009. The Great Recession also had an impact, as some former four- and five-star renters moved to older, cheaper three-star buildings to save money. This increased demand for three-star units, allowing landlords there to continue raising prices.

In recent years, the effective rental growth rates of three-star and four- and five-star buildings have diverged even further. Just as in 2007, this is largely a result of the recent construction boom in the Washington area. An unprecedented number of new apartment units (about 24,000) have arrived in the area in the past two years, increasing the total apartment inventory by roughly 5 percent.

That new supply wave cut rents for four- and five-star apartments even further, even as rents at three-start apartments continued to outperform. But the narrowing may be slowing as the wave of supply takes its toll on three-star rents as well, working in renters’ favor.

Comments: This article identifies some of the submarkets in DC, separating out 3-star properties from 4-star and 5-star properties, and describes how the influx of new high-end units has had rents falling since 2013. (see chart) Also of interest are the descriptions of people moving from one submarket to another because of the Great Recession.

Closer to home, a piece on the Triangle Apartment Market as a whole – 11/19/2014

A total of 7,965 new apartment units have been completed in the Triangle over the 12-month period ending in September, according to MPF Research, which analyzes apartment data in 100 U.S. metro markets. That is easily the largest amount of new supply added over a 12-month period in the 20 years that MPF has been tracking the Triangle.

According to MPF, demand for new units over that same period totaled 6,940 – a hefty number but still below supply.

The new supply has helped slow rent growth in the Triangle. Rents were up 1.7 percent in the third quarter compared to the same period a year ago. That was well below the 3.7 percent average increase across the United States.

Comments: Pretty self-explanatory. More units coming online slowed rent increases compared with national averages.

More local data, in Durham – 2/14/14

The boom in apartment construction in Durham County and across the Triangle has helped to bring down average rental rates, according to a recently released report from the Charlotte-based market research firm Real Data.
However, a real estate company behind one of the new apartment complexes in downtown Durham expects to be able to buck that trend due to the location and type of product it’s offering.
Across Durham County, the average rental price per unit in January was $887. That was down 2.3 percent compared with the average in July of last year. That’s a larger decline than was seen in the three Triangle counties of Wake, Durham and Orange, where the average was down 1.7 percent to an average rate of $868 per month.
Vacancies have risen as some of the units in the new complexes have come online, the firm reported. Real Data had a total of number of 3,045 units under construction in Durham County, which is 30 percent of the number of units – at 10,028 – under construction across the Triangle.
Although averages are coming down, according to the firm’s reporting, it appears that the newer units are being rented out at the expense of older communities. Existing communities saw a net loss of 306 renters across the Triangle, according to Real Data, while there was a positive net unit absorption of 1,436 units.

Comments: The last sentence (emphasis added is mine) is a perfect description of filtering with new units attracting high-end submarket renters to the newest, latest/greatest housing. This raised vacancies at existing multifamily properties,and rents fell 2.3 percent across the market, making housing more affordable.

And in Chapel Hill on Rosemary Street – 3/31/2014

Students stood in line with keys outside of the LUX apartments leasing office on Franklin Street Thursday hoping to open a treasure chest that would give them free rent for a year. At one point they were approached by two people handing out treats with advertisements for The Warehouse on them.

“I incorrectly thought it was LUX employees trying to pacify people who were waiting in line, but I was wrong,” UNC student Lauren Sutton said. “I got my rice krispie treat and flipped it over and there was a sticker on it saying, ‘Warehouse apartments: Now Leasing,’ and their prices for rent.”

The Warehouse did not return requests for comment.

But the complex did lower its monthly rent for four-bedroom apartments to $618 for next year, down 21 percent from $785 this year, according to the complex’s website.

Comments: Classic response to visceral competition from brand-new amenity rich building directly across the street- move your rents to a new, lower-rent submarket to compete!

You see that there are all kinds of affordable cities in the United States. There are plenty of low-demand cities, especially in the midwest, where the housing stock has grown slowly and prices are low. But there are also plenty of cheap, fast-growing cities in the sunbelt where the housing stock is growing rapidly and keeping things affordable.

And then there are the expensive cities. The places where house-sellers are asking for over $200 per square foot. All of them are cities where the housing stock is growing slowly, even though these are the places where it would be most profitable to build. That’s because these cities tend to have geographical constraints that prevent further sprawl, and have adopted zoning codes that make it difficult to add more housing by building more densely.

Here’s the chart, courtesy of Trulia.com:

As I was working on this post over the last few days, I was trying to put together a good summary paragraph when an excellent blogger in Chicago, Daniel Kay Hertz, took up the same topic and posted this excellent conclusion for affordability:

But the bottom line is that slow, zero, or negative cost-of-housing growth is better than fast cost-of-housing growth. (At least, that is, in high-cost neighborhoods/metropolitan areas.) The vast majority of low- and moderate-income people live, and will continue for the foreseeable future to live, in non-subsidized housing. Even in New York, which has held on to its public housing better than most other large expensive cities, it only makes up something like 7% of all units. That means that it’s exactly these kinds of market trends – consistently large rent hikes, year after year, in mid-ish market housing – that makes a neighborhood, or city, or metropolitan area, eventually unaffordable to working- and middle-class people.

And it turns out that construction booms arrest that sort of pattern, or prevent its continuation, all the time.

Getting Terms Right: At Its Core, The Word “Urban” Is About Life On Foot

Posted on February 10, 2015 by patrick

Editor’s note: I originally published this post on February 18, 2013, but there’s been a lot of discussion about density, urbanity, and quality of life in local media recently, and I thought it was worth re-publishing this.

Original post below:

On this blog, I’ll be discussing a variety of topics regarding questions of town-building for Carrboro, North Carolina and other places. But one I’ll probably come back to again and again is the word “urban.” Knowing that, I want to be as clear as possible about what I mean when I use this term.

In growth debates, this tends to mean a lot of things to a lot of people. More than a few people hear “urban” and immediately think “Manhattan” or “New York.” Interestingly enough, I think that when people say New York, they actually do mean “Manhattan,” and not Brooklyn, Queens, or any of the other boroughs. They are thinking of super-tall buildings first and foremost, and Manhattan has the highest concentration of skyscrapers in one place in the USA.

Others think more broadly of large cities with very large populations, places that generally have over one million inhabitants in a single municipality. This definition can encompass neighborhoods and communities of very different physical character. It may include skyscraper districts, mid-rise districts, and low-density neighborhoods often found 3 to 10 miles from an American city center.

However, I think the definition of urban can be made very simple, and most accurate, by tying it to one function: walking. Here is the simplest definition I can offer:

If you live, work or visit somewhere that numerous people regularly walk from one place to another for a variety of reasons other than recreation or exercise, then you are living in, working in, or visiting an urban place.

Christopher Columbus Park, Boston – a Place for Walking

This is really the key to figuring out if a place is urban or not. Fundamentally, I believe that once we have stopped talking about agricultural landscapes and communities where farming is a principal activity, we are better off organizing our communities around urban principles instead of not doing so. This blog will be about explaining why I think this is true, and how we can build cities and towns full of beautiful urban neighborhoods.

With that in mind, what are some of the primary reasons why we should build urban places?

1. Health of Individuals. Getting around on foot rather than in a car provides significant health benefits. Most doctors will tell you that walking is close to “the perfect exercise” – low impact, able to be participated in for most of one’s life, and requiring little special equipment or money to participate. A community that makes it safe, easy and pleasant for people to walk for non-recreational purposes is one that is investing in the long-term health of its population.

2. Health of Shared Common Resources. Initiatives that convert auto trips to transit trips and particularly bicycle and walking trips lower a community’s per-trip air pollution and per-trip carbon footprint. Developing in a more compact growth pattern, by putting more uses and residents within walking distance of each other- reduces development pressure on farmland and on land around water resources.

3. Reduced Lifecycle Costs for Infrastructure. If we build 150 homes on 450 acres (1 home per 3-acre lot) then attaching those homes to a local sewer system such as OWASA will require a network of publicly maintained pipes that provides drainage across 70 percent of one square mile. Building those same homes at 15 dwelling units to the acre means that any expanded sewer network will need to cover 1.6 percent of one square mile. Joe Minicozzi of Asheville has probably done a better job than anyone documenting this issue.

4. A Healthy, Innovative Local Business Ecosystem A compact, reasonably dense neighborhood can support its own district of small businesses. Finer grain block sizes in city streets inherently lead you away from big-box retail owned by large corporations and international investors, and towards smaller format stores with a greater likelihood of a local owner running the business. Greater population densities create opportunity for greater variety in dining choices and for agglomeration benefits in many industries.

5. Vibrant Public Spaces By building compactly and in an urban pattern, one of the best outcomes is the ability to create special places that people cherish because they function as social centers as well as perhaps cultural or artistic centers. Locally, the Weaver Street Market Lawn is the best example of such a place.

A Latin Dance Band gets the crowd moving on the Weaver Street Market Lawn at the 2012 Carrboro Music Festival.

Whether you’re a local elected official, a developer, or a citizen, if we’re going to build better urban places, it’s always good to ask – “is this proposed change going to help or hinder Life On Foot in the neighborhood and the town?”

Lloyd Farm Development: Can We Avoid a Missed Opportunity?

Posted on December 1, 2014 by patrick

One of the more significant development projects in recent Carrboro history may reach the Board of Aldermen soon- the Lloyd Farm property. Located across NC 54 from Carrboro Plaza and just west of the Carrboro Post Office, this is one of the largest contiguous areas of mostly undeveloped land left in Carrboro. Here’s the location in question:

On September 11th I attended a meeting on the project at Town Hall. Late that night, I forwarded some thoughts to the development team. Having not heard back from them, I’m not sure what they thought of those comments, which were mostly about how to make changes to the organization of the buildings on the site that tried to allow for maintaining the overall building program, but organizing it into a more urban pattern, as opposed to a suburban pattern.

The more I think about the site plan that has been proposed, however, the more I think an outcome similar to what the developer is currently proposing is going to be a missed opportunity for Carrboro.

Let me start simply- if this parcel is going to develop (and it is) then it should develop in an urban pattern. In the plan proposed by the developer, the project is largely organized around a very parking lot. None of the other buildings have any substantial relationship to each other; instead they have relationships to the car circulation features. This is a suburban layout.

Lloyd Farm Site Plan

The Carr Mill parking lot in front of Harris Teeter and CVS is a good example of what you might get here with the large parking field.

Carr Mill Parking Lot from Greensboro St Side (click to enlarge)

What would an urban layout look like? More like one of these locations below. Forget about building height for right now. Just look at the relationships of the buildings to each other, and the spaces they create or frame. I chose these locations because the Lloyd site is about 40 acres. Where I could ballpark estimate the acreage of the commercial core of these projects, I did.

North Hills, Raleigh – 21-acre core, 850,000+ sq ft. Apartments also.

North Hills, Raleigh

North Hills Beach Music Series

American Tobacco Campus, Durham- 22-acre core; 1 million sq feet office space, 10 restaurants, 90,000 sq feet of apartments

American Tobacco Campus

American Tobacco Musical Event

Birkdale Village, Huntersville, NC – 52 acres; 300,00 sq ft, 320 apts

Birkdale Village, Huntersville

Birkdale Village Streetscape

Birkdale Village Fountain

The Piazza at Schmidt’s, Philadelphia – 8-acres: 500 apts, 50,000 sq feet office space, 80,000 sq foot public space

The Piazza at Schmidt’s, Philadelphia

Piazza at Schmidt’s, Market Day

Piazza at Schmidt’s – From Above

Biltmore Park, Asheville – 42-acres: 276 apts, 270,000 ft class A office, 283,000 sq feet retail.dining/entertainment, 65,00 sq ft YMCA, 165-room hotel

Biltmore Park, Asheville Layout

Biltmore Park Event

Biltmore Park Main Street

I have additional more detailed thoughts on how we’ve arrived where we are with the Lloyd project, but big picture stuff first: What do you think of these places as inspiration for the Lloyd property?

The Distribution of Population in Orange County and the Site of the Southern Orange County Library

Posted on September 16, 2013 by patrick

Back in the spring, at an Orange Board of County Commissioners meeting where I and other citizens spoke in favor of building an urban library in Southern Orange County, one of the most common themes from county staff in the discussion was that a significant number of rural residents would be served by this library, and that they would come to the library by car and need a place to park, implying that this criterion should play a primary, and perhaps even decisive role in the siting decision of the library.

For the remainder of this post, let’s put aside the question of whether or not parking is easier for rural residents in an urban or suburban location, and just look at where the population of Southern Orange County is located.

Orange County 2010 Census Population Data

Orange County, in addition to containing all or part of four municipalities (Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough, and Mebane) is split into seven townships. These townships are more or less remnants of a briefly operating system of local governance in the post-civil war period that lasted less than 15 years. Nevertheless, the county still gathers data based on these geographical boundaries which can help us examine the present-day distribution of population. In the 2010 Census, the total population of Orange County was estimated to be 133,801. Below is a map of Orange County townships and their 2010 Census population:

Orange County Population by Township, 2010

As you can see, over 75% of county residents live either in the Chapel Hill or Hillsborough townships, with almost 68% of the county population in Chapel Hill township alone. The Chapel Hill township contains both the town of Chapel Hill and the town of Carrboro, as well as just under 14,000 residents living slightly outside the Chapel Hill / Carrboro town limits.

Implications for Library Siting

One of the criteria that County staff discussed in their prepared memo on March 19, 2013 was:

“Able to provide comprehensive library services to all the residents of southern Orange County.”

Given this criteria, I believe it is reasonable to say that “Southern Orange County” could be reasonably defined as the two southernmost townships, Bingham and Chapel Hill. These two townships had a combined population of 94,498 in the 2010 Census. Of those 94,498 people, 93% of them lived in Chapel Hill township, and 7% of them lived in Bingham township. This means that if you’re trying to maximize your ability to serve “all the residents of Southern Orange County,” you should probably focus heavily on how you’re going to serve the people in Chapel Hill township most effectively.

In the past few months, a new visualization tool has appeared that gives us an even closer look at population distributions, the Census Dotmap website, which maps every single person in the USA using one dot per person in their Census Block, the smallest level we can look at the data without actually placing people in their homes, which the Census will not do for privacy reasons. Here’s a look at the entire county using that tool:

Census 2010 Dotmap with Orange County Township Boundaries

The simple take-away is that the darker the section of the map, the more people live there. I drew in the county boundary using a graphics tool so if you go to the Census Dotmap website, don’t expect to see the townships there. Still, even without the townships drawn in, you’ll find that you can pick out the county border pretty well along the Alamance and Durham county lines. It’s harder with the Chatham and Person/Caswell borders, but the effects of the Orange County Joint Planning Agreement and rural buffer are still evident.

You’ll see that Southern Orange County’s population core is in the sections of Chapel Hill and Carrboro roughly bounded by Estes Drive on the north, MLK/Hillsborough/Country Club on the east, Fordham Blvd/Clubreth/Smith Level Rd (including Southern Village) on the south, and Old Fayetteville Rd on the west. Scroll down for a closer look at that population core, traced in dark red. For orientation, the primary commercial section of Franklin Street is highlighted in Carolina Blue. The sunburst graphics are as close an approximation as I can make at this scale of the following locations that have been mentioned as potential Southern Orange County library sites:

1128 Hillsborough Rd (Orange)
401 Fidelity St (Blue)
301 W Main St – Town Hall (Purple)
201 S Greensboro St – Roberson St Lot (Red)
300 E Main St (Green)

Southern Orange County Population and Various Potential Library Sites

The county staff’s preferred site, 1128 Hillsborough Rd (shown in Orange) from March 2013 is outside the “core of the core” section of Chapel Hill Township, while the other four sites are within that critical center of population.

Recap: Southern Orange County Population

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be discussing more benefits of building the library in the population heart of Southern Orange County. But for now, I’ll close by reviewing the following facts about Orange County population.

Unless there is a sudden, drastic change of plans to put the Southern Orange County library somewhere north of Eubanks Rd, the existing Orange County library on West Margaret Ln in Hillsborough will be the closest library to pretty much everyone in the five northernmost townships: Cheeks, Hillsborough, Eno, Little River, and Caldwell.
Of the combined population of the two southern townships, the population split is 93% Chapel Hill township, 7% Bingham township.
Of the combined population of the two southern townships, 78%, or almost 4 out of every 5 residents, live in the Chapel Hill or Carrboro town limits.
If the county staff’s linear projections are correct, Bingham Township will add 2,686 residents by the year 2050; while Chapel Hill township will add 51,996 residents by 2050.
If the county staff’s exponential projections are correct, Bingham Township will add 3,854 residents by the year 2050; while Chapel Hill township will add 90,825 residents by 2050.

With the exception of the graphics, I got all of this population and projection information from the County website’s demographics page. This data acknowledges that nearly 80% of the people most likely to use the library are in-town residents of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and the county’s own projections looking forward indicate significantly higher projected growth in Chapel Hill and Carrboro town limits than in unincorporated Chapel Hill Township or Bingham Township.

Future analysis of any potential library sites should acknowledge this baseline data about where population is located.

Five Great Reasons to Bulldoze the BCBSNC Building In Chapel Hill

Posted on June 1, 2013 by patrick

BCBSNC Headquarters – A Building Its Own Architect Doesn’t Know What Do To With (photo from newsobserver.com)

Today Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC announced they are consolidating their operations in Durham and vacating their dated, modernist solar-cooker-on-cinder-blocks digs in Chapel Hill, because the building is inflexible, expensive to operate, and bad for workers:

Blue Cross officials said the insurer’s distinctive Chapel Hill headquarters – a rhomboid, glass structure designed by the architect A.G. Odell Jr.’s firm – had become more costly to operate than its other buildings and didn’t fit the way employees work today.

The article adds:

Blue Cross expects the move to Durham will ultimately save it more than $2.5 million annually in utilities and operating costs.

“It will be a walkable, flexible environment, and create a community of literally all of our employees,” Borman said.

As for the Chapel Hill headquarters, Blue Cross plans to work with town officials to determine the property’s future, Borman said.

McMurray [the building’s designer] worries what will become of his building.

“It’s sad that they’re leaving it,” he said. “I don’t know what you do with it.”

I visited this building this past year on a day with temperatures in the 60s to low 70s. The air conditioning was cranked up like it was in the high 80s or 90s outside, which I assume is part of the reason why their utility costs are so high- whoever occupies the building must combat massive solar gain through the roof. Even the guy who built the building can’t think of a reason to keep using it.

The site layout is as flawed as the building, with curvilinear roads in a mid-century suburban layout that wastes space with both pavement and grass. But as much as anyone hates the announcement that a major employer is leaving, the silver lining is an opportunity to redevelop over 30 acres, or more than 1.5 million square feet of land. If this dysfunctional building was torn down, what could fit there instead?

For inspiration, here are five other examples of quality urban development that could fit in that area or less:

1. Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic (photo by Flickr user Iurbi)

This picture perfect town is mostly enclosed by a bend in the river that winds through it. The area within the river bend is about 80% of the size of the BCSBNC site.

Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic

2. Vernazza, Italy (photo by Flickr user damianocerrone)

Hemmed in by the see and a hill, Vernazza only takes up about 40% of the BCBSNC site, and that includes some of the harbor.

Vernazza, Italy

3. Downtown Shelburne Falls, MA (photo by Flickr user neonlike)

Picturesque small town in Massachusetts with a waterfall, an abandoned bridge covered with flowers, and a trolley museum – in about 25% of the BCBSNC site.

Shelburne Falls, MA

4. The entire pedestrian-only section of Church St and the 8 surrounding blocks in Burlington, VT. (photo by Flickr user devils4ever)

About 91% of the size of the BCBSNC site.

Church St, Burlington, VT

5. The Downtown Core of Black Mountain, NC (photo by Flickr user Bass Player Keith Hall)

East of Asheville, the downtown of Black Mountain is about 50% the size of the BCBSNC site.

Downtown Black Mountain, NC

6. And One Bonus Location: East Franklin St (photo by Flickr user Zannie Gunn)

The space bound by Columbia St, Franklin, Rosemary, and Henderson takes up about 25% of the BCBSNC site.

East Franklin St

Any of these building patterns are more resilient for changing times than the modernist design of the BCBSNC building, which was always more about making abstract aesthetic statements than being useful to the people using the building or embracing the neighboring parcels in a constructive way. When was the last time you heard someone say Franklin St “doesn’t support the way people work or live today?”

Build a street grid on this site and populate it with many smaller buildings, public spaces, and much less parking, and Chapel Hill can have a tremendous new urban neighborhood built to last. This is an exciting opportunity. What could you imagine here?

How are Carrboro Residents Distributed Across Town?

Posted on February 12, 2013 by patrick

Recently, a programming guru at MIT, Brandon Martin-Anderson decided to make a map of every person in the US Census- all 300+ million of us. The map assigns a dot for every person to the Census Block they live in, and then displays it. You can see the interactive map here, zoomed to a level that shows Hillsborough, Durham, Carrboro and Chapel Hill, mostly. Anderson has since added Canada and Mexico Census data as well.

Here’s a slightly more zoomed-in look at our neck of the woods. The main commercial section of Franklin Street is shown in blue.

Census Dotmap of Chapel Hill / Carrboro

If you look at the Chapel Hill / Carrboro map long enough, you’ll notice a few things:

There’s a “core” of population density (circled in red) that includes the UNC campus, the MLK corridor about halfway between Foster’s Market and Estes Drive, West Carrboro’s apartment complexes along NC 54 and Smith Level Road, and Southern Village.
The large white spaces in the center of both Chapel Hill and Carrboro are contiguous Census Blocks that are dominated by employment and not residents, so they appear to be empty. They simply have few or zero residents. In 2020, projects like Greenbridge, 140 West, 300 East Main and Shelton Station should change these blocks a good deal.
There are some other denser clusters of population near Eastowne/Sage Rd/Erwin Rd and at some apartment complexes on MLK near Timberlyne.
Southern Village is clearly more dense than Meadowmont.
Suburban Carrboro is generally a little more dense than suburban Chapel Hill.

If we further zoom in on Carrboro, and match the dots up to a street map, you can also see that the densest neighborhoods in town are Abbey Court/Collins Crossing condominiums, and generally the entire area bounded by Jones Ferry Rd, Barnes St, and NC 54; Estes Park Apts, the entire area bounded by NC 54 and Old Fayetteville Rd; and the apartment complexes along Smith Level Rd close to Carrboro High School.

Carrboro Density – click to embiggen

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Category Archives: Density