UNC will talk with the public in January about vision for Franklin Street buildings
Update: UNC has announced plans to hold community workshops on Jan. 27 and Jan. 28 — focused on what might happen to its East Franklin Street buildings. Find more details below.
UNC will give the public a say — but no promises — as it plans for the future of its East Franklin Street properties and tenants, including Carolina Coffee Shop and Johnny T-Shirt.
Despite a campus master plan that envisions replacing the buildings, nothing is final yet, Gordon Merklein, UNC’s associate vice chancellor of University Real Estate Operations, told the Chapel Hill Town Council on Wednesday night.
The planning process will consider the buildings’ historic context, including facades or other features that could be saved, he said, in response to a question from council member Nancy Oates.
“I wanted you to say that you were going to preserve (the buildings),” Oates said. “But it sounds like that’s not what you’re saying.”
The university is “very committed to looking at that and very committed to preserving the scale,” Merklein responded. “But I don’t think anyone could stand in front of you and promise something, because until you start looking at the buildings themselves, you really don’t know what the structural integrity is.”
Franklin Street character
When news about the Porthole Alley redevelopment broke in July, Chapel Hill residents, students and alumni decried the potential loss of longtime tenants, including the coffee shop, which will celebrate 100 years on Franklin Street in 2022. Some also worried about losing the classic, two-story Franklin Street character of the buildings.
The planning process will be similar to what the university did when it replaced the aging University Square shopping center on West Franklin Street with the Carolina Square mixed-use development, Merklein said. It will start with hiring an architect this fall.
Community workshops, which could take four to six months, will focus on what uses the public and UNC want to see there, Merklein said. The workshops also will consider urban density, pedestrian access, historic preservation, building scale, design and other issues.
“We want to have them with groups that are unique to downtown, so landowners, merchants, users of downtown,” Merklein said. “We would like to have one with the various boards and commissions for the town ... to also receive their input, and then obviously, just the general public, as well.”
UNC has hired architectural firm KieranTimberlake, which will help lead four community workshops in late January:
▪ Jan. 27, 7-8:30 p.m., Chapel Hill Town Hall, Council Chambers, 405 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
▪ Jan. 28, 7:30-9 a.m., Ackland Art Museum, Art & Gallery, 101 S. Columbia St.
▪ Jan. 28, 12-1:30 p.m., Frank Porter Graham Student Union, Room 3206AB, 209 South Road
▪ Jan. 28, 4:30-6 p.m., Ackland Art Museum, Art & Gallery, 101 S. Columbia St.
The information gathered at those workshops will help develop concept plans, and UNC will choose which to move forward, Merklein said. Any plans also would be submitted to the town, Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger said.
UNC has identified the area as a good location for its undergraduate admissions office and its visitors center, which will be moving to 134 E. Franklin St. later this fall. The new buildings will have retail on the ground floor, UNC officials said in a January news release.
Those uses could draw at least 55,000 UNC visitors and families downtown, Merklein has said. He emphasized Wednesday that UNC is “very committed to retail” and the commercialization of Franklin Street.
Visitors, students and retail
The master plan suggests demolishing the strip of three buildings housing Johnny T-Shirt and Cosmic Cantina to the Bank of America ATM near University United Methodist Church. It also recommends replacing the Porthole Building behind them, which houses Carolina Performing Arts.
The buildings surround Porthole Alley, a busy gateway to campus named for a popular restaurant in the Porthole Building from 1942 to 1985. However, they are not part of the town’s Franklin-Rosemary Historic District or the Chapel Hill National Register Historic District. Both lie north and east of East Franklin and Henderson streets.
The plan suggests UNC’s new buildings could be four and five stories tall, offering 190,000 square feet of office and commercial space.
The university, the state and Chapel Hill Foundation Real Estate Holdings Inc., a not-for-profit corporation founded by the UNC-Chapel Hill Foundation, own the buildings. REH also owns Carolina Square at 123 W. Franklin St. and pays property taxes on all its buildings.
Hemminger has said REH will continue to pay property taxes if its buildings are redeveloped.
This story was originally published September 26, 2019 at 12:30 PM with the headline "UNC will talk with the public in January about vision for Franklin Street buildings."
