Category Archives: Carrboro

Ending Parking Requirements for Cars in Carrboro is a Zero-Cost Win for Climate: Let’s Do It Now

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It’s an exciting time in Carrboro! There are new bike lanes on Main Street. The construction of the 203 Project, featuring a new branch of the Orange County library, is underway. Perhaps most importantly, we have a new Comprehensive Plan that is focused on addressing racial equity and taking action to fight climate change. Better still, the Implementation chapter of the Carrboro Connects Comprehensive Plan (see below) highlights numerous policy actions that can move us towards our goals.

The Fastest, Easiest Climate Win Available: Ending Parking Requirements for Cars

The great news on the climate action front is that there is one policy action that can be taken immediately with virtually zero negative (or even noticeable!) effects: ending parking requirements for cars.

How Does Ending Parking Requirements Fight Climate Change?

There aren’t enough jobs in town for the residents who live here. So many of them have to commute 20 to 40 miles to work, as I discussed in the Fundamentals of Carrboro post.

Eliminating parking requirements, as described in Implementation Strategy 4.1.c on page 48 of the chapter, can make it easier to build mixed-use and commercial buildings in town, and provide more jobs locally.

4.1 c) Update parking requirements to consider adjustments or removal of minimum requirements for affordable housing, accessible
dwelling units, and mixed-use development to reduce impervious surfaces and make more efficient use of land. – Carrboro Connects

If we can house more jobs in downtown Carrboro, we have the potential to convert climate-intensive car commutes from Carrboro to RTP, Durham, and Raleigh to walk, e-bike or local bus trips on the Chapel Hill Transit F, J, CM, or CW bus, and reduce emissions of Carrboro residents.

Eliminating parking requirements can also help build more small housing units on the same land, making it easier to live in a community that is prioritizing walking and biking, which have no emissions. Removing parking requirements is also addressed in strategy 4.2 a on page 29 of the Implementation Chapter.

4.2 a) Remove minimum vehicular parking requirements for residential development close to transit.* Lower vehicular parking requirements
for all residential uses, including ADUs.

On examination, creating a 1/2-mile buffer around the transit routes in town (a standard distance for a reasonable walk to a bus stop) actually puts MOST of the town in an area that would be eligible for removing parking requirements.

After creating the map, I realize it is also missing the F route, which did not run when this bus route layer was created, so the white boundary should encompass even more of North Carrboro. I’d say we’re talking 75% to 80% of the town is in the end-requirements-near-transit area.

The Easiest Path Is the Best Path: Eliminate All Car Parking Requirements in Carrboro

Given that most of the town falls under the criteria where parking requirements would be eliminated, the best course of action is to make it simple and remove all car parking requirements in Carrboro, period.

It’s also a best practice at this point! In March 2022, Raleigh removed all parking minimums citywide. Dunwoody, GA (population 49,000) did the same in 2019. Graham, North Carolina (population 15,000) has removed parking minimums and applied parking maximums to ALL nonresidential buildings citywide. Albemarle, NC has also eliminated virtually all parking requirements. There’s even a lovely map of all these places and what they’ve done!

What Will Happen When We Eliminate Parking Requirements?

Immediately and for awhile thereafter? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Ending Parking Requirements in Carrboro doesn’t affect any properties as they are currently built in town, and doesn’t affect any currently existing parking spaces. It only ends the practice of requiring a certain number of parking spaces for new development. But over time, with the removal of these requirements, we are likely to see more viable building projects downtown and in our commercial areas become financially viable, allowing us to have more jobs with short commutes in town.

Does This Mean Developers Will Only Build Buildings With No Parking? No.

The 201 N Greensboro project is a great example of what will happen downtown without parking requirements. A developer will bring a project forward, and they will have a financial interest in having some amount of parking that meets the project need. Instead of having to match some arbitrary number in the ordinance, which is not tuned to how many people take the bus or bike in town, they will find a number that works for the project, and assumes (appropriately!) that many people will arrive by bus, bike, and walking.

Finally – How Have Parking Requirements Harmed Carrboro?

Parking requirements increase the cost of housing. From Todd Littman at the Victoria Transport Policy Institute:

“Based on typical affordable housing development costs, one parking space per unit typically increases moderate-priced housing costs approximately 12%, and two parking spaces increases lower-priced housing costs by 25%. Since parking costs increase as a percentage of rent for lower priced housing, and low income households tend to own fewer vehicles, parking minimums are unfair and regressive.” – Littman, Parking Impacts On Housing Affordability, May 2022

Parking requirements also inhibit economic development and job growth by limiting the financially viable buildings that can be constructed. Downtown Carrboro is a perfect case study on this point. The Triangle has been undergoing a roaring population and job expansion over two decades, and other than the 300 East Main project, which was entitled in the 2004 – 2007 timeline, and built between 2007 and 2013, we have not had a new given permission to build in our downtown core* until a few months ago, when the town gave 201 N Greensboro a green light – after letting the developer go below the required number of parking spaces, without which, the building was not likely to be financially feasible.

It’s also worth noting that the only other building approved downtown since that time is the 203 Project, which is being built with public money and does not have to meet a financial profit test to be built. Those expensive parking spaces at $48,000 per space would render any private development downtown financially impossible.

So when you ask yourself: “gee, a lot of other communities, even Graham out in Alamance County are seeing quality new development downtown, but Carrboro isn’t, why is that?”

The answer is that our parking requirements have basically told developers who look into a project that the math to pay for parking isn’t going to work out, so the jobs and tax base that would like to settle here goes elsewhere.

There are many other policy changes that need to happen to achieve the goals in the Carrboro Connects comprehensive plan. Eliminating parking requirements is a necessary first step and a good way to start moving towards those goals. I hope that we’ll see this item on a Carrboro Town Council agenda sometime in October.

*I’m considering Shelton Station to be outside the downtown core

Carr-Connects-11-ImplementationDownload

The Morgan Creek Greenway Will Be a Great Asset for Carrboro – Let’s Include Lighting to Maximize Its Benefits

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On Saturday, August 27th, Carrboro Town staff hosted a tour of what will be Phase 1 of the Carrboro portion of the Morgan Creek Greenway.

Morgan Creek Greenway Overview

The Morgan Creek Greenway is a regional greenway connection across southern Chapel Hill and Carrboro with many years of planning behind it. Our family has ridden on the existing portion of the greenway for years and it is delightful. Here is a “sights and sounds” video I made in 2016. Notice what a safe and low-stress riding environment it is for children. (and people of all ages and cycling abilities)

The map below shows the existing sections of the Morgan Creek Greenway, which connects to Merritt’s Pasture, and the Fan Branch Trail, which connects the Morgan Creek Greenway to Southern Village. The red box near Smith Level Rd indicates where Phase 1 of the Carrboro portion of the greenway will be built.

Existing Morgan Creek Greenway in Purple, Carrboro Phase 1 in Red Box

The Carrboro Portion of the Morgan Creek Greenway

The Town put together a Morgan Creek Greenway Conceptual Master Plan Report(PDF) in 2010 to outline the possibilities of what full implementation could look like. The original master plan alignment is shown below. Again, the red box indicates Phase 1.

Morgan Creek Greenway Master Plan, Phase 1 in Red Box

Current Phase 1 Design Features

The greenway is currently at 30% design. This is a portion of the engineering process when many major things have been figured out, but there is still an opportunity for some adjustments to be made to the path of the greenway.

The current design proposes the following:

  • A sidewalk from Smith Level Road and public works drive leading from the street down to the greenway
  • A connection under the Smith Level Road bridge to the portion of the trail that the Town of Chapel Hill is working on
  • The greenway proceeding on town property outside of the Public Works facility fence along the north side of the creek
Greenway will run to the left of the fence outside of Carrboro Public Works
  • A sidewalk access into the cul-de-sac at the bottom of Abbey Lane by Canterbury townhomes and another access point further up on Abbey Lane directly across from Friar Lane
  • A bridge (in maroon, at right below) over the small creek that passes under Public Works Drive
  • A bridge (in maroon, at left below) crossing Morgan Creek to the south side of the creek and a turnaround where the future Phase 2 section of the greenway will begin
Carrboro Portion of Morgan Creek Greenway: Phase 1

Design Analysis and Recommendations for Improvement in the Next Design Milestone

Overall, there’s a lot to like about this design. A bridge under Smith Level Road to the Chapel Hill section ensures this will be a Level of Traffic Stress 1 facility, suitable for children and senior citizens. This is the gold standard of bicycling safety and comfort in terms of protection from motor vehicles. The two different access points to Abbey Lane ensure that nobody has to significantly backtrack out of the neighborhood to go east or west when the full trail is built out.

The most important opportunity for improvement in this design is to include lighting as part of the trail.

The Frances Shetley bikeway in Carrboro is heavily used and beloved by neighbors, and one of the key reasons is that it has excellent lighting that makes it useful after dark. (see left side of trail picture below) There are even new lighting types that reduce or completely eliminate upward light pollution by ensuring the light emitted only goes down. The International Dark Sky association maintains a list of compliant lights that can make the Morgan Creek Greenway as useful as possible while meeting dark sky goals.

For the 60% and final design of this greenway, the town should ask the engineering team to incorporate dark-sky compliant lighting for the trail into the design.

Shetley Greenway with Lights Near Carrboro Elementary School

Improving Public Process: Notify Everyone

Finally, one place where the Town continues to use an outdated practice is to notify near neighborhoods of a project meeting, but not the broader community. I only learned about this event because we own property within a certain number of feet of the project location. But this is supposed to be a REGIONAL bike-ped project that is part of a multi-town plan in Chapel Hill and Carrboro.

There’s no reason this project and commenting on how to improve it should be a privilege of nearby neighbors, and not the whole town, and even our neighbors in Chapel Hill who might use it as well. Numerous studies have shown how notifying homeowners in near neighborhoods around projects ultimately biases processes towards favoring participation among older, wealthier and whiter participants. And frankly, while the crowd of nearly 50 who attended were largely enthusiastic about the trail, and that was great to see – they also largely fit the narrow demographics of this outdated notification method. Given that 33% to 38% of the population of the Census tracts that would be served by the trail are home to non-white residents, we probably could have done better at reaching those residents.

Let’s work to broaden the conversation from here on out, shall we?

The Fundamentals of Carrboro

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Carrboro Town Hall

Carrboro has a relatively new (and yet deeply experienced) Mayor, a new town manager, and the most progressive town council in recent memory.

This new leadership team has settled into place and Carrboro recently adopted its first ever Comprehensive Plan for the town, declaring that its two overarching principles are making Carrboro a place that advances Racial Justice and takes Climate Action.

Now that the Carrboro Connects plan is adopted, will it move us in the directions described above? Are the strategies proposed to move ahead feasible for a town with budget and staff capacity the size of Carrboro, and will they be designed to leverage our assets, or be more dependent on the goodwill of other partners to be executed?

To answer these questions, we’ve got to start with an accounting of Carrboro’s place in the world, and our challenges and opportunities. Below I present what I see as the lay of the land, what I will refer to going forward as The Fundamentals of Carrboro. Let’s begin.

Fundamental #1: Carrboro is part of the Triangle economy, and except for UNC, it is far from all of the region’s other major job centers.

Traditionally, the Triangle regional economy has centered on employment opportunities in Wake, Durham, and Orange counties. Carrboro sits very close to one of the densest job clusters in the region with UNC and UNC Hospital. Downtown Chapel Hill and Downtown Carrboro could also be considered part of this cluster. But most of the rest of Carrboro is adjacent to low-density suburban Chapel Hill neighborhoods or the Orange County rural buffer. The rural buffer has few to zero job opportunities now and will not likely add them in the future. East Chapel Hill may hold more jobs in the future, but development cycles in Chapel Hill are long and slow. Except for those Carrboro-ers that work at or adjacent to UNC, most Carrboro residents are traveling 10-20 miles each way to work in Durham or RTP, or 30-40 miles to work in Raleigh. Increasing suburban growth across the region and no high capacity transit planned for Carrboro in the next 30 years means that driving to these far-flung jobs will only get more challenging for Carrboro residents.

Unless we figure out how to grow a larger base of jobs here in town, Carrboro residents will have an increasingly difficult time accessing a wide variety of jobs in other communities in the region. If like me, you are a parent who finds Carrboro a good place to raise a child, this situation increases the likelihood that the kids we love to raise here will move away to find work.

Fundamental #2: Our tax base is 86% residential and only 14% commercial.

We have a very high dependence on residential property tax to pay for town operations. If we can’t grow the commercial tax base, the funding for all of Carrboro’s lofty goals will be paid for most heavily through residential property taxes, which…raise the cost of housing.

Fundamental #3: Carrboro is part of, and heavily influenced by, the Chapel Hill real estate market. Both towns have made choices to grow slower than the region, with significant consequences.

Over the past decade, all the other communities surrounding Chapel Hill and Carrboro have grown by at least 20%, while Chapel Hill and Carrboro have grown at less than half the rate of the others. (Durham, while not listed, is also over 20%).

Wikipedia

Growing this slowly is A POLICY CHOICE that has been repeatedly made by both the Chapel Hill and Carrboro town councils.

The scarcity of new housing in both communities for a growing population has a predictable result, nearly half of our renters are cost-burdened:

Carolina Chamber State of the Community Report

This means that since Carrboro is adjacent to another slow-growing town, Chapel Hill’s scarcity of housing also drives up our prices and rents, and the difficulty of building in either of the two towns sends jobs elsewhere.

What does growing slower and becoming more expensive have to do with Racial Justice? Due to a host of systemic discriminatory phenomena, from redlining to urban renewal to hiring discrimination to real estate appraisals, we have a significant wealth gap in the United States between white and non-white households.

Median Net Worth By Race (Federal Reserve, 2019)

This means that when lower-income residents struggle to afford to live in Carrboro, they are much more likely to be black and brown residents. Our current development patterns have us on a glide path to being an increasingly older, wealthier, and whiter town. This outcome is far from the values Carrboro professes to hold.

What does growing slower have to do with Climate Action?

The Cool Climate Network at UC-Berkeley modeled a bunch of policy actions to see how much they would reduce GHG emissions. The data above is for the City of Sacramento. Look at how much urban infill outperforms. The biggest source of GHGs in the US is transportation, and urban infill can convert driving trips to walking, turning the most polluting trips into zero-emissions exercise. That’s why it makes such an impact.

Fundamental #4: Carrboro does not have the capacity to build affordable housing at scale.

Building new affordable housing units is expensive, and while Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill have the financial and staff capacity to do Low Income Housing Tax Credit projects like Willard Street Apartments in Durham or Greenfield Commons in Chapel Hill, Carrboro presently lacks both the resources and staff to produce and fund new affordable housing at this level.

This doesn’t mean Carrboro shouldn’t pursue affordable housing initiatives; we most certainly should. What it means is that we should be thinking about how to increase Carrboro’s capacity to meet our goals just as we define those goals in our Comprehensive Plan.

This capacity expansion will demand financial resources and technical skill, likely through the hiring of new town employees.

Fundamental #5: We are the people we’ve been waiting for.

If you’ve followed state government or federal government policy recently, it’s fair to say that if our plans rely on outside partners to contribute significant amounts of funding to achieve our goals, then we could be waiting for a long time. To paraphrase Barack Obama, Carrboro’s plans should embrace the idea that “we are the people we’ve been waiting for.”

Our elected leaders should certainly try to build partnerships with other levels of government to advance community goals. The soon-to-break-ground 203 Project, featuring a new library in Carrboro, is a great example of the town and Orange County working together. However, excellent outcomes like this are more often the exception than the rule, and while we should embrace those opportunities when they arise, we should not count on them to achieve our goals.

Fundamental #6: Carrboro has assets to pursue its goals, but the town is not taking full advantage of those assets to reach its goals more quickly – YET.

Carrboro has some powerful things going for it. While far from many jobs in the Triangle region, it is very close to a big job center in UNC, including many well-paying jobs. The University and UNC hospital also aren’t going anywhere, which means that even in recessions, that job base will likely remain present and strong.

Carrboro and Chapel Hill share the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School System, which is one of the highest-regarded and best funded in the state of North Carolina. As a former college admissions counselor, I can tell you that its high schools are well-regarded both in-state and nationally.

We have a downtown that has a strong local business flavor. Our town commons hosts a nationally recognized Farmers Market.

Our fare-free bus system, Chapel Hill Transit, carries a very high number of passengers for a community of this size, and has helped LOWER most traffic counts in town compared to the early 2000s, despite growing population in both communities.

These are just some of the things that make our community a good place to live, and makes the land beneath our buildings quite valuable. But not all buildings are created equal, and on a per-acre basis, our more densely developed buildings provide significantly more tax revenue per acre to pursue our community goals. In 2013, the Chamber hired a consulting firm, Urban 3, to report on the tax productivity per acre in Orange County. The most productive building in Carrboro at that time was the Hampton Inn.

Tax value per acre (Carolina Chamber / Urban 3/ Joe Minicozzi)

Putting it all together – Carrboro can meet a lot of goals by using our valuable land differently, and more intensely. We can build more housing, and make room for new neighbors, while helping current ones stay in town. We can provide space for new job opportunities, so our residents can shorten their commutes, and their emissions. Doing both will also bring in new tax revenue to help pay for the big goals the town wishes to pursue.

Equally important is that how the town grows is mostly controlled by choices made by the Carrboro Town Council.

The 2022 – 2023 Town Council session presents an ideal time to begin making a transition to a greener and more inclusive future. This coming year on the blog will be dedicated to putting forth strategies to make this happen.

A Review of the Carrboro Connects Plan Adoption Draft

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On Tuesday, May 10th, the Carrboro Town Council will have its first opportunity to adopt its first-ever comprehensive plan. The fact that our town has reached this point after not having a plan for so long is commendable, and everyone who has helped propel this plan forward, especially in the pandemic, should be proud of their efforts.

That said, the Adoption Draft still contains some places where it equivocates instead of sets direction, and those should be improved ahead of final adoption.

Must-Address Changes In the Adoption Draft

Parking Requirements: Still Getting It Wrong
What the Adoption Draft Says: “Investigate lowering parking requirements…”, “reduce negative effects of parking requirements” “update requirements to remove minimum requirements for residential development close to transit.”

What the Plan SHOULD Say (Best): Parking requirements are hereby eliminated in Carrboro with the adoption of this plan.

What the Plan COULD Say (Acceptable): Parking requirements are hereby eliminated in Carrboro within all downtown districts (list here), future growth centers identified in this plan and within ¼-mile of all transit routes. Parking requirements in the remainder of town are hereby reduced to no more than 1 space per dwelling unit, and all applicants are encouraged to propose alternative parking ratios for their projects. These changes are effective upon adoption of this plan.


Why: Removing parking requirements DOES NOT MEAN that projects will not have any parking; it simply means that developers of projects we would like to see in town do not have to curtail their ability to meet our goals in order to meet an arbitrary number. We can see this right now with the 201 N Greensboro Project, where the code requires 50+ spaces for no good reason, and the developer is proposing 43. This is the number that meets Transportation Management Goals best that also works to obtain lender support for the project. If we want economic development, more jobs in town, and the tax base that comes with it, we need to stop making developers beg for this. In fact, letting them figure out what the project truly needs HELPS us because parking is expensive, and developers will be financially incentivized to spend time figuring out how to divert money formerly earmarked for baseless parking requirements into more important items like affordable housing units and green infrastructure.

I can only imagine that these requirements are hanging around in the draft, particularly for commercial uses, because of hypothetical concerns that if new commercial development does not have parking requirements, it will put pressure on existing parking for current businesses. This is only potentially a problem if we continue to do nothing to manage our parking downtown.

The town must grapple with this truth: we have had very limited private investment downtown through one of our region’s most continuous massive boom periods because the parking requirements are effectively eliminating proposals before they start. The changes in East Chapel Hill and many parts of Durham are a testament to how much Carrboro has shunned economic growth in the past decade. Maintaining parking requirements to address this concern is a commitment to stymie development downtown, a commitment to NOT capture a larger share of the regional economy, and it is the town telegraphing that it anticipates that indecision and non-action on pricing parking downtown will persist.

In other words, maintaining parking requirements is waving a big flag that the plan is more committed to keeping the status quo than raising funds through new compact, walkable development to address climate change and racial equity.

The plan should not pass with the current lack of action on parking requirements. If it does, the staff and/or council should say WHY this strategy is preferable to elimination. I get that implementing parking pricing in town has a lot of culture change to process and requires a lot of thought. But this is a no-brainer. Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Durham, and GRAHAM, North Carolina (GRAHAM!) have all removed parking requirements.

Our adoption draft plan is scheduled to “Conduct financial analysis of benefits of reduced parking requirements” in 2024. This is ridiculous. The idea that there’s something left to study that makes them more important in Carrboro than in other jurisdictions is comical. Mayor and Council, pull the trigger and save us all years of meaningless debate. End parking requirements in Carrboro with passage of this plan.

Open Space In New Development: Still Encouraging Sprawl and Inhibiting Climate-Friendly Density
What the Adoption Draft Says: “the Town is committed to improving ecosystem quality, recognizing the dual benefits for quality of life and climate change resiliency and its importance to town identity. For example, in 1995, the land use ordinance required that 40% of open space be preserved in all new developments. In 2014, the tree canopy coverage standards were updated to include at least 40% canopy coverage on residential land.”

What the Plan Should Say: “The town recognizes that while well-intentioned, the requirements for 40% open space in new development, especially when coupled with parking requirements, largely have worked to prevent development downtown and along transit corridors and encouraged it along the edges of the town. The ordinance is hereby adjusted to reduce both coverages from 40% to 15%, and that the open space requirement can be met by a combination of open space and green roof facilities.”


Why: We must move beyond the idea that because we can see more green right in front of our eyes, that we have made the most green development choice possible. Indeed, Mebane and Chatham County are booming with large lot development that disturbs much more land than urban development in Chapel Hill or Carrboro would because of standards like these. Urban communities can have density and tons of greenery. Any visit to Savannah, GA proves this on every block.


Get Specific About What “More Lots” Means for ADUs
What the Adoption Draft Says: “Reform ADU standards in the Land Use Ordinance to allow for ADUs on more lots.”


What the Plan Should Say: “Reform ADU standards in the Land Use Ordinance to allow for ADUs on more than 50% of single family lots in town.


Why: We don’t want to go through a long process to enable 5-10 ADUs to be built in town. We want to enable dozens or hundreds of them. Set a goal for making ADU viability the NORM rather than the exception, and tune ADU eligibility to exceed 50% of existing single family lots in town.

Make Decisions In This Plan To Avoid Overlong Timelines
The Timeframes of when to do things in the plan are either “1 to 5 years” or “6+ years.” How can the staff build a reasonable workplan off of this? How can we hold anyone accountable. To sustain momentum out of the adoption, the town should have a relatively short list of priority actions to be addressed by 6, 12, and 18 months from adoption.

Then there should be a 1.5 to 3 year bucket of actions. Then 3 to 5 years; then 6+.

But more importantly, MORE DECISIONS SHOULD BE MADE NOW.

Under land use, it says for 2022-2023: “Determine priority areas to conduct small area plans such as key corridors identified in the comprehensive plan and possible updates to existing
small area plans based on the comprehensive plan. Determination should consider race & equity and climate action criteria.”

Why can’t this be done as part of the plan? We have opportunity sites in the plan. We have engaged the largest group of diverse audiences in the Town’s history. Why can’t we put those priority areas in the plan today? How could we have done all this work and not be able to figure out where these priority areas should be already? Chapel Hill’s 2020 plan identified Future Focus Areas as part of its adoption; surely we can do the same.

The rest of the plan should be screened for other decisions that can simply be made NOW.

It is worth stating that one of the reasons that it is important to get as much policy direction set in this document is that outside of processes like this and the 203 Project where consultant resources were engaged, the town has struggled to advance any significant policy changes in planning ordinances and regulations that move the needle on our problems. We may need a larger planning staff that dedicates more time to changing regulations to fit the plan to create this capacity. We may need the Council to set shorter time limits for project reviews and to put finite bounds on public engagement processes that have previously over-privileged wealthy homeowners at the expense of everyone else. But more than anything, we need the Council to provide leadership and make decisions. That’s the biggest barrier between the Town and its goals in this plan.

Affordable Housing on Town Land Presents an Opportunity for Carrboro – and a Character Test

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This blog post is an overview of a community conversation going on in Carrboro, NC, about the town’s plan to build affordable housing on town-owned land.

The Big Picture: Our Housing Challenge

But first: how expensive is it to live in Carrboro? We need to put things in perspective. Before we grapple with this question, watch this 90 second video from the Raleigh News and Observer yesterday with the volume on. Take a listen to Monique Edwards, who is narrating the scene at a showing for a house that is being sold for $260,000 in Raleigh.

 

Now that we’ve set the scene, here are the median listing prices for homes in our area from realtor.com as of February 23, 2022:

Let it sink in- the median home for sale in Carrboro is priced 85% higher than the one in this video.

Carrboro’s Strategy to Build Affordable Housing on Town-Owned Land

Here’s what’s happening: on February 8th, 2022, the Carrboro Town Council approved a strategy to create affordable housing on Town-owned land. This approval represents the culmination of several years of work, including:

  • Town Council adopting Affordable Housing Goals and Strategies (June 2014)
  • Updating those strategy documents (March 2015)
  • Affirming via the Town Attorney that Carrboro has the authority to provide affordable housing in general, and on town-on land specifically (February 2018)

The most recent step has been for the Town to review land it owns to see which sites are most suitable for building affordable housing. Building affordable homes on publicly owned land is a common strategy for municipalities in North Carolina, which lacks the legislative support for tools like rent control and inclusionary zoning that are available in other states.

The Town reviewed 47 parcels, and narrowed the list down to three sites with the most potential after excluding other sites in the list of 47 that were any of the following categories:

1) Within a conservation easement
2) Inside a Long-Term Interest Areas (WASMPBA)
3) No water or sewer nearby
4) Within 100 year floodplain
5) Within dedicated right-of-way
6) Parcel completely developed
7) Inside Rural Buffer zoning

The Town Council unanimously endorsed this strategy at the meeting on February 8th, and it was reported on by Chapelboro.com on February 16th.

Where are the sites?

  • 106 Hill Street (three homes already being built)
  • Crest Street
  • 1814-1816 Pathway Drive

Community Response

After the Chapelboro story, email lists around town began receiving invitations to a meeting scheduled by neighbors of the Pathway Drive site on Saturday, February 19th. As someone with a long interest and professional background in these topics, I attended the meeting. About 50 to 75 people gathered in a cul-de-sac near the proposed Pathway Drive site to share their thoughts and concerns about the proposal with each other, and Councilmember Randee Haven O’Donnell took questions.

While I’m not going to spend time detailing lots of comments, I think it is fair to say that the majority of those in attendance were first and foremost trying to learn what is going on. Beyond that, I think it is also fair to say that there were a few individuals who think that affordable housing at the Pathway site represents a significant opportunity for the community, and several more who have concerns.

But while this story may be new to Carrboro, it has all the ingredients of a disheartening local government controversy that we see time and again in communities that vote in very high percentages for Democratic candidates in national elections.

A Local Story In a National Moment

I was going to write a few paragraphs about this, but then I remembered that the New York Times did a fabulous video on this recently. Start at the 4 minute mark, and go to 7:15. This is a better primer than anything I could write.

This topic has also been addressed in Richard Reeves’ book Dream Hoarders, where he takes a look at how anti-development activism locks lower income children out of better school systems, and limits social mobility:

“…homes near good elementary schools are more expensive: about two and a half times as much as those near the poorer-performing schools, according to an analysis by Jonathan Rothwell. But the gap is much wider in metropolitan areas with more restrictive zoning. ‘A change in permitted zoning from the most restrictive to the least restrictive would close at least 50% of the observed gap between the most unequal metropolitan area and the least, in terms of neighborhood inequality,” Rothwell finds. Loosening zoning regulations would reduce the housing cost gap and by extension narrow educational inequalities.”

So…how similar is this conversation we’re having in Carrboro to the national trend?

I don’t need to review how Carrboro votes in national election. And I think everyone is aware we have one of the top-rated school systems in North Carolina, and that McDougle Elementary and Middle schools are well regarded. But let’s look at Census data. We have two sites up for discussion since the third one is already being built upon.

Here is a map of the Crest Street and Pathway Drive sites, overlaid on median income by census tract from the American Community Survey (ACS):

The Pathway site is in one of the highest income neighborhoods in Carrboro, with a median income over $130,000, which is approaching double the Orange County median household income of around $71,000.

And also percent white by census tract from the ACS tables on race and ethnicity:

The Pathway site is in a census tract that is 81% white, whereas Carrboro as a whole is 62% white. (2020 Census)

On my way home that evening, I counted seven Black Lives Matter yard signs on the way back to North Greensboro Street. It was also hard to miss this larger banner one block from where the meeting was held.So yes, while every college town development tussle has its own nuances, this is a conversation that could very easily end in dispiriting outcomes like Boulder residents opposing affordable housing to protect firefly habitats and limit “pet density.”

Can We Have A Better Conversation In Carrboro?

I sure hope so. With that in mind, I’ve got some suggestions for everybody.

Suggestions for the Town

For the town staff:

1. The clearest take-away from the meeting I attended near the Pathway site is that the process that got from 47 sites to 3 sites is a mystery to everyone. I don’t think the Town intended it to be that way, but I spent some time looking around the town website and digging through 2018 meeting minutes and I couldn’t find what I think a lot of people would like to see – a spreadsheet that lists all of the sites, which criteria they met and failed to meet, and so forth. I think it’s imperative to share that data with the community.

2. Future discussion of these projects needs to have some basic educational content about what is and what isn’t possible with affordable housing in North Carolina and Carrboro. Rent control? Illegal. Requiring affordable units in new development? Not allowed under standard zoning in NC. Can we negotiate with a for-profit developer? Yes, but density bonuses are tricky and when Durham offered 3 bonus market rate units for every 1 affordable unit supplied a few years back, not one developer took them up on it. These are some of the reasons why non-profit developers building on public-owned land are often how affordable housing gets delivered these days.

I’m a professional urban planner and these things are not common knowledge even in our circles. The public shouldn’t be expected to navigate the what-ifs without more background on why other things may not be possible. Please help the community understand why certain things are and are not on the table.

3. Share more information about how our Stormwater Utility (and the money it collects) are designed to help with addressing flooding issues. It’s clear there are legitimate flooding concerns already being dealt with by neighbors, and talking about how the town can address those on a parallel path to any new home construction will be valuable.

Suggestions for Those With Good Faith Concerns About the Pathway Project

4. Most importantly – go look at some multifamily home communities nearby. There are many that are quite beautiful and sought-after places to live. Take pictures of things you don’t like to share with town staff, but crucially, also take pictures of things you DO LIKE so that if something does get built, it is as informed by your goals as much as possible.

There are lots of ways to put 24 to 36 units on a small number of acres, and a sloping landline can sometimes help. Stacked townhomes with a one-floor condo on top of a two-story townhouse (or vice versa) create a three-story building type that makes it easier to build cost-efficiently while preserving more trees.

We have some interesting examples around here – the best may be Village West off of Estes Drive:

The two cohousing communities of Arcadia and Pacifica also offer some interesting, compact building techniques. I like how little land the parking at Pacifica takes up. That said, both of those communities were designed with solar access in mind, so they have very few trees amid the homes, with significant trees at the edge of their buildings. I wonder if some mix of the parking approach at Pacifica and the building type from Village West could meet the town’s goals while leaving more land undisturbed, which seems to be a goal of several neighbors.

5. Accept that while this may have felt like surprising news, the Town did not get to this point casually or without careful consideration. I hope the Town does share their list of 47 town-owned sites and the attributes of those that didn’t make the cut.  But be prepared to find out that even after the data is released, that the Pathway site is still probably the best site that the town controls to build the most affordable housing at one time.

Suggestions for the Media

In this conversation, there will be misinformation brought up, and it can’t be put on an equal plane with real technical expertise. I’ve seen reporting in one local outlet that sounds too frequently like this: “The professional stormwater engineer certified that the design can detain all the runoff from a 125-year storm using its cistern and best management practices, but a person with a strongly held opinion said that it will flood just like all the other stuff in the neighborhood [that was built before modern stormwater rules] does.”

6. Don’t do this. If you believe that reporting on an assertion that isn’t supported by technical expertise is crucial to a story, use a truth sandwich when sharing it.

Suggestions for Affordable Housing Advocates

In every local government controversy, our elected officials are besieged with emails about what people are mad about, afraid of, and against, and they rarely get emails about what people are excited about, hopeful for, or supportive of.

7. If you think building affordable housing is important, don’t just watch this process, write in and tell the town council. You can write to council@townofcarrboro.org.

Suggestion For The Town Council: Help Us Pass This Character Test

Sometimes it’s easy to tell what the right thing to do is, and hard to follow through on it. Our town’s draft comprehensive plan is built on pillars of Racial Equity and Climate Action. How do those fare if we miss this opportunity? Well, if lower-income families who were going to live at the Pathway Drive site wind up living somewhere else, it’s probably most likely somewhere with lower housing costs outside of Chapel Hill/Carrboro, and Orange County. The medical staff who check people in at my doctor’s office in Carrboro drive in from Roxboro and Siler City, respectively. The emissions of commute trips that long are a climate issue. I’m sure they’d live closer if they could afford it. From a racial equity point of view, researchers have documented how much the zipcode you grow up in can influence your life trajectory. So many of us live here because we believe this is true in Carrboro for our children. Being generous with that opportunity in 27510 is one of the best contributions we can make to racial equity.

In closing, at the community meeting last Saturday, I was heartened to hear Council member Randee Haven O’Donnell say that we absolutely must avoid pitting affordable housing and environmental goals against each other, and that this project is an opportunity to build a new model for how a community can come together to build affordable housing, and share all that we love about Carrboro with others.

May it be so. I believe this Town Council can lead us there.

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.

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!

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.