Growth & Development

Local governments are practically salivating at the prospect of several new buildings that Orange County is planning to build in Hillsborough.

"What makes this different is we have 93,000 square feet of space in our inventory that we literally didn't have this time last week," Pam Jones, the county's purchasing director, told the board.

On Nov. 2, the commissioners approved an agreement of intent to build a central library, office building and parking deck off West Margaret Lane, as well as leasing the top two floors of the nearby Gateway Center. After one year and one day, the county has the option to buy those floors.
- heraldsun.com: County eyes department moves

This move will cause a lot of shuffling of departments, but also promises to serve the community by creating a new meeting room that will hopefully have more modern technology (for recording and broadcasting meetings). This and other new resourcs will be an asset to the whole community.

As a part of their application for a third modification to their Development Plan, UNC is holding a meeting to focus on "perimeter transition areas" (areas where campus development has a greater impact on neighbors). The meeting is today at 5:30 at the UNC Law School, room #5046.

We were shown a flyer for this meeting at the last Chapel Hill Planning Board meeting, but I can't find any information online about it. You don't have to be a UNC neighbor to attend.

Click the map below for a big version.

This graphic is from http://www.unc.edu/community/concept_plan.html

It's disappointing to see the Chapel Hill News this week stoking our fears of skyscrapers instead of adding some new ideas or perspectives to the critical dialog about the nature of growth downtown.I am so tired about hearing people simply exclaim over the number of stories a building has without discussing its design, infrastructure, relationship to other buildings to the street and to the sidewalk, impact on transportation, or public service features. It's not that height doesn't matter, but it's meaningless in isolation. You can have an ugly 3-story building or a beautiful 10-story building. We need to move past this one-dimensional focus on height into a more sophisticated vision for the future of Chapel Hill. I am hoping that the upcoming revision of Chapel Hill's Comprehensive Plan will be one venue for this discussion.