After years of back-and-forth, the future of the proposed Obey Creek development — which could bring a big-box retailer like Target to Chapel Hill — hinges on the Town Council’s meeting tonight.
At the meeting, the council will discuss the Obey Creek Compass Committee’s final recommendations. Obey Creek is a proposed mixed-use development that would be constructed across from Southern Village over U.S. 15-501. Discussion about development at the site began as early as 2010.
The current development proposal includes a residential and retail space and a hotel.
In June, the Town Council approved the formation of the Compass Committee. The committee’s goal was to examine the development proposal and make recommendations to maintain the economic potential of Obey Creek while satisfying Southern Village residents’ vision for a human-scale, walkable, environmentally-sound development.
The report calls for higher density and smaller buildings within the development to promote walkability, as well as a plan to minimize traffic and consideration of environmental impact. It also requested more economic and traffic data from the developer.
The primary aim of Monday’s discussion will be to decide how to move forward — including possibly requesting a revised Obey Creek plan from the developer.
“The committee has worked very hard to come to some consensus,” said council member Maria Palmer. “I think if the developer has common sense, he’s going to take seriously these recommendations and try to come up with something that aligns with this hard-won community vision.”
One of the Compass Committee’s primary concerns was that not enough information was available to the public in these early stages of the development agreement process, which made it difficult to approve the development plan.
John Newall, a Chapel Hill resident and president of the Durham-based advertising agency McKinney, said he supports the Compass Committee’s recommendations.
