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The Daily Tar Heel
Town Talk

Chapel Hill Town Council discusses downtown parking

Chapel Hill residents are advocating for equal parking for all.

At Tuesday night’s Chapel Hill Town Council meeting, the council voted to refer a petition from the Community Home Trust regarding parking for affordable housing residents to Town Manager Roger Stancil.

The Community Home Trust, a nonprofit organization that sells affordable homes for lower income families, is asking the town to designate 13 additional parking spots for residents of the affordable housing condominiums at the 140 West Franklin development.

Developers broke ground on the $55 million mixed-use development — located at the corner of West Franklin and Church streets — in January 2011.

The project will include 140 condominiums, 26,000 square feet of retail space and 337 parking spaces. According to the town ordinance, 18 of the condos must qualify as affordable housing units with reduced condo fees.

Robert Dowling, the executive director of the Community Home Trust, said the development firm, Ram Development Company, has only agreed to provide five parking spaces for the 18 units.

But Dowling said that the Community Home Trust wants each unit to have its own space.

“We are asking to council to simply designate 13 parking places as reserved for each of those 13 affordable units,” he said.

The Community Home Trust thinks that, without the parking places, the units will be harder to sell.

Will Raymond, a Chapel Hill resident who has been involved with council petitions for more than a decade, said that he thought Ram Development should provide the 13 additional spaces.

“Ram is already benefiting greatly from this project,” Raymond said. “It should come out of Ram’s allocation output.”

Councilwoman Laurin Easthom said that while she understands there are legal contracts involved, she would also like to see Ram Development provide the spots.

“I think it’s fair to have Ram supply the spots,” she said.

Councilman Matt Czajkowski said he wouldn’t be able to make any decisions until he learned more about the project.

“Many of use weren’t on the council when this deal was negotiated,” he said. “I think it will be important for us to understand what the original idea was behind not having spaces for these units.”

No one present spoke on behalf of Ram Development.

Noted

The Council also heard a presentation from the county tax administrator about the upcoming revaluation process for real estate value.

Quoted

“It just doesn’t make sense to me,” said Councilman Gene Pease, on why he needed more information about the parking at 140 West. “I’m on Home Trust board and we’ve been talking about this for two years.”

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