At Friday's forum, committee member Jack Evans gave a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation showing conceptual maps and artists' renderings of the projected mixed-use development on UNC's Horace Williams property off Airport Road.
In this most recent plan, which the committee developed with Ayers Saint Gross, a Baltimore architectural firm, projected development was trimmed from 550 to 295 acres.
"The plan that we're thinking of right now does not in any way exhaust the available land," Evans said. "It is rather going to use it quite sparingly."
Resident Mary Whitton, of 811 Kenmore Road, said she was not concerned about potential runoff going into Eastwood Lake because this plan takes environmental issues into account. "If the concerned people of Chapel Hill are interested in the Eastwood runoff issue, I don't have to worry about it," Whitton said.
The original plan that firm Johnson, Johnson and Roy designed for the advisory committee in 1998 would have developed 56 percent of the 979 acres available. Evans said that while the total proposed building space was still a little more than 8 million square feet, Ayers Saint Gross was able to reduce the figure to 30 percent by concentrating all new construction into one area and building up and not out.
"We're not going to sprawl as much," Evans said after the presentation. "We're going to build vertically."
But because the concentration of businesses and residential space will remain the same, the projected increase in traffic will remain around 45,000 trips per day, he said.
The 2000 proposal does address the traffic issue by making the development pedestrian-friendly, building retail space into the development and placing housing for University employees near their workplaces. There are also plans for a bus line to Cameron Avenue.
"'Smart growth,' I think, is a very apt description of what we're trying to accomplish with this development," said Vice Chancellor Nancy Suttenfield, co-convener of the 30-member committee.
