UNC
Update: This meeting is not open to the public. Apologies for the error.
This afternoon, UNC is hosting an informational meeting about Carolina Commons at 3:30 pm. This is a development on Homestead Road with a number of housing units for UNC faculty. This proposed development will go through Carrboro's review process. I urge anyone interested in the Carolina North development to attend.
Carolina Commons is an attempt to provide housing close to the University so faculty won't have to drive so far. I'm encouraged that they're at least starting to address the widespread concern about future traffic and congestion problems. It's only a start though - there will be lots of University staff and workers at CN that won't live in this new development.
Meeting location – the Global Cup Cafe in the new Fed Ex Global Education Center. The Center is located on the corner of Pittsboro and McCauley St. in Chapel Hill. It is next door to the School of Social Work and behind the Pharmacy School. Directions below.
Chancellor James Moeser described some of UNC's vision in a Sept 2005 posting on UNC's Community pages:
Cam Hill asked me to post his guest column in the Herald today about Carolina North:
For several years UNC has been talking about developing
a research campus, Carolina North, which is slated to contain as many
as eight million square feet of buildings. UNC owns the Horace Williams
tract, some 900 acres that currently is the home of the Horace Williams
Airport, a couple of toxic dump sites and the old town of Chapel Hill
public works and transit facility locations. UNC wants to put Carolina
North there. Because the property is largely undeveloped (with the
above exceptions), surrounded by existing neighborhoods and not served
by any existing (or planned) transit or large-scale utility
infrastructure, and because this is Chapel Hill; there has been some
considerable discussion about this. Oh yeah, and the airport is still
open.
This Thursday will be UNC's fourth and final (?) "community meeting" to get feedback on plans for Carolina North. I missed the last meeting but I've been reviewing the presentation and comments from May. June's sessions will be Thursday, 6/21, at 3:30 and 5:30 p.m. in the School of Government, room 2603. (The 5:30 session duplicates the 3:30 session.)
The original three concepts have narrowed to two (below), one that follows the airport runway's east-west axis (left), and another that goes north-south (right). I instinctively feel like the east-west plan works better and feels more cohesive, but I don't really have enough information to understand them.
Wow. Today I discovered the Counter-Cartographies Collective, a group at UNC using mapping and visual information to help us see our environment in a new light. One of their major works so far is the "disOrientation Guide" produced last fall. It's two poster-sized pages packed with useful and insightful content. Although it's designed for newcomers, any local veteran will learn something new from the new perspectives on things we thought we knew, and from the hidden information uncovered in these maps.
A funny thing happened today. I was driving along El Camino Real (which runs through Silicon Valley where I'm attending a conference) and listening to the college radio station from Stanford University in Palo Alto. A show called The Lunch Special came on in which they interview a professor or community leader while playing music selected by the guest. Today's guest was Palo Alto Mayor Yoriko Kishimoto. I turned up the volume, fascinated to get glimpse into local politics on the other side of the country.
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