Kudos to the UNC-CH Board of Trustees for rejecting a recent architectural plan for the inaugural building at Carolina North. It seems they felt the proposed design of the Innovation Center was not innovative enough to mark the entrance to the modern new campus which they plan to build in the northern heart of Chapel Hill. I was glad to see that the BOT has such high expectations for the building, but was a bit concerned about administrators' refusal to consider locating the building anywhere other than the grand entrance.
I still don't understand the logic behind UNC doing construction before completing the plan for the larger campus into which this building must fit. I really don't feel I can support any thing on that site until we see that it will be part of a commitment to use Carolina North to enhance Chapel Hill and not just UNC's bottom line.
"I can't imagine we would put this building on the premier corner of the property," said Trustee Rusty Carter, the first and most persistent voice of opposition to the design. Carter worried that the proposed three-story building topped with metallic grating designed to mask utility structures on the roof would not fit in with the surrounding community.
[...]
"I think we'll regret this building," said Trustee Paul Fulton.
Even before Carter made his opinion known, he asked Anna Wu, UNC's director of facilities planning, if the board could consider moving the Innovation Center to another Carolina North location.
"No," Wu said, later elaborating that California-based Alexandria Real Estate Equities designed the Innovation Center with the corner opposite Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Piney Mountain Road in mind.
A change of location could require significant design changes and time, including a return to the beginning of the town of Chapel Hill review process, Wu said. Trustees Chairman Roger Perry said the cost for a change of location would be "enormous."
"We've been on this course for over a year now on this site," said Bruce Runberg, associate vice chancellor of facilities planning and construction. He reminded the board that the Innovation Center may be approved for a Special Use Permit by the Town Council as soon as September.
Carter said the board shouldn't approve the design just because members are anxious to get moving on Carolina North.
"For that corner it doesn't say enough to me," he said. "If you move it two blocks inland, I'll vote for it today. It's too vanilla for that corner."- heraldsun.com: Carolina North building's plan 'not special enough', 7/24/08
Sorry for such a long excerpt, but I found the conversation very interesting.
More Information:
Issues:
Comments
California-based....?
Status of Legislature's support
Anything new in the General Assembly on funding for CN?
Also, what became of the offer to let the financial consultant's model be used by the community?
How Carolina North fared in the State Budget
David and others, here is some information on how Carolina North fared in the final State budget. I am willing to be corrected on any interpretations.
The General Assembly web page displays a link to the text of the budget signed by Governor Easley. This link should work to get to the home page:
http://www.ncleg.net/homePage.pl
Click on:
Bill Text - House Bill 2436, 2008-2009 State Budget, signed into law 3:52 pm, July 16, 2008 as SL 2008-107
See page 168, under Capital Appropriations for the UNC System, in the UNC-CH entry. You might want to compare the System total to what this campus is getting.
The amounts you see were evidently negotiated, and possibly not calmly.
I tracked the trends in funding, starting with the proposed House budget in mid-June.
The final adopted House budget had these appropriations for the UNC campus, with line 37 being all shown for Carolina North. The total follows.
35 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
36 Biomedical Research Imaging Center Planning 4,000,000
37 School of Law Replacement Planning 3,500,000
=$7,500,000
The final adopted Senate budget had these figures.. Line 34 applies, and the total follows.
31 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
32 Biomedical Research Imaging Center Planning 31,000,000
33 Morehead Planetarium Renovation/Expansion Planning 3,480,000
34 Carolina North Phase I and Replacement Law School Planning 16,900,000
=$51,380,000
So the Senate proposed almost 5 times as much CN funding as the House.
In the end, the budget signed by the Governor has these amounts:
Biomedical Research Imaging Center 35,000,000
Carolina North Phase I and Replacement Law School Planning 11,500,000
Morehead Planetarium Renovation/Expansion Planning 1,800,000
Hope this answers David’s question.
Ed Harrison
bait and switch?
It's interesting how a shift in the conversation occured from "Should any building be approved before a Master Land Use Plan at Carolina North?" to accepting the building as a given and discussing only its design!
Del Snow
My biggest concern about
My biggest concern about this innovation center (altho happy that design changes will take place), when meeting with the Trustees this past January at the end of our retreat...was: how many other times are we (the council) going to get hit with some plan for a building that is contingent on some private funding and has to be done in X amount of time or (god forbid) they pull out and UNC can't build it and xyz research can't be done......the Chancellor assured me, having told me it was a "good question", that future concept plans and SUP's out of context of a master plan would not happen again....that this was unique and we would not have this happen again. So at this point the Town with UNC is developing a process by which to consider the development of Carolina North and right now it's too vague for me to comment on specifics but I can do so when we firm up this process. There is a council committee meeting this summer in August to very preliminarily discuss this, which I'm on, and we'll report to full council in the fall. If you want to attend that meeting it is of course public and just check the website to see when/where (I don't even know yet as date hasn't been set).
Laurin
laurineasthom.wordpress.com
There's a basic conflict of
There's a basic conflict of goals in worrying about whether the building will make a distinctive and bold enough statement, and whether it will fit in with the surrounding community -- unless, of course, the "surrounding community" is meant to refer to the rest of Carolina North, which everyone notes is still in the ethers of imagination as yet. If not "vanilla," what would be "fitting in" with the neighborhood?
Frankly, if a truly graceful, green, and distinctive architectural/environmental design were created, I wouldn't mind having it as a landmark on that corner. Although I'm not crazy about the Nasher building per se, it now defines that corner in Durham in an interesting way. But of course, money is determining (and meanwhile, the delay has obvious though varying significance for many interests).
Ironic or futile?
fitting in
i've not looked at the design in question, but i wonder if "fitting in with the surrounding community" (assuming we're talking about architecture) is over rated? did the eifel tower, the great sphinx, the statue of liberty, the rhodes colossus, the great wall of china, the kremlin, the st louis arch, hagia sophia, or taj mahal fit in with the surrounding community? i guess the neolithic residents of salisbury plain probably worried that stonehenge would not fit in with their community, but long term building stonehenge of sticks and straw to make it fit in better would've been a mistake.
on the other hand, locating on the salisbury plain, or in the giza desert, the ancient druids and pharoahs wisely avoided impacting traffic choke points. if i recall correctly, nearly a year ago unc was of the startling opinion that no additional transit was needed. are they still contending that the current transit system has enough excess capacity to absorb the additional demand? we know estes ext doesn't need any more single occupant motor vehicles.