Carolina North plans moving ahead

CORRECTION

This story incorrectly says that the Chapel Hill Town Council has approved a special use permit for Carolina North construction. The council only has reviewed a concept plan for the project. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for the error.

Carolina North has yet to form solid design plans, but it continues to grow and has continued through important approvals.

Most of the sprawling campus, set to occupy about 250 acres of a 963-acre tract of land north of UNC's main campus, is still largely unplanned.

"It's going to constantly change over the next five years and next 50 years," Roger Perry, chairman of the Board of Trustees, said of Carolina North's master plan.

"You come up with a road system and an infrastructure and then you design the community around those things as it evolves."

To help review these constant changes, this spring the town and the University formed a committee to work through development commitments - marking one of the first concrete steps to allow faster approval of projects.

Council member Matt Czajkowski said this committee will set a definition of the development plan that will in turn allow faster proceedings.

"I think that we've made great progress," Perry said. "It's not perhaps as tangible as it will be in the next 12 months."

Town Manager Roger Stancil, members of the town staff and UNC staff members are all included in the discussions.

"We spent a lot of time trying to ensure that we have a common understanding of information and definitions of important words," Stancil said.

They have worked on a development agreement and shared observations, he said.

And there are more concrete steps in the works that will address some of the concerns citizens have voiced.

The transit study and the fiscal impact analysis will be released soon for consideration in future planning. The two are expected to guide the development plans for the satellite campus.

On Jan. 23 the town held a public hearing for the Innovation Center and the updated master plan for Carolina North.

The Innovation Center, the first building slated to break ground in 2009, has been approved by the Chapel Hill Town Council for a special-use permit.

"That's on its own schedule independent of any review protocol for overall review of Carolina North," said Jack Evans, executive director of Carolina North.

Sentiments were mixed at the forum, with most criticism aimed at the lack of context of a full master plan to compare with the center.

Other concerns included the lack of parking, transit and housing.

And the way to work through these issue is to resolve them, agree to disagree, Czajkowski said.

"The Innovation Center to me is one of the most exciting opportunities that has come up within Chapel Hill and the University in a long, long time," he said.

"There's just no excuse for slowing that down."

But the Innovation Center is not the only part of Carolina North underway.

The UNC School of Law declared this February that it will move to the campus, but plans are not completed.

And plans are not the only unfinished business for the law school. It still needs to acquire funding before it can even begin to design a new facility.

As for funding for the entire satellite campus, Evans and other officials met with the state legislature Wednesday to discuss moving forward with monetary plans.

"This is going to give us the first round of funding to keep us moving forward," Perry said.

Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.