"When I come to pick Henry up, he doesn't want to leave," said Michael Hobbs, father of the 3-year-old. He shares the experience of this place with the 300 children before him. "It fits its current usage perfectly," Steele said. She also rents rooms in the cottage to foreign and doctoral exchange students to supplement her income from the preschool.
Residents on Mason Farm Road have seen construction before. Steele recalls when UNC built the Smith Center in 1986. "The children and I walked to see the big trucks at work," she said.
Steele has spent a lifetime of learning here. Her father was a genetics teacher at UNC, and she walked to school in Chapel Hill her whole life. Now her tenants walk to UNC too. "The international students say that they love having a home-like place within easy walking distance of the hospital, and I love having the tenants in student housing as neighbors," she said.
The Master Plan proposes to relocate Student Family Housing at Odum Village and purchase residential land to make room for the highway.
But today the house sits quietly awaiting an answer from the Master Plan Committee, and the children will return tomorrow. "It's their place," Steele said.
UNC has the option to implement the power of imminent domain, which, by state statute, would allow the University to seize the land for public use.
UNC officials say they don't intend to exercise this right, but if they do, Steele says, "I have my answer ready for them: I'm staying."
<b>Trick or Treat?</b>
Westwood, a neighborhood off South Columbia Street, will soon welcome trick-or-treaters, and "each year they look a little older," said Elaine Barney, a 20-year resident, who is able to recognize each child. Westwood, however, faces bigger worries than what type of candy to give out at Halloween. The neighborhood, part of the National Historic Registry, lies on the edge of what might soon be the mass transit corridor.
The corridor would run beside the neighborhood. Although not directly affected by the Master Plan, neighbors say they share concern about the plan's effect on the neighborhood ambiance.
"When we first saw the plan a year and a half ago, it changed a little each time we saw it," Barney said.
In each version of the plan, the path of destruction changed a little, cutting through a different neighborhood.
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Seeking protection against the plan, Westwood neighbors presented a petition of 120 signatures to the Town Council in July 1999. The council passed a unanimous resolution promising that it would oppose a transit corridor through any established neighborhood.
But while the council pledges to advocate for preservation, the UNC Board of Trustees will make the final call.
And Westwood is still at risk, Barney said. A large highway could produce noise pollution and interrupt the aesthetic flow from University to neighborhood. Barney said the residents love being able to walk to the University. "The people who live in all three neighborhoods - Westside, Westwood and the Mason Farm area - have either worked or do work for the University," Barney said.
Barney and her neighbors want to preserve the sense of peaceful neighborhood that has drawn people to these neighborhoods since the 1930s.
She first saw Chapel Hill when her husband was working on his doctoral thesis at the University. "In 1968, you could go from Chapel Hill to Duke and go through maybe one traffic light and see maybe five cars," Barney recalled.
The couple returned to live in Chapel Hill seven years later, and there was a huge change, she said. "If (UNC) can take a plan of action that will drastically affect people's neighborhoods, then where will it stop?" Barney asked.
With a neighborhood association, passion and a 300-signature petition, Westside residents warily guard their future.
<b>A Sense of Place</b>
Bitty Holton and Betty Cloutier are self-proclaimed tag-team talkers. Their dialogue of Chapel Hill's history and their desire to maintain it mesh seamlessly.
Co-presidents of the Chapel Hill Preservation Society, a watchdog group to maintain historic accuracy, Holton and Cloutier have a vested interest in the Master Plan. "We are very concerned about the older buildings on campus and maintaining the historic facade of these buildings, and not just buildings, but sense of place," Holton said.
She said UNC's reputation as a neighborhood-oriented school depends on its treatment of the surrounding community. "When I tell people where I went to school, Chapel Hill, they all say, `What a beautiful place,'" Holton said. "We are envied for living here."
Cloutier echoed her colleague. "The ambiance of our town is directly related to the historic look," she said. "We are known for our beautiful neighborhoods filled with University people. We can't possibly not be concerned."
The school and community have been inextricably bound since land for private houses was auctioned off immediately following the laying of the first cornerstone of campus at Old East in 1793, Cloutier said. "Westwood, exquisite in the springtime, would be affected by the corridor," she said. "There are a lot of old Chapel Hill people there. The scary thing is that the UNC Board of Trustees has the ultimate decision about the plan. We might not know what the final decision is."
Holton said the decision-makers should take the memories of alumni, like her, into consideration. "We want to come back and see it the way we remember it."
The City Editor can be reached
at citydesk@unc.edu.
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