Key Take-away From Summer Streets: It’s Time For Autumn Streets

Posted on July 22, 2015 by patrick

Sunday, July 19th, from 8:00 am to 2:00 pm, Carrboro held its second “Summer Streets” (Herald Sun article) event, in which the block of Weaver St between Main St and North Greensboro St was opened to people and closed to cars. For the umpteenth time in the decade and a half I’ve lived here, the Town closed this portion of Weaver Street with no visible negative impacts to traffic or downtown in general.

As usual, people came out and enjoyed a calm public space, kids drew with chalk, and everyone generally had a grand time relaxing, even with 100-degree heat index temperatures. People did yoga, hung out in folding chairs just talking, and one of our Aldermen even held “office hours” for the second time during such an event.

What does opening a street to people do for a town? Stuff like this:

Kurt Stolka and his 3-year-old son walked around Weaver Street after playing a game of soccer in the street.

He said when there is traffic on Weaver Street, “I just can’t feel calm letting my kids play. You have to constantly keep an eye on them.”

But the Summer Streets program helps parents like him relax, he said.

Carrboro Summer Streets: Safe, Happy Kids Dancing on Yellow Lines

Kurt is absolutely correct. I took the picture to the right at the 2012 Carrboro Music Festival. I was able to take this photo because I did not have to hold DC’s hand in a vise grip in downtown Carrboro to provide protection from the greatest danger to children, cars. Why is this so important? Sure, I can take DC to Wilson Park, Carrboro Elementary School, McDougle School, or MLK Park and take advantage of any of the stuff there in the same way, but none of those places have the amenities of downtown in terms of food, commerce, and culture.

Back in May, WCHL reported that the Town was only going to hold three Summer Streets events, and to end them at 2:00 pm each time. This was due to concerns from “…local business owners inside Carr Mill Mall who don’t love the idea. They worry the street closures will keep shoppers away from the mall.”

Given the people-attracting quality a street closure can provide, I was baffled by these concerns. Fortunately, the latest Herald-Sun article reports:

“…[Carrboro Economic Development Director Annette] Stone said that after last month’s event, she sent out an email to business owners. She said she didn’t receive any negative responses and several businesses expressed support for the program.

Seeing as there appears to be broad agreement that there’s not problem here, let’s not take any more half-measures in managing what could be one of our community’s marquee public spaces- let’s set up an “Autumn Streets” program that starts the first Sunday in September and runs EVERY SUNDAY until the Sunday before Thanksgiving, from 8:00 am to 9:00 or 10:00 pm.

That would be twelve glorious autumn days to come downtown and relax, and twelve other great opportunities to try ways to program the block to engage residents. There are plenty of tourism co-promotion opportunities between UNC football games, 2nd Friday Art Walks, etc to take advantage of as well to engage visitors.

If you think this is a good idea, please email the Carrboro Board of Aldermen and let them know “I support weekly Autumn Streets!”

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.

Displacement Without Development: Filtering Up on North Greensboro Street

Posted on February 24, 2015 by patrick

Last week I described the real estate market phenomenon known as “filtering,” and discussed a recent example in Carrboro where Abbey Court filtered from a lower rental submarket to a higher rental submarket and became Collins Crossing.

Displacement Without Development

Today I’m going to discuss another local example of where lower-rent units are disappearing and higher-rent units are taking their place. As you continue reading, keep in mind what is ultimately the most important part of this post – that new development is completely absent from the neighborhood real estate market, and yet rents are rising. When rents in existing buildings are rising, the socioeconomic status of the people living there is going to change. (as we saw last week)

Since properties filtering up and down is driven by the decisions of many individual landlords, a lot of filtering happens one property at a time, and thus can be hard to spot. However, Carrboro has one smaller-property hotspot for filtering up these days: North Greensboro Street, just north and south of Estes Drive Extension.

Let me show you what I mean, and also show you the best free software tool available to track filtering visually: Google Street View. If you look at the date of any Google Street View photo and see a clock to the left of it, that means there should be older views available as well. For neighborhoods currently seeing changes and investment, this is a great way of doing before and after comparisons. With that in mind, let’s explore North Greensboro Street in Carrboro in the pictures below.

Filtering On North Greensboro Street

Here’s 1103 North Greensboro St in 2007:

1103 N Greensboro St – 2007

and “The Wilson” in 2012 (same property)

“The Wilson” – 2012

From a website attempting to sell The Wilson for $2.3 million for its 16 units- the smallest unit is a 2BD/1 BA renting for $905/month for 700 square feet:

The Wilson Apartments are located 1.5 miles from the UNC campus and the commercial hub of Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. The property has been completely renovated with condo quality finishes that include stainless steel appliances, updated baths, hardwood floors and a new metal roof.

Also from their website, here are the improvements the owners of The Wilson made to move to a higher-end rental submarket

Removed baseboard heat & window a/c’s and installed central heat and air in all 16 units – new heat pumps
Removed old shingles, replaced old plywood and installed a new energy efficient standing seam metal roof
Removed all the original single pane windows and installed new Pella low-e vinyl windows
Completely renovated every kitchen; new cabinets, counters, sinks, and appliances – stainless refrigerators with ice makers, ranges, built-in microwaves
All new bathrooms including, tubs, showers, vanities, cabinets, lighting, mirrors and accessories
Installed all new plumbing lines and fixtures inside every unit, sub-meters were installed on some of the units, but are not being utilized at this time
Installed new main sewer line from buildings to the street
Removed the laundry room and installed new, energy efficient stackable washers and dryers in every unit
Painted the exterior brick and re-painted all the interiors
Refinished the existing hardwood floors and “feathered in” new hardwoods in the living and bedroom areas – tile floors installed in the baths
New interior and exterior doors with new hardware
Completely demoed and re-wired all units and the common areas – replaced lighting fixtures with new
Made alterations to floor plans which include, but are not limited to; adding bedrooms (converted 6 units from 2 BD’s to 3 BD’s), removing dividing walls
between kitchens and living areas, creating arched doorways, vaulting the 3rd floor ceilings and capturing common area space (previously un-used) to make
some units larger
Upgraded the landscaping in the courtyard with new plantings and accents,removed overgrowth at the front of the property and planted new trees and shrubs, removed debris and thinned out the woods in the rear of the property to create and view and path to Wilson Park
Added three new porches with standing seam metal roof, all new wood handrails with cedar trim accents and arched pergola in courtyard
Tore down, graded and re-built the retaining wall on the left side of the property
Graded and added gravel in the rear of the property to create more parking spots
Built new property fence along the street and dumpster containment area

Remember that year you spent in grad school at the aging Todd St apartments?

Todd St Apartments, Mid-Renovation – 2007

It’s now known as “The Flats.”

“The Flats” Condominiums – 2012

Here’s a picture of the kitchen and laundry area in one of The Flats units that recently sold for $193,000 according to Zillow. Notice the stainless steel appliances, double-stack modern front-loading laundry equipment, and new counters. This building was built in 1962, but the inside screams 2010 or newer.

The Flats Kitchen/Laundry Investment

One of the more recent conversions is 605 North Greensboro. Here I have put the before and after shots side by side- one from Google Street View, and another photo I took last year.

605 N Greensboro Filters Up in Carrboro

Like many other buildings on the street, 605 N Greensboro now has a name- “Sagebrush,” to signal its upmarket transition.

What Filtering Means for Carrboro and Affordable Housing

In a world where not enough housing gets built to meet market demand, the demand for luxury and high-end-of-the-market housing in a growing metropolitan area will turn middle market units into upper market units via renovation. This is exactly what is happening on North Greensboro Street.

If new housing is built, and it is luxury housing, it will entice some residents seeking a luxury housing experience out of their current units, freeing up those units for renters with a little less income to take their place. This helps put downward pressure on prices through the basic law of supply and demand.

The flip side of this point is that if Carrboro produces a limited amount of new housing units, then the town has adopted a de facto policy to encourage filtering up in various submarkets of the existing housing stock. The landlords on North Greensboro Street have figured this out, and they are making rational capital investments in their rental businesses.

As the Board of Aldermen continue to discuss affordable housing strategies, it is important that they and town staff be aware of filtering occurring in town at large properties (like Abbey Ct/Collins Crossing) and smaller ones (like North Greensboro St), and they think about how to channel the reasonable and natural impulse of landlords to filter their properties up and down to support the town’s broader housing goals.

Filtering: A Word We Need to Understand as We Discuss Affordable Housing

Posted on February 17, 2015 by patrick

Protest of Abbey Court Sale to ASM (photo courtesy of www.chapelboro.com)

When new development occurs in Carrboro, many people ask “how many of the new residential units are going to be affordable?” While this is a good question to ask, the new units in any project are inevitably a small portion of the overall housing stock in the town.

The more important question is “how many of the EXISTING units are becoming more or less affordable?”

New Development = Small Portion of the Housing Supply

The 2012 American Community Survey reported that Carrboro had 9,347 housing units. A recently approved project on North Greensboro Street, Shelton Station, will add 96 units to the town’s supply of housing, which is barely over 1% of units. The debate over a single project’s affordability can make it seem like the prices of the other 99% are affordable, or at least have prices that are holding steady. This is not the case.

Landlords Respond to Rent Conditions and Trends

I’ll let Chris Bradford, the eloquent blogger behind Austin Contrarian, explain this part:

When property values rise, low-quality housing “filters up” to the high-quality housing sub-market. The reason is that rising rents encourage landlords to invest more in the property. When property values fall, high-quality housing “filters down” to the low-quality housing sub-market. The reason is that falling rents encourage landlords to invest less in property. The key in either case is that old housing costs more to maintain than new housing.

He continues:

Every landlord with an old property confronts the same decision: Should I spend the money to keep the property in top shape, or should I let it go?

Keeping the property in top shape allows the landlord to charge more rent. But it also costs the landlord more in maintenance and periodic renovation, especially for old apartments. What the landlord decides to do depends on the current market, his estimate of future demand, and about a million other things. But we know one thing for sure: A landlord is less likely to maintain an apartment in tip-top shape when the rent for tip-top apartments is falling. Declining rents mean a declining return on the maintenance investment. That spells less investment .

Without constant maintenance, apartments deteriorate from “tip top” to “slightly dilapidated.” Renters, sensible people that they are, are not willing to pay as much for bad quality. Rents fall, and the apartments “filter down” into the pool of affordable housing.

Filtering Moves Units From One Housing Submarket to Another

In another one of Bradford’s posts on filtering, he goes on:

People understand that a tight housing market leads landlords to raise rents. What they often don’t seem to understand is that a tight housing market also causes some landlords to invest more money in their properties in order move them into a more expensive submarket. That’s how a shortage of units in the $1,200/month submarket (for example) can hurt someone shopping in the $800/month submarket.

This is a key point about “filtering up.” If there’s a demand for higher-end units in a market that is not being met, middle-market landlords who realize this are likely to invest in their properties and re-position them as higher-end units. This often comes in the form of fresh paint, premium kitchen appliances and countertops, and other modest-cost improvements such as better light fixtures and new carpets. Once these conversions take place, the landlords will then start charging higher-end market rent for their unit, and simultaneously shorten the supply of mid-market apartments by one unit.

Bradford touches briefly on “filtering down,” and makes a good point:

Filtering down happens too, of course. It’s just that no one sends a press release to the Austin Business Journal when they decide to cut back on maintenance and allow their property to slip in to a cheaper submarket.

What’s The Most Prominent Example of Filtering In Carrboro?

One particular property in town has had a place in the spotlight as it has gone through filtering changes in the last few years: Collins Crossing, formerly known as Abbey Court. While the story cannot be completely told using news clips, the following quotes suggest that Abbey Court was “filtering down” through neglect from the middle of the past decade to the time of its sale to Aspen Square Management, and the new management firm has been renovating units, repositioning the property as a student-centric location, and “filtering up” to a higher-rent submarket ever since. Units that once rented in the mid-$500 range a few years ago now rent for more than $900 after the renovations.

June 2012: Abbey Court Sold [emphasis added]

While Blau acknowledges that renovations to the condominium complex are desperately needed to bring things up to code – citing buildings that are unsafe and stairways that are falling apart – because a large percentage of the residents who live in the condominium complex are immigrants, she is concerned that renovations could price them out of the complex.

January 2013: Abbey Court child falls through staircase [emphasis added]

A 10-year-old boy tumbled through a deteriorated stairway at the complex on Nov. 24, three days after Collins Crossing owners notified condo owners of their plan to impose assessment fees.

Carrboro officials gave owners 90 days to make repairs. In the meantime, condo owners have to find the cash within three weeks. It’s unclear what penalty tenants will face if they don’t pay, although Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton says management could impose a lien on the condos. Some residents fear foreclosure.

March 2014: Glowing reviews about Collins Crossing Landscaping on Yelp: [emphasis added]

I moved in right before school started last fall. The landscaping is great and the renovated apartments are awesome. I have so much room/closet space, other then having a tiny sink, the bathroom is perfect. The staff is always more then accommodating, they are some of the nicest women ever. The prices are going up but still quite affordable and the best part is that you can have separate leases. I would definitely recommend this place.

Current (Jan 2015) Collins Crossing Website:

The UNC is our fully renovated 2 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment. It is an ideal floor plan for roommates within biking distance to UNC. It also features a full sized stackable washer and dryer.Starting at $979.

Housing Markets Are Dynamic, And Don’t Require New Development to Experience Price Changes in Submarkets

Carrboro has not seen significant new residential construction over the last several years, and Abbey Court/Collins Crossing is a good case study of how real estate market conditions, independent of the presence or absence of new development- drive how properties can become less affordable.

While the change from Abbey Court to Collins Crossing received significant coverage in the media, in part due to the size of the complex, this is not the only part of town that is filtering up.

Next Tuesday’s post will cover another key location where filtering is presently going on in Carrboro. Have a guess about which part of town it is? Leave it in the comments, and check back on February 24th to see if you got it right.

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?

Transit Tourism Opportunity on Sunday 9/28: Carrboro Music Festival!

Posted on September 26, 2014 by patrick

Carrboro Music Festival

Well, it’s decorative gourd season, friends, and the weather looks perfect this weekend, AND the Carrboro Music Festival is Sunday. I expect to be over there by foot/bike/wagon or some combination thereof, but for Durhamites who feel like Carrboro is a long drive to hang out with 10,000 other music lovers taking in 180 local bands for free, then good news! For the first time ever, you can take Triangle Transit to get you to the festival, as long as you’re willing to do a little walking.

Route 400 leaves Durham Station every hour from 7:00 am to 6:00 pm on Sundays now, and drops you off on Franklin St in Chapel Hill at the Varsity Theater. Just walk due west down Franklin along maybe the nicest stretch of city street in NC, and you’ll arrive in the middle of all the music in about 15 minutes or so.

Buses head back to Durham from the Carolina Coffee Shop (directly across from the Varsity, where you got off) a little after the hour, with the final bus leaving at 6:12 pm.

Here’s a link to the Route 400 bus schedule. Download the Transloc App (Iphone or Android) to track buses in real time and locate stops.

Music starts at 1:00 p.m. so you can easily catch 4-4.5 hours of music before needing to walk back to Chapel Hill to bus it home. Have a great weekend!

Visiting Carrboro and Chapel Hill Without a Car Just Got A Lot Easier

Posted on September 8, 2014 by patrick

New regional bus service on weekends from Triangle Transit is making intercity and interstate travel to and from Chapel Hill/Carrboro without a car easier than it has ever been.

If you try to visit the Research Triangle region of North Carolina without driving your own car here, you will generally arrive by one of three methods:

By Plane – To RDU Airport, which is in between Raleigh and Durham, just north of the town of Morrisville
By Bus – To Durham Station in downtown Durham via Megabus; or to the Raleigh Greyhound station on Capital Blvd
By Train – To the Raleigh, Cary or Durham Amtrak Stations

None of these arrival points are in Chapel Hill or Carrboro, which means if you want to get to our neck of the woods, you need to then either use Triangle Transit’s regional bus service, rent a car, or take an expensive cab/UberX ride.

Before August 2014, Triangle Transit had offered service that stopped serving Chapel Hill around 6:45 pm on Saturdays, and there was no Sunday service at all.

Triangle Transit Expands Weekend Service August 2014

But as of August 18th, 2014 – these gaps in the regional bus schedule have been filled in!

Regional Saturday service now runs as late as the weekday service on routes 400 and 800, and Sunday service runs from 7 am to 7 pm. What this means is that trips that were either impossible or forced a car rental for a weekend visit, can now, in most cases- be accomplished using Triangle Transit regional services, local buses, and walking in the urban core of Chapel Hill and Carrboro. This will give travelers more options, and save them money.

Here’s a quick rundown of your options.

Downtown Durham and Bus 400 or 405 = best Ground Transport Access to Chapel Hill / Carrboro

Piedmont Arrives at Durham Amtrak Station

Arriving by Amtrak in Durham, every train arrival of the entire week except for the last train from Charlotte (#76) on Sunday nights – allows for a successful connection on to Chapel Hill via Triangle Transit bus 400 or 405. Unfortunately, the earliest southbound train out of Durham leaves before the first bus from Chapel Hill each morning reaches Durham. Hopefully this connection will be added in the future.

However, the rest of the daily outbound train schedule in Durham is well served. Amtrak has direct connections from Durham to everywhere Amtrak’s Carolinian and Piedmont travel, including Charlotte, Greensboro, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and DC.

Also arriving in Durham, directly across Chapel Hill Street from the Amtrak Station at the corner of Willard and Chapel Hill, is the one stop for Megabus in the Triangle. Megabus has direct service from Durham to Charlotte, Fayetteville, Richmond, and Washington, DC.

To get from either the Amtrak station or Megabus stop to Chapel Hill / Carrboro, walk to the bus center and connect via routes 400 and 405. 400 runs all day long, and 405, which is slightly faster, runs on the weekdays during rush hour. You can find schedules for bus 400 and 405 here.

To be sure, you could also reach the Triangle by train in Raleigh or Cary, and by Greyhound bus in Raleigh as well. That said, if you’re trying to get to Chapel Hill or Carrboro, your connection will be shorter and more convenient from Durham. The only time this might not be true is if you arrive at the Raleigh Amtrak station by one of the trains that do not stop at Durham, such as the Silver Star, Silver Meteor, and the Palmetto. If this is how you reach the Triangle, use the Trip Planner at www.gotriangle.org for the best way to continue on to Chapel Hill / Carrboro on Triangle Transit.

RDU Airport, Bus 100 and Connect to Bus 800 = best Air Transport Access to Chapel Hill / Carrboro

If you fly into RDU Airport, the bus that will pick you up, no matter whether you land at Terminal 1 or Terminal 2, is Triangle Transit bus 100. Note that this bus follows the same traffic pattern through the airport whether it is going to Raleigh or to the Regional Transit Center (RTC). When 100 arrives, assuming you’re headed for Chapel Hill or Carrboro, just confirm with the driver that you are boarding a 100 bus headed towards the RTC, and you’ll be on your way. The RTC is quite close to the airport, and after departing Terminal 2, you’ll reach the RTC in just under 15 minutes.

Once at the RTC, you will find that every time bus 100 arrives, so do bus 700 (goes to Durham) and bus 800 (goes to Chapel Hill). Board 800, and about 30 to 35 minutes later, you’ll be in Chapel Hill at the UNC Student Union. If you’re headed to downtown Chapel Hill or Carrboro, it’s best to stay on to the first stop past the Morehead Bell Tower (can’t miss it), and then either walk up Columbia Street to Franklin, or if you’ve got heavy luggage, catch any Chapel Hill Transit bus with a name that doesn’t end in “X” at Sitterson Hall heading north to get to downtown, which is only 2 stops away.

Franklin and Columbia Streets – the Heart of Chapel Hill Transit

Now that you’re in downtown Chapel Hill, if you’re at the corner of Franklin and Columbia, you have easy access via Chapel Hill Transit to pretty much everywhere the bus system goes in either Chapel Hill or Carrboro. The F, J, or CW bus will take you to downtown Carrboro in about 7-8 minutes. The NS will take you to Southern Village or the north end of Chapel Hill. The D or F can take you to eastern Chapel Hill.

Transit Information is Text and Smartphone-Ready in the Research Triangle

If you’re reading this for the first time, I can understand how this may all sound a little complicated. That said, if you’re a visitor, there are lots of ways to get customer information about these and other bus services. Perhaps the most useful are the Transloc and Transloc Rider apps in the usual smartphone stores. They are free and integrate real-time arrival information for every bus and every bus stop in the Triangle. You can see the system in action on the web as well at triangle.transloc.com You can also call 919-485-RIDE to speak to customer service representatives who can provide trip planning assistance.

Fares

The base fare for Triangle Transit for a one-way trip is $2.25. Chapel Hill Transit routes within Chapel Hill and Carrboro are free to everyone, so unless you’re planning to ride Triangle Transit multiple times in one day, paying for regional buses by trip with cash is the best, most cost-efficient way to pay. More information on fares, including youth and senior discounts, can be found here.

Morgan Creek Greenway Sets a New Standard for Local Bike Facilities

Posted on July 11, 2014 by patrick

While Chapel Hill and Carrboro have some of the highest rates of walking and cycling for transportation in North Carolina and the Southeast, there is still a lot of work to be done to build a continuous network of bike/ped infrastructure that both IS safe and FEELS safe. The recently published final Chapel Hill Bike Plan notes that one of the primary reasons identified by residents for why they do not ride their bike for transportation is safety. (see pages 25-27 for the excellent Level of Traffic Stress Assessment)

With that in mind, it is critical to recognize the outstanding leap forward that the Morgan Creek Greenway project in southern Chapel Hill represents, and the standard it sets for other future off-road and on-road facilities in the area.

Recently we’ve begun taking family bike rides on the Morgan Creek Greenway, and the reasons are numerous:

It’s safe from cars. The greenway is 10 feet wide and from where we usually begin at a parking lot off of NC 54 to Southern Village, there is not a single roadway to cross thanks to the new Culbreth Rd. underpass. Within Southern Village, the crossings of the streets are on low-speed, 2-lane only roads with limited traffic, 3-way or 4-way stop signs, and pedestrian bulb-outs at the crossing points.
The scenery is terrific – creeks, bridges, honeysuckle bushes, wildlife.
It takes you somewhere- we usually integrate dinner in Southern Village into the roundtrip; the picnic tables outside Pazzo are in the shade late in the day.

Here’s a map of the Morgan Creek Greenway, connected to the Fan Branch Trail, via the Culbreth Rd underpass. While the graphic says “trail segment planned for 2014,” I’m sure that will be updated soon – the trail and underpass are completed and open.

Morgan Creek Greenway (map by Town of Chapel Hill)

While at present, the trail seems to end at a parking lot along NC 54, this project is part of a larger effort to bring the trail all the way to University Lake. Another great benefit of this trail’s current and future alignment is that in addition to the already-served Scroggs Elementary school, there is the potential to also link Culbreth Middle School, Frank Porter Graham Elementary, and Carrboro High School to the same trail. You can take a look at the future potential of this greenway by viewing page 13 of this PDF on the Town of Carrboro website.

By the time the greenway reaches Smith Level Rd, the current project to add bike lanes and sidewalks to Smith Level Rd should be complete to the Morgan Creek Bridge near the Carrboro Public Works facility. This will allow the growing network of on-road bicycle lanes to connect with the off-road network that includes the greenway system.

Everybody who had a hand in making this happen in Chapel Hill should be very proud- it’s a terrific community asset!

Here are a few more photos from various locations along this map.

Bridge Over Morgan Creek

Culbreth Rd Underpass Approach from the South

Fan Branch Trail Section

Looking Through Culbreth Rd Underpass

Thanks for reading!

Carrboro Town Staff Considers Replacing Fidelity St Bike Lanes with Car Parking

Posted on June 24, 2014 by patrick

Carrboro is a progressive town in many ways, but there are a few community characteristics for which the town really stands out- and one of them is Carrboro’s commitment to bicycle infrastructure. Carrboro is currently the only town or city in North Carolina meeting the American Bike League’s “Silver Award” standard and was home to the North Carolina Bike Summit just last year.

That’s why I was quite surprised to peruse Tuesday evening’s Carrboro Board of Aldermen agenda and find the following:

In an effort to better manage the Town’s parking resources, the issue of how to deal with the needs of longer-term parking for business employees arises. Some businesses have requested parking permits from the Town to allow all-day parking for their employees in public lots…The staff has been discussing two options that the Board could exercise in the interim to help with the immediate problem of employee parking. The first option was discussed at the April 15^th meeting and that is for the town to sub-lease out spaces in the Laurel and Weaver Street lots.. A second option that the Board of Aldermen could consider is to use Fidelity Street for permit-only, on-street parking, Monday through Friday 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The street could hold an estimated 100 +/- vehicles. Permits would be issued to Carrboro business owners for use by their employees only.

This is a really bad idea for a lot of reasons that run the gamut from policy substance on bike lanes to policy substance on parking to symbolism to process. Before getting into all of that, though, here is the staff memo statement on the potential impact to the bike lanes on Fidelity St:

Allowing on-street parking on Fidelity Street would impact the bike lanes. Fidelity is a low traffic volume street and cyclists often utilize the traffic lane due to the width of the road and low traffic volume. The width of the street also encourages motorist to speed, therefore on-street parking may act as a traffic calming measure. The Town could paint the bicycle markings in the road, to increase safety. However, on-street parking does affect the Town’s overall number miles of bike lanes. Additional signage would be required to direct parking. The estimated cost of the additional signage is approximately $800.00 and street markings would cost an estimated $5000. This cost would be offset by the fees of the permits to park.

I think this is not stating the impacts clearly enough. What I think this paragraph is trying to say is that the proposal to allow on-street parking on Fidelity Street would REMOVE the bike lanes. The comment “The Town could paint the bicycle markings in the road, to increase safety” seems to suggest that after removing the bike lanes, the Town would paint a few sharrows on the street. As one of my colleagues recently tweeted after Streetsblog recapped a poor decision along these lines in Texas:

To avoid making this a very long post, I’m going to try to provide a quick rundown of a few detail-level reasons why replacing bike lanes with parking on Fidelity Street is likely a mistake, and move on to the two major reasons to try to come up with a better idea.

A Half Dozen of Reasons NOT to Remove Bike Lanes from Fidelity Street

The Town spent years waiting to repave Main Street with last year’s road diet, completing the “missing link” of bike lane coverage in town, linking facilities on Hillsborough Rd, West Poplar Ave, West Main St past the 605 building, Jones Ferry Rd, and yes, Fidelity Street. Now that we’ve linked all these facilities together, let’s not undo the linkage!
Removing bike lanes from Fidelity Street would be in direct conflict with the Two Guiding Principles (see Chapter 5) of the 2009-adopted Carrboro Bike Plan: “Assure safe and convenient bicycle access to all areas of the Town” AND “Promote bic ycles as a viable and attractive means of transportation.” Also not to be missed in this chapter is the plainly-stated Implementation Policy: “Provide bicycle facilities along all collector and arterial streets.”
Issuing parking permits for Fidelity Street only to employees of Carrboro businesses is more or less the removal of an open, all-resident resource (bike lanes) to provide a closed-benefit resource to a mix of residents and non-residents. (leased parking spaces for employees only) The likelihood of the town FILLING Fidelity Street with cars is unlikely when the majority of parking in town will remain free AND be closer to all the employers. Remember, even if only 25% of the spaces are full and the town doesn’t recoup the cost of repaving the street for a several years, the residents still lose their bike lanes.
It’s not clear the town has tried any real Transportation Demand Management (TDM) efforts with their own employees to address this issue; the fact that some of the materials in this item talk about Parks/Rec employees parking in the Weaver Street lot and sometimes even the Greensboro St lot suggest that more could be done here. There are at least 100 parking spaces at Wilson Park, which is about a 3-minute bus ride from the Century Center on the F bus. If the town really wants to promote parking space turnover downtown for local for-profit businesses, then a zero-cost step in the right direction would be encouraging non-law enforcement Town employees who work downtown to park at Wilson Park and take a 3-minute bus ride to and from downtown. I’m not sure how much parking at McDougle School is fully used during the day, but that is another right-on-a-bus-route location where downtown employees could be encouraged to park. Either of these approaches expands capacity downtown without dismantling a part of the bicycle network. Are there any incentives for town employees to carpool or vanpool to Carrboro? Does the town assist employees with bike purchases up to a certain amount? Maybe the town is doing these things already. If they’re not, they should try them.
Best practices in urban parking management literature often encourage curb pricing to promote short-term (1-3 hour) turnover and move long-term parking to decks. Carrboro presently encourages short-term parking in its deck and the Fidelity proposal puts long-term parking on a curb. It would be wise to consider if having our incentives flipped from the best practice position makes sense.
Random parking supply interventions without an overall strategy today are tomorrow’s grandfathered deals that set bad precedent. Let’s avoid doing these things.

But there are two BIG reasons why NOT to remove bike lanes on Fidelity Street and replace it with parking.

Carrboro Needs to Approach “Parking Problems” as “Access Problems”

The worst thing about this proposal is that it suffers from the “when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” syndrome. The staff text is built on the assumption that since complaints have been lodged about long-term parking for downtown employees, they must be solved by creating new parking spaces. This orientation is part of the problem. Instead, the questions that need to be asked are:

Can we get some or all of the employees in question downtown without a car? Yes or no?
Can we do things to convert some of the “no” answers in question 1 to “yes” answers?
Can we better manage parking that already exists, downtown or outside of downtown?

These questions will widen the solution set if pursued in earnest.

But here’s the other big reason to keep bike lanes on Fidelity.

The Future Growth of Cycling in the US (including Carrboro) Depends on the Expansion of Facilities That Don’t Require BRAVERY to Ride On

If we really want to expand bicycling in Carrboro, we have to grapple with the fact that the biggest barrier to this outcome is reducing both real and perceived danger to people riding bikes from cars. Roger Geller’s excellent piece on the Four Types of Transportation Cyclists breaks down Portland, Oregon’s population into the following groups by their proclivity to bike for transportation (as opposed to recreation) purposes, and puts 60% of Portland’s population into a category he describes as “Interested But Concerned,” which he describes as follows:

About 60% of the population. These residents are curious about bicycling…They like riding a bicycle, remembering back to their youths, or to the ride they took last summer on the Springwater, or in the BridgePedal, or at Sun River, and they would like to ride more. But, they are afraid to ride. They don’t like the cars speeding down their streets. They get nervous thinking about what would happen to them on a bicycle when a driver runs a red light, or guns their cars around them, or passes too closely and too fast.

Geller goes on to emphasize:

No person should have to be “brave” to ride a bicycle; unfortunately, this is a sentiment commonly expressed to those who regularly ride bicycles by those who do not. There are many cities in modern, industrialized nations around the world with a high bicycle mode split. They have achieved these high levels of bicycle use through adherence to various cycling-promoting policies and practices. But, one thing they share in common is they have substantially removed the element of fear associated with bicycling in an urban environment…In these “fearless” cities septuagenarians are able to ride alongside seven-year-olds safely, comfortably, and with confidence throughout the breadth of the cities[1]. Making bicycling a more widespread and mainstream means of transportation in Portland will require substantially addressing concerns about personal safety.

The path to expanding bicycling as a pleasant and convenient choice in Carrboro (and well, most anywhere) is the path that develops infrastructure that is as safe as possible AND feels as safe as possible to people age 7 through 77. For the “Interested But Concerned” group, bike lanes are significantly better than no bike lanes, and Protected Bike Lanes are better still. Recent research has found Protected Bike Lanes have significantly increased bicycling where they have been built in several US cities.

Carrboro’s upcoming Jones Ferry Rd project will incorporate a Protected Bike Lane under NC 54 as part of the design. We need more facilities like these, not fewer.

Right now both the “Interested But Concerned” and more aggressive “Strong and Fearless” riders (see Geller’s typology) both have a choice that meets their needs on Fidelity – bike lanes for the former and riding in traffic for the latter. Removing the bike lanes damages the bike network for the largest groups of users.

So let’s work on access issues for employees who work in downtown Carrboro, and let’s give them choices to get downtown- to free up parking spaces for paying customers at our local businesses. But let’s not do it at the expense of our award-winning bike network that we’ve worked so hard to build.

Thanks for reading.

CityBeautiful21

Urban Planning for the 21st Century

Category Archives: Carrboro