Carrboro Needs a Comprehensive Plan, and The Aldermen Should Put Money in the Next Budget To Create One

Posted on January 22, 2017 by patrick

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An outdated and piecemeal-amended Unified Development Ordinance that draws its core values from the ideas of the late 1970s, that does not reflect the challenges and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

What’s particularly sad about this outcome is that residents have been advocating for several years to get a sidewalk on South Greensboro Street. If the Town had required a sidewalk here, and the new South Green development had been required to build more sidewalk to connect to it, the Town would be much closer to having a sidewalk from downtown to the base of the South Greensboro, and the private sector would have been a partner in helping to make that connection.

Instead, the town is having to compete with Durham, Chapel Hill, and Hillsborough for limited Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) funds at the DCHC-MPO to build a sidewalk for $400,000. Carrboro should be getting developers to participate in building our sidewalks on major arterials, so that we can request CMAQ funds for things that are greatly needed but unlikely to be funded by developers, like future phases of the Morgan Creek and Bolin Creek Greenways.

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.

2016 Year End Stats for CityBeautiful21

Posted on December 27, 2016 by patrick

Compulsory Town Logo Shot

With a few days left in a year like none other, I’ve assembled my annual stroll through the site statistics for CityBeautiful21. A few highlights:

More posts! Last year, Iamented only posting 8 times in 2015. I posted 16 times this year. Improvement!
Total pageviews this year: about 10,700. 85% more pageviews than last year.
Average pageviews per post was about 725 in 2015. This year, I reached only 669 per post, but that’s hiding some wide variation. See the popular post item below for the tale of the tape.

Most Popular Posts

The Lloyd Farm piece at number 1 blew away everything I’ve previously written on this site. It was a read a lot locally for a day or two, but then within the national urbanist blogging scene, it went viral. It got picked up by Reddit’s architecture forum and got put on the front page of The Direct Transfer, and cracked the top three articles the day it was posted. It then got featured on the mega-urban DC blog Greater Greater Washington as well.

Most Common Referring Websites

1,704 from search engines, 95% from Google
1,699 from Facebook.
812 from Twitter.
699 from Reddit
174 from Greater Greater Washington

More Comments!

Most enjoyably, this was the blog’s best year from comments. Ray and BlakeR were among the most frequent, and I’m glad to have their contributions, and those from everyone else who weighs in.

Keeping Up With CityBeautiful21 in 201&

To all of you who read regularly, first and foremost, thank you! I appreciate your readership and your comments, be they on the blog or via email.

If you’re interested in keeping track of new posts when they hit the blog, there are several ways to do so:

The Email Blast – the easiest way to ensure you get every post from CityBeautiful21. Proceed to the Home Page, and look for the Subscribe Link at the upper right! Your email will NEVER be shared with anyone else, for any reason, period.
Facebook – You can “Like” CityBeautiful21 on Facebook, where I now post direct links to every new blog post.
Twitter – Follow me @CityBeautiful21

What’s coming in 2017? I’m not entirely sure, but Carrboro is likely to face another decision on the ugly property on the corner of N Greensboro and Weaver Streets, and I expect there will be more discussion about the future of the Lloyd Farm property. A new hotel could arrive behind the ArtsCenter, or at least go under construction. Meanwhile, Carrboro still deals with each of these items lacking a comprehensive plan and a zoning code that had its DNA formed in the 1980s, which steers us towards a suburban default in most of our outcomes unless a really progressive developer appears and does something better by working harder.

My biggest hope for 2017 is that the Board of Aldermen will put money in the 2017-2018 budget for a Comprehensive Plan effort that will ultimately replace the current zoning and development ordinance in town with something updated, modern, more predictable, and more urban. You can expect me to talk about this more in the coming months.

As always, drop me a line if you have a story idea or a question.

Best wishes to you all for a healthy and happy 2017,
Patrick

Roundabout Being Considered for Estes Dr and Greensboro St Intersection

Posted on October 17, 2016 by patrick

Did you know that NCDOT is considering removing the traffic signal at the intersection of Estes Drive and North Greensboro St in Carrboro?

There will be a drop-in meeting Monday, November 14th at from 4 to 7 pm in the Carrboro Town Hall Board Room.

Study Area for Potential Roundabout

Roundabouts have significant safety benefits as their design reduces 32 potential conflict points for cars to only 8, and 24 conflicts down to 8 as well for pedestrians- when compared to a standard 4-way intersection.

This intersection also provides a link to the Frances Shetley Greenway, so hopefully there will be an excellent bicycle interface between the two facilities. Make sure to stop by Town Hall on Nov 14th!

Carrboro Now Has Express Bus Service to Durham! Here’s How to Use It

Posted on August 9, 2016 by patrick

Route 405 Arrives In Carrboro (Photo Courtesy of Alicia Stemper Photography)

Monday, August 8th was an exciting day- for the first time ever, we now have direct regional bus service to and from Downtown Carrboro! GoTriangle Route 405, which currently runs between Chapel Hill and Durham, will be extended into Carrboro and will provide service during rush hour between Carrboro and Durham. A big crowd was on hand Monday morning to greet the new buses. Here are the key things to know about the new Route 405:

There will be seven departures from Carrboro to Durham every morning, with the earliest at 5:45 AM and the latest one at 8:41 AM. There will be seven return trips in the evening with departures from Durham to Carrboro between 3:30 pm and 6:30 pm.
GoTriangle buses will make two stops in Carrboro: one at Collins Crossing/Abbey Ct, and the other at the Weaver St Realty/Jade Palace pair of bus stops downtown.
Route 405 will provide a direct, one-seat ride to the Duke West campus and Duke Hospital area along Erwin Rd, the American Tobacco Campus, and to downtown Durham.
The regular cash fare for the bus is $2.25 for a one-way trip. Discounted multi-ride tickets are available, and employees at Duke, American Tobacco (read far down page), and other major employers are eligible for a prepaid GoPass from their employer.

The Schedule as of August 2016:

Carrboro to Durham (morning)

Durham to Carrboro (afternoon)

Things Carrboro Residents Can Do With Route 405, Part I – Catch the Early Amtrak Train to Charlotte

Prior to Route 405’s extension, the only way to get to Durham by transit in the morning from Carrboro was riding Chapel Hill Transit and then catching Route 405 into Durham. However, the morning train to Charlotte (Piedmont #73) leaves Durham at 7:19 am, and the F, J, and CW routes all don’t start early enough to connect with the 405 in Chapel Hill to make the connection. With 405 beginning in Carrboro, there are now TWO departures from the Jones Ferry/Collins Crossing stop at 5:45 and 6:15 am which both will get you to Durham Station in time to catch the early train. The same two trips also pick up in Downtown Carrboro at Weaver St Realty at 5:48 and 6:18 am, respectively.

Things Carrboro Residents Can Do With Route 405, Part II – Grab Breakfast in Downtown Carrboro and Ride To Duke/Durham With Ease

A trip I have tried to make many times in the past but was too challenging goes like this: I would be headed to Downtown Durham for work, and thus need to transfer from a Chapel Hill Transit bus from my neighborhood in Carrboro to GoTriangle. SInce this switch needed to occur in downtown Chapel Hill, if I wanted to grab breakfast at Weaver St, Neal’s, or anywhere else downtown- I would need to catch three buses to make it work:

Bus 1: Neighborhood to Downtown Carrboro
Bus 2: CHT bus from Downtown Carrboro to Downtown Chapel Hill
Bus 3: GoTriangle bus to Durham

The CHT buses that you can take to make the second trip (CW, J, and F) sometimes have big enough gaps between them between 7 and 8 am that with the old schedules/routes, you’d be rolling the dice that you’ll miss your connection and be late to work in Durham. Route 405 stopping in Carrboro solves this dilemma neatly by eliminating that middle bus trip.

Imagine you live up North Greensboro St near the intersection with Hillsborough Rd, and work at the American Tobacco Campus. The F route leaves N Greensboro at Morningside Drive at 7:38 am and reaches the Century Center stop (across the street from WSM) at 7:42 am. You can take the F bus, and have 30 minutes to get coffee or breakfast on the WSM lawn and then stroll over to the Weaver St Realty stop at 8:10 or so. At 8:14, GoTriangle 405 comes by and reaches Durham Station at 8:55 am, and you walk right into American Tobacco by 9:00 am.

Prefer breakfast in downtown Chapel Hill? Don’t worry, that still works too. Just keep riding any CHT route to Franklin St, get food there, and board 405 at the Carolina Coffee Shop Stop.

Things Carrboro Residents Can Do With Route 405, Part III – Get a Beer With Friends After Work in Downtown Durham

With departures on the half hour from 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm, if you work in Downtown Durham, it’s easy to stop by the lawn at Bull McCabe’s, West End Wine bar, or even Bull City Burger or the Pinhook as long as you plan your walking time well. What if everyone wants to go to Fullsteam? No problem. You can catch GoDurham Route 4 right by Fullsteam & MotorCo at 6:17 pm, which will bring you to Durham Station with 5 minutes to spare to switch to GoTriangle 405. You’ll be back at Jade Palace in downtown Carrboro by 7:13 pm.

What About Getting To/From Carrboro By Regional Bus Outside of Rush Hour?

While Route 405 now provides direct access to Carrboro during morning and evening rush hour, you can still travel between Carrboro and Durham during the midday and evening by transferring between Chapel Hill Transit Routes J, CW, F, CPX, or CM- and GoTriangle Route 400. Route 400 covers all of the same stops as Route 405, but makes a few extra stops in Durham near the Patterson Place shopping center. Route 400 was also upgraded this week as midday service went from once an hour to once every 30 minutes. After 7:00 pm, Route 400 runs hourly until the last departure leaves Durham Station at 10:00 pm, getting to the Varsity Theater in Chapel Hill at 10:33 pm.

Route 400 runs every half hour on Saturdays between 7:00 am and 6:00 pm and once every hour on Sundays. Additional Hourly service is provided Saturday evenings between 6:00 and 10:00 pm. View the Route 400 Schedule here.

Biking to Route 405, and Bringing Bikes On Route 405

Bike Rack on GoTriangle Bus

Like all GoTriangle buses, the Route 405 vehicles have a bike rack that can hold two bikes on the front of each bus. If you’ve never tried to use a bike rack on a bus before, I recommend viewing this 2-minute video from AC Transit in California. The rack they use is exactly the same style as the ones found on GoTriangle and Chapel Hill Transit buses, and the camera angles are really good at showing how it works.

If you find that the bus you want to ride already has two bikes in the rack, and you can’t wait for the next bus, it’s best to lock up your bike and pick it up later in the day. There are lots of convenient bike parking locations in downtown Carrboro- zoom in on the intersection of E Main St and E Weaver St in the map below for bike parking convenient to the Weaver St Realty Bus Stop.

Real-Time Information

Another tool you can use to make using Route 405 and Chapel Hill Transit even easier to use is the real-time bus locator app made by Transloc, which works on IPhone and Android phones, and can track all seven transit systems in the Triangle.

To learn more about Transloc, check out this video:

Good Luck!

Happy riding! That’s all the tips and pointers I have for now. Have questions about some aspect of the service I didn’t cover? Tried planning a trip and aren’t entirely sure that you have the best trip for you? Add a comment below or drop me an email; I’ll see what I can do to help.

Carrboro Greenways Have Great Tree Canopies

Posted on July 14, 2016 by patrick

I took a ride on my bike recently to check out construction progress on the Bolin Creek Greenway extension under MLK Blvd in Chapel Hill. In the late afternoon, it was 93 degrees with a heat index of 97, and biking along West Main St and North Greensboro St was pretty uncomfortable, heatwise. Fortunately, I got two big doses of shade as I rode on both the Frances Shetley Greenway and the Wilson Park Multi-Use Path during my trip.

The Shetley greenway, a facility that has been in place for more than twenty years, has a tree canopy covering the path from both sides.

Shetley Greenway Shade Near Carrboro Elementary School

Here’s the view of the Wilson Park Multi-Use path, looking down towards Estes Drive, riding from Wilson Park. There’s more light here, as this path has been in place less than ten years. Still, the path has more shade than sunlight for most of its length.

Wilson Park Multi-Use Path Headed Towards Estes Drive

Finally, in Chapel Hill, I reached the latest phase of the Bolin Creek Greenway that is presently under construction between MLK and Umstead Park. Here are two photos of segments of the trail that are already finished:

Bolin Creek Trail Extension Summer 2016 – picture 1

Bolin Creek Trail Extension Summer 2016 – picture 2

In both of these photos, even with construction finished recently, there is significant shade in both locations and trees arching over the path. If you’re looking for a safe place to get some exercise with friends and family this summer, and want to beat the heat a bit, check the finished greenways out and enjoy!

Lloyd Farm: What Happens When You Let a Grocery Store Chain Do Urban Design

Posted on June 27, 2016 by patrick

After several years of hearing suggestions for improvements from adjacent neighborhoods, elected officials, advisory boards and citizens from all over Carrboro, the folks at Argus Development have submitted plans for what they have always wanted to build here – a grocery-anchored strip mall. I first wrote about this project in 2014, nearly 18 months ago, and have talked to many Carrboro residents about it since. Very, very little about the proposal has changed and its chief flaws dating back to 2014 remain mostly unaddressed.

If I was a member of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen, I would vote to deny this rezoning application.

The most recent site plan attached to Tuesday’s packet is below. If you look at the link above to my prior post, you’ll see little has changed in 18 months. I’m going to list several shortcomings ahead of the image below.

The overall design of the site is simply too suburban, which makes it hard to redevelop into something better in the future. Some of the suburban features damaging this site layout in particular are the gently curving road from the top of the site the area down by the two stores surrounded by stormwater detention ponds. This roadway geometry and lack of buildings along the side of the road will encourage speeding through the site by cars.
Tax base efficiency for the town. This design incorporates several of the low-value per acre approaches documented in the 2014 presentation by Urban 3 to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce (click to see slides-they’re EXCELLENT!). In a town with a rural buffer, we need to do our best to maximize our tax value per acre on parcels inside the buffer to produce a better balance between commercial and residential tax base in Carrboro, and that means building up in a denser format. The site design for this plan incorporates the limited value proposition of the Timberlyne Shopping Center and the “Older Outparcel Format” on slide 18 with parking completely surrounding a building, providing a much lower value per acre (in this case, about $950,000/acre) than more urban building types such as the Hampton Inn in downtown Carrboro. (Over $33 million per acre!). Go to the final slide and look at the comparison of mall or strip development per acre with mixed-use at 3 and six stories. The Lloyd Property should be in the categories on the right hand side of the chart; instead, it is mostly in the strip mall category, with limited tax base per acre developed and a design that locks that in for probably 30 or more years.
The massive parking field in front of the Harris Teeter grocery store. I don’t think I have had a single conversation about this project that doesn’t involve someone lamenting the massive parking lot fronting the grocery store, and how much better it would be to have something more akin to Southern Village instead. This suggestion has been made repeatedly to the applicant, and they have done nothing to engage with this community request in their design. The most likely reason is that their client, Harris Teeter, has probably sent some middle management person to the site who looked around and said “yup, this looks suburban, it must have the suburban standard site layout,” which comes with a checklist that says, more or less- “if we can’t have all the parking right in front of the store in a massive parking field, the store will not make money. Our customers are simply too stupid to figure out how to use our stores otherwise.” Harris Teeter’s own store at North Hills in Raleigh shows this isn’t true, but since the corporate grocery office has labeled this “suburban” rather than “urban” they are shoving the standard design down our throats. Let me say that again another way- one of the most significant undeveloped parcels in Carrboro is being designed primarily around the needs of a checklist in a major grocery store corporate office, not the town’s needs and goals.
The two water detention ponds with the two outparcel sites featuring a triple drive-through (worst kind of drive through!) bank and another retail site are a pretty irreversible suburban set of uses that work to prevent a future urban street grid from being installed while also only supporting low-intensity uses.
No public gathering spaces. There are two locations titled “Plaza Lawn” on this drawing. Neither of them are likely to be used by many people and become the beloved community space that the Weaver Street lawn is. One Plaza Lawn (bottom left) is going to be nearly empty, all the time. With no adjacent uses other than parking, and a walking path to Old Fayetteville- the side of the site featuring the least pedestrian traffic, there’s no reason to be here. The Plaza Lawn in the curve near the top center of the site will have high-speed traffic on one side, and a retail/restaurant space on the left side. Perhaps there may be some spillover here if this is a restaurant, but if it is a retail store, this will just be another grassy berm that goes unused. Looking at these two sites plus the big green swath of land between the road and the detention pond north of the senior housing, there was plenty of space in this site to create a village green surrounded by active uses, but the parking for the grocery store was too important. Are you one of the folks who was really interested in a gathering spot, or are you interested in learning more about the failures of American “plazas,” and why the Lloyd Farm “Plaza Lawns” fail in the same way? Check out this neat piece by Neil Takemoto on the difference between Americanized “plazas’ and Italian “Piazzas.”
Age-restricted housing. My most recent post on Lloyd Farm covered the issues with Senior Housing instead of housing for all ages. Click here to read why going from apartments to age-restricted housing presents a dilemma when it comes to equity issues in housing.
None of the buildings have any relationships with the streets. They have relationships with the parking lots. This means that it will be harder to tear these buildings down and replace them with more dense development in the future, effectively restricting the future economic capacity of one of our limited commercial zones.
Virtually all of the commercial buildings are one story. Orangepolitics ran a great piece recently on how we don’t have space to receive small and growing companies, and we can’t get ANY of these buildings to have a second story with some space for the next business that breaks out of an incubator to move to?

Lloyd Farm Plan April 2016

In closing, I’m going to share a few comments from the advisory boards that I thought were particularly good:

Add multistory mixed use development with ground floor commercial with residential
and/or office use above, and increased clustering of buildings relative to the current site
plan. Consider the model of Southern Village. The current site plan has too many
buildings too far apart with too much separated parking. Building up and clustering
would reduce impervious surface and therefore more effectively address stormwater
runoff and flooding issues. – Environmental Advisory Board

And…

The Board recognizes the need for senior housing in Carrboro, but is disappointed with
the lack of affordable or workforce housing. We would like to see some of the senior
residences made available at workforce rates. A payment-in-lieu should be required as a
condition of the rezoning.- Planning Board

And…

The Board strongly suggests that the final plan reverse the positions of the grocery store
and the buildings facing it. The intent is to reinforce a residential buffer. It would also
serve to decrease the distance between the grocery store and the senior housing.
The rezoning should include conditions regarding architectural standards, including
uniformity of materials and setback of taller buildings in proximity to residential areas,
which mirror the Downtown Districts. The conditions suggested by the Applicants should
also be included, however condition #1 should be amended to reflect the change in
positions of the grocery store and the facing retail buildings.

It seems pretty clear that the rezoning is the last chance to get any improvements to the design or reconsideration of strategies, and I hope the Board signals that this proposal should not proceed unless these issues are addressed. Given we’ve been at this for 18 months formally and longer informally, I’m not terribly optimistic that we’re going to get much better by giving them a green light.

In closing, I want to acknowledge that I think that development processes that don’t make it clear what the community wants and expects make it harder for developers to come to reasonable win-win outcomes for the community. I understand that the proposed investment at this site is a big deal, but I also think a superior project would offer better upside for the town and the developer if they could get past the inflexible approach to the parking on the grocery store and the other conventional mid-to-late twentieth century design approaches they are taking to the site layout and organization. Honestly, I feel like the investors and the Town are leaving profit and taxbase on the table to cater to the checklist at the Harris Teeter corporate office.

Given that we already have a Harris Teeter with a dangerous, pedestrian-hostile parking lot in Carrboro, and that these folks don’t seem to have incorporated much of what the community is asking for, I think that denying this rezoning is reasonable, and that the town should then turn to establishing a process that the TOWN leads to establish what type of development is appropriate for this site. We can (and should) do better.

At Busiest Time of Day, Downtown Carrboro Has Over 2,000 EMPTY Parking Spaces

Posted on June 14, 2016 by patrick

Yes, you read that right. There are usually 2,000 (or more!) parking spaces empty at all times in downtown Carrboro. But we don’t have a way to allow private businesses to partner seamlessly with each other and the town to make these spaces available to the public in a way that balances individual lot owner goals and overall access goals for the downtown, so these spaces go unused when they could be more full.

Until we figure out how to address this untapped parking capacity for the benefit of business owners, the Town, and residents, there is absolutely no reason to build another parking space with public money in downtown Carrboro. It represents a massive opportunity “hiding” in plain sight.

In February, the consulting firm hired by the town to conduct the parking study, VHB, reported the following:

The Town of Carrboro owns 359 public parking spaces in 3 lots
The Town of Carrboro leases 356 public parking spaces in 5 lots
Private Property owners control 3,333 private parking spaces in 145 lots
Total Downtown Parking = 4,048 parking spaces
Carrboro’s parking supply is 82% private spaces and 18% public spaces

Lunch Time is Crunch Time

VHB conducted parking counts and determined that peak usage for parking lots overall occurred between 11 am and 1 pm.

Parking Occupancy In Downtown Carrboro By Time of Day

As you can see, the public parking spaces (the combined blue and red area) are more uniformly full, while the private spaces vary greatly. It’s also worth noting that the town leases or owns 715 parking spaces in total, and these counts never get above 500. So our public parking system still has capacity at all times of day.

This second chart by VHB shows how much capacity is available in terms of public, leased, and private spaces.

Parking Utilization By Type

Parking Availability Varies by Block and By Lot

VHB put together two helpful maps showing parking occupancy by block and by lot. Here it is by block, with publicly owner or leased facilities emphasized. For example, the dark green rectangle to the right of the letters 300 E Main is the parking deck by Hickory Tavern/Hampton Inn. It’s clear that parking, while still having capacity, is most scarce (up to 85% full) in the Carr Mill Mall section in the middle.

Downtown Carrboro Parking Utilization by Block

When you break parking availability down by lot, you see much wider variation in how full the lots are.

Downtown Carrboro Parking Supply By Lot- 11 am to 1 pm

Still, three of the public lots, including those on Laurel and West Weaver St near PNC Bank, are close to half empty or have greater than 50% of their spaces available. Even the large lot just south of Open Eye Cafe shows at least 30% vacancy at lunch time. The small lots by Friendly Barber are tapped out, as is the lot by Carrburritos and Bowbarr on Rosemary. The parking deck also shows at least 30% vacancy.

What The Green Means – Opportunity

But look closely at the green lot in the middle towards the bottom, just a little bit below the “W” in the “E Weaver St” text. I’ve circled that lot in PURPLE. (click the image to make it bigger)

This is the Bank of America Lot. It has 25 regular spaces plus some for people with disabilities. What the parking study is telling us is that at the biggest crunch time for parking, a lunchtime rush hour, when a lot of people come to downtown Carrboro to eat at restaurants, with Tyler’s to the left of it, Acme to the right, there it is – stuck in the middle with at least 15 parking spaces free, ALL the time. The lot surely has signs saying “Parking for Customers only” so nobody parks there unless they’re going to the bank. But the bank clearly has far fewer customers coming by car than their lot can accommodate. In fact, VHB’s analysis tells us that Bank of America could keep the ten parking spaces closest to their door for themselves, and rent out the other 15 for public use- and not ever have a customer come to the bank and not be able to park for free in one of those ten spaces.

So why doesn’t this happen? Simply put, there’s not a system to buy into. This problem is too big for any one business in town to tackle on its own, but if the town set up the infrastructure and technology to make it EASY for Bank of America to release its parking spaces, the barrier for the bank to become a partner would be greatly reduced. What would such a system look like? It would look something like the system Asheville already has for its public spaces, but would allow businesses to opt in for some portions of their parking lots. I’d call it “CarrPark.” If the town set up a system like the one in the link for its public and leased lots, then opened up invites to businesses, then lots like the Bank of America who clearly have capacity could be invited to join, and even get some revenue for renting their spaces. If Bank of America wanted to be cautious, they could only decide to lease ten spaces to the CarrPark pool at first. That means the public supply would go from 715 to 725. If it worked well, and Bank of America customers were still happy, the bank could consider moving to 15 spaces, and the public supply would go from 725 to 730. See how this works? Incrementally, without having to worry about giving up ALL their parking, business owners could expand the general parking pool, making everyone feel LESS of a parking crunch.

How to Price a “CarrPark” System

Best practices suggest that if you set the price of parking lots to to the lowest price possible that keeps them 85% full, but no more- then people find parking to be easy and convenient. If a parking lot in the CarrPark system is less than 85% full at any time, it’s free! When demand goes up, though- the price rises to help keep the lot convenient. Revenue from the system would cover the cost of operations and provide some revenue to business owners for each space they share as an incentive to participate. Revenue beyond the incentive would be used to fund other access improvements to downtown such as better evening transit service and bike/ped access projects.

Carrboro Parking Meeting June 16th: 5:30 – 7:30 PM, Town Hall

The next meeting on the Carrboro Parking Study will be Thursday, June 16th, at 5:30 PM at Town Hall, and the agenda includes future parking management strategies. I hope to see something like the CarrPark system presented as one of the options. Please attend if you can!

Carrboro Advisory Boards Should Push For Gathering Space at Lloyd Farm

Posted on June 2, 2016 by patrick

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This Site Needs More Housing, For ALL Ages

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

One Chance to Get This Right

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

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

Posted on May 31, 2016 by patrick

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing Unusual About This Density

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

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

Carrboro Should Aim Higher for Infill

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

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

Carrboro Likely To Approve Homestead-Chapel Hill High School Path for Construction

Posted on May 16, 2016 by patrick

Near the end of their May 10th meeting, the Carrboro Board of Aldermen affirmed their commitment to see the Homestead-Chapel Hill High School Multi-Use Path move forward to construction this summer.

Compromise Recommended by the School System Staff and Town of Carrboro Staff

Early in the meeting, Todd LoFrese of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School System took to the podium to describe a compromise that had been worked out between school staff and Town of Carrboro staff regarding the Multi-Use Path. That compromise took the following form:

Reduced the number of Multi-Use Path crossings of the Cross-Country trail from three to one.
Proposed looking at alternative surfaces (such as ADA-compliant rubber instead of concrete) at the remaining crossing.
Explore creating as much separation as possible where the multi-use path and the cross country trail parallel each other.

One citizen brought forward an interesting photo (at right) showing staggered gates on a greenway designed to slow riders approaching a potential conflict point. To address concerns of runners worried about bicycles crossing the cross-country trail at speed, particularly during meets, these may be a potential solution to maximize safety.

Citing not only the financial implications, but also years of participation by many Carrboro residents in the process, and the town’s values in support of providing transportation choices and addressing climate change, the Board of Aldermen asked the town staff to explore how to address some remaining engineering questions about what types of alternative surfaces could be feasible and report back one week later, with an eye towards the Board passing a resolution to move forward affirmatively at their May 17th meeting.

What the Town Residents Will Be Getting From This Project

Lest the big goals of this greenway get lost in all the discussion of process, I want to remind everyone of the big, game-changing amenity the town will get when this project is complete- a safe, low stress way for up to 1,000 children living north of Homestead Rd to walk or bicycle to the three schools south of Homestead Rd.

I went out and shot some video (with audio) on the Morgan Creek Greenway and Fan Branch Trail Greenway in Chapel Hill yesterday. We rode about four miles in all, got pizza and did some grocery shopping, and took in all the great natural enjoyments found along the greenway. We saw squirrels, deer, many kinds of birds, and heard a barred owl calling nearby in the woods in the early evening. In a world where we hear talk of “nature-deficit disorder” among younger generations and childhood obesity, imagine what a joy it would be to get to ride to school on a facility like this every day.

You can hear many of the sounds we heard in the clip below, but you can’t smell the honeysuckle- you’ll need to get out there yourself to enjoy it.

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