I was asked to share this gem from last's night's Planning Board meeting with you. Phil Szostak is an architect who is developing an addition for Olin T. Binkley Baptist Church. Binkley is a leading progressive institution in this community and is also very prominently located next to University Mall on The Bypass. So I found it very amusing that Phil kept claiming "we're just a little church." If that's so, then UNC is a community college, OK?
Anyway, I have worked with Phil a tad and I was inclined to trust his powers of creativity and resoning, until he started explaining why it would be just fine if the driveways for the mall and the church remain in their current configuration 5 feet away from each other on Willow Drive. Everyone knows that spot is a mess, and confusing to drivers at best. Phil's claim? "The quirkyness makes it safer." This got a good laugh from the Planning Board.
By Phil's logic, we should allow more drieveways to be built at intersections, and perhaps stop putting up all those orderly traffic signals. Apparently the government is forcing drivers to suppress their creativity! Try explaining this to the police the next time you get pulled over.
Anyway we approved the project (of course) but we also required the church to fix that crazy driveway in two years if the Mall doesn't do it first (which it should).
Also, the planning Board was given our inch-thick copies of UNC Development Plan Request for Modification #2 (PDF). I can't tell how many pages it is since UNC doesn't like to use conventional numbering systems, but I can tell you it's easily as thick as the entire phone book for Chapel Hill and Durham. I can't wait to dig in!
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