The Carrboro Board of Aldermen received and acknowledged Tuesday a request from UNC to annex 303 additional acres of UNC's Horace Williams land into the town limits, said Carrboro Town Manager Bob Morgan.
Town and University officials say the request is an early step in a long process that will possibly lead to the land's development down the road.
Bob Knight, UNC associate vice chancellor for finance and administration, said the University's request that additional land be annexed is a protocol issue with little concrete expectations.
More specifically, Knight said the reason behind the University's request is more contingent on the annexation of a smaller, 62-acre satellite tract of property just north of Homestead Road.
UNC recently asked that the smaller land be annexed into Carrboro as well. But before any action can be taken on that tract, slated for the proposed Winmore project, the town requires that the larger portion of the Horace Williams land be annexed as well, Knight said.
"We had to do it all at once," he said. "(The town's) procedure was that we couldn't ask for annexation of the property north of Homestead Road unless we annexed the larger portion."
The move does not indicate any more detailed plans for the Horace Williams tract, Knight said. "It doesn't really do much in developing (the land) just yet," he said. "It's still very early."
Annexation itself cannot even take place until after a number of other procedural steps, Morgan said.
Now that the aldermen have received the annexation petition from UNC, the town clerk will verify the legitimacy of the request by next week, Morgan said. At that time, the board will set a date for a public hearing, which Morgan said could happen Sept. 17.
