There are several positives here worth celebrating.
Most substantively in Carrboro, these arbitrary parking requirements deter potential housing projects in Town, and force developers to over-provide parking that they may not consider necessary simply to meet the ordinance code. When developers over-provide parking, they have less financial capacity in their projects to address more important public policy goals like including some percentage of affordable housing in a project. Carrboro has seen very little new multifamily housing in the past five years, and rents for a 2-bedroom apartment have soared by nearly $400 per months since January of 2020. (source:rentometer.com)
Removing residential parking requirements supports building denser on the same piece of land, which can create more small-size units that are more likely to be affordable to a wide range of individuals. Projects with higher Floor-to-Area Ratios (FAR) consume less land than lower-density housing on the edge of town, and house more individuals and families per acre, reducing each household’s carbon footprint, and building a market for locally-owned businesses.
Finally, Dr. Donald Shoup and others have documented that parking requirements are little more than pseudoscience, with most communities drawing on old, poorly executed studies in suburban Florida, in an environment very different from present-day Carrboro.
How Different Parking Reforms Represent Different Levels of Climate Action
Carrboro’s action last night represents a strong step forward past Climate neutrality to positive Climate Action by introducing parking maximums, which encourage developers to think about how to deliver projects with as little parking as needed while still being financially feasible. Both Shelton Station and the recent 203 N Greensboro Street project had developers asking to provide LESS parking than the presumptive standard. In their discussion, the Town Council and staff could not recall the last time a developer asked to provide MORE parking than the minimum in town. The table below helps delineate how much specific parking reforms advance Climate Action and Climate Change mitigation, and also how flexibility the approach affords developers.
Which Additional Reforms Are Still Needed?
While Carrboro did a great job with its residential parking reforms last night, the Council discussion made it clear that to meet its goals of Climate Action and Racial Equity, the Town Council will also need to reform commercial parking requirements as well.
The Town Staff were initially instructed to address residential text amendments only, and commercial text amendments could be brought to Council in early 2024.
Key Lesson Learned: We Can Make Policy Choices In a Four Month Timeframe
The Carrboro Connects plan was adopted on June 7th, 2021, and as of June 7th, 2022, no new policies had been adopted. However, this parking item first reached the Council table on May 16th, 2023, returned to Council on June 27th, 2023, and was approved on October 23rd. This a five month period from first policy draft to final approved policy. However, considering that the Town of Carrboro does not typically meet in July and August, one could say that this was closer to four-month process in terms of active Council meetings.
In that timeframe, the Town was able to share information on the proposed change at several public events, and circulate the proposal to each of the town advisory boards. This should be the working schedule for policy changes going forward – four months from first policy draft to a final vote.
The Carrboro Town Council Should Take a Victory Lap
In closing, I want to commend the full council: Mayor Damon Seils and Councilors Susan Romaine, Eliazar Posada, Randee Haven-O’Donnell, Barbara Foushee, Danny Nowell, and Sammy Slade for embracing this opportunity to act, and to plan for continued conversations about commercial parking requirements in January.
This is the leadership on housing, racial equity, and climate we have been waiting for, and it is is marvelous to see it in action.
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
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 needs a new Comprehensive Plan, and an entirely new Unified Development Ordinance. The Carrboro Board of Aldermen should take the first step towards these goals by putting money in the town’s Fiscal Year 2018 budget to create such a plan.
Last year, my most widely read posts on CityBeautiful21 were about one subject- the proposed Lloyd Farm development, a crappy 20th century strip mall concept that greatly underused the site and missed the mark in many ways. I’m not going to rehash the problems with the proposal, but anyone who wants a rundown can read my final piece before the vote here.
Instead, I’m going to discuss the two things that Carrboro lacks that likely would have prevented the Town from taking FIVE YEARS to reject a bad idea.
Those two things are:
A lack of a Current Comprehensive Plan or Vision document with appropriate geographic specificity
An outdated and piecemeal-amended Unified Development Ordinance that draws its core values from the ideas of the late 1970s, that does not reflect the challenges and opportunities present in Carrboro today.
Quick Review: What’s A Comprehensive Plan? What’s a Unified Development Ordinance?
Simply put, a Comprehensive Plan is an overall policy document for a city or town that describes the type of community the city or town seeks to become in the future. A Comprehensive Plan usually has many subsections with goals for each including items such as Land Use, Transportation, Economic Development, Parks and Recreation, Social Equity, Environmental Quality, and so forth. Truly excellent plans try to address the places where goals for each of these topics may conflict and accurately frame the tradeoffs inherent in those conflicts.
A Unified Development Ordinance is the nitty-gritty, detailed set of rules and regulations that govern how buildings, streets, sidewalks, telephone poles, plantings, trash bins and just about any other physical element of the community you can think of gets laid out on the ground when it is built.
Lack of a Current Comprehensive Plan or Vision Document
It is worth nothing that while the town does not have a Comprehensive Plan, Carrboro does have a Vision document, called “Carrboro Vision 2020.” It was adopted quite a while back, in 2000, and it is a vision for the whole town. Some of the policies are quite good. Here are a few:
2.22 Where development is deemed acceptable, there should be well defined dense
development with areas of well preserved open space.
Another:
2.41 The town should support the evolution of a downtown district that embodies
Carrboro’s character. The downtown district should have medium-rise buildings
appropriately sited with adequate public access, and it should provide shopping
opportunities that meet our citizens’ everyday needs. The downtown should
remain a center for the community where people work, gather, shop, socialize and
recreate. The Century Center should serve as a focal point for the downtown.
And another:
4.41 As a general policy, established roads should be widened to accommodate bike
lanes and sidewalks, but not to provide additional lanes for automobiles.
It is terrific that Carrboro has a policy document like this, and the 300 East Main development in downtown is evidence that this policy is being applied in at least part of downtown. But while it is great that we have such straightforward, intentional statements for downtown, it is clear that “well defined dense development” is nearly the opposite of what we got at Lloyd Farm.
An Outdated Unified Development Ordinance (UDO)
Generally speaking, if you want to build something that positively adds to the town’s urbanity, amplifying the “life-on-foot” feel that makes downtown Carrboro such a great place, you need to jump through all sorts of hoops, extra public hearings and special use permits to get it built. When you want to build something that turns inward, away from the street, and doesn’t contribute much to the public realm in Carrboro, you can usually get a building permit pretty quickly under our 1970s suburban ordinances. Under these conditions, you’re counting on the quality of the vision of the developer to give you something other than a terrible outcome.
While once in a blue moon we get a solid outcome like Shelton Station, we usually get an urban failure like the Park Slope development. What’s wrong with Park Slope? Several things, but the worst thing about it is that the Town did code not require Park Slope to build a piece of sidewalk on South Greensboro St along the front of the Park Slope property.
No Sidewalks At Park Slope (right side, with little red signs on white posts) on S Greensboro St
So why exactly didn’t the code require sidewalks here? It’s not entirely clear to me, but the reason may be in Article XIV (the Streets and Sidewalks section) of Carrboro’s current UDO.
In subdivision developments that abut a public street, sidewalks shall be con-
structed adjacent to such street if a sidewalk in that location is required by the officially adopted town sidewalk master plan. Whenever possible, such sidewalk shall be constructed within the public right-of-way.
I put a few words in bold above. Carrboro does have an adopted Bike Plan on their website, but I did some Googling and Carrboro does not seem to have an officially adopted sidewalk master plan. That seems to be a big hole weakening the connection between what we want to happen and our requirements to deliver our desired future.
There’s also some text in other parts of Article XIV that states:
The permit-issuing authority may reduce the sidewalk requirement for subcollector streets
meeting the alternative street standard from both sides to one side of the road if:
a. The development contains a parallel system that is integrally designed and provides pedestrian access to the interior of the site;
This is great for the people who live in Park Slope, but not good for anyone who doesn’t live there but needs to walk by Park Slope. It’s also very consistent with the idea that paths are for walking within developments, and presumes you will never need to walk out of the development because you will drive to anywhere else- a very 1970s view of the world.
Our Regulations Aren’t Working For Us (Or For The Developers)
With five years to get to “No” on Lloyd Farm, and missing the chance to have developers build sidewalks on a street where we ARE approving development and are applying for public funds to build sidewalks, it’s clear that our directions to the development community aren’t clear enough about our desires and our ordinances aren’t organized to require the pieces of town infrastructure we need.
If Carrboro doesn’t change its approach to development proposals, what happened with Lloyd Farm will happen again, and what happened with Park Slope will happen again.
Our ordinance is full of band-aids with amendments in 1998 or 2003 still trying to address thoughts from the 1970s and the 1980s in 2017. The world has changed, our towns opportunities and challenges have changed, and so should our development regulations to be more specific about the future our town needs and desires. It’s time to throw the old stuff out and start fresh. Want to see what a modern UDO looks like? Check out Raleigh’s – complete with pictures to make it easy to understand for residents.
From the point of view of the development community, I’m sure they would like to propose projects that generate less fractious debate and have a better chance of being well-received by residents. A clearer code could be a win-win where Carrboro residents see more changes in town that complement their vision for the future, and developers can approach projects with more certainty about outcomes.
What The Aldermen Should Do
On January 24th at 7:30 pm, there is a public hearing on budget priorities for the upcoming year. I’m requesting that the Aldermen put in funding to hire a consultant to support the Town Planning staff in developing a new Comprehensive Plan for Carrboro and a completely brand-new UDO. Please join me in making this request. You can attend in person, or tell the Aldermen “We Need a Comprehensive Plan!” by emailing boa@townofcarrboro.org.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
