Chapel Hill weighs big apartment project planned for old tree farm on MLK Boulevard
A town advisory board hinted at support Tuesday for over 400 rental units at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Estes Drive but wants more information about how they could look.
The Community Design Commission asked staff to schedule a special meeting about the Aura Chapel Hill project’s design, landscaping buffers, parking, and driveway access on Estes Drive.
The CDC needs to meet before April 21 to make a recommendation in time for the Chapel Hill Town Council’s scheduled public hearing that night.
Texas-based developer Trinsic Development Services is asking the town to rezone the 15-acre site from residential to office and institutional for a mix of apartments, townhouses and live-work units with a smaller amount of commercial uses.
The plan is not perfect, but “it could be an exemplary project,” commissioner Ted Hoskins said Tuesday.
“They’ve done a nice job of crafting exterior space in the site plan,” he said. “I would be happy to recommend that this rezoning be approved.”
Apartments, townhouses, business
The plan has 361 apartments and up to 59 townhouses for rent. At least 54 units could be priced affordably for 30 years for residents earning up to 80% of the area median income. In 2021, that’s up to $50,900 a year for a Chapel Hill resident or up to $72,700 for a family of four.
The project also would include about 12,500 square feet of commercial space — about the size of a chain drugstore — and 650 ground-level and underground parking spaces.
Twenty spaces would have electric-charging stations, with infrastructure for another 160 spaces in the future. The parking garage would have a separate entrance for each of its two levels — one off Estes Drive and the other off MLK Boulevard.
New sidewalks, bike lanes and greenway connections would be added, and over three acres would be kept as green space, including a park with trails on the eastern portion of the site crossed by a stream. A plaza would feature a dining area and a fenced-in playground for children, while a Central Park would provide space for activities and events.
Finding right project at the right size
The Aura site has tested the vision for the town’s Central West District, which runs east of the boulevard, from north of Estes Drive to roughly Mt. Bolus Road. A small area plan calls for a mix of uses, including up to 175 apartments and 145,000 square feet of commercial, office and hotel space on the Aura site.
Only one Central West project — the 152-unit Azalea Estates Gracious Retirement Living — has been built. Aura Chapel Hill is the fifth plan proposed for the former tree farm in nearly a decade. It was mostly clear-cut in 2018 after being untouched for more than 25 years, prompting angry citizens to petition the council for tougher tree protection rules.
In the Aura application, Trinsic Residential Group officials said the latest plan “conforms to the vision and scale offered with the guidelines for … Central West.”
However, residents noted Tuesday that Aura would have more housing units than the 175 envisioned for the site in the Central West plan, and roughly two-thirds of all the housing units planned for the Central West district.
They urged the commission to consider the precedent their decision might set. They also questioned how the developer would manage traffic without additional delays and how a transit-friendly project could have 650 parking spaces.
Traffic and gridlock are his key concerns, Ian Jackson said, but he also wondered how Aura would attract people to patronize its businesses and green spaces.
“I want the community and the businesses and the college to grow around here, but if we’re only putting in enough retail space in Aura to accommodate probably even less than what that particular community would desire, I wonder how much that development will contribute to the broader Chapel Hill population,” he said.
Traffic, parking concerns
Cars already back up over half a mile on Estes Drive at rush hour and crossing either street on foot can be a challenge.
Turn lanes and high-visibility crosswalks would be added to both streets. Drivers would have right-in, right-out access to Aura from MLK Boulevard, and a full-service intersection would be created on Estes Drive, where drivers exiting Amity United Methodist Church and Somerset Drive already take chances when turning left into traffic.
The new design also would incorporate a bus-rapid transit station on MLK Boulevard.
“Even with the additional development that’s being done on this property, (because of) the improvements that we are proposing along with some of the improvements that are already in the works by the town, the current queuing — stacking — at the intersection of MLK and Estes will be shortened,” said project official Dan Jewell, with Coulter Jewell Thames.
Commissioner Christine Berndt said there have been major improvements to the plan, but there are still concerns, including about potentially inadequate landscaping along its northern boundary and pedestrian connections to the wider community.
Her main concern is the traffic, especially since studies show a new driveway at Estes Drive might fail from the start.
“To me as a planner, I can’t support that, creating a project that creates an intersection that’s an F, and it’s one of two main entrances into the project,” Berndt said.
Commissioner Susan Lyons urged the developer to remove half of the parking.
“This whole traffic issue could be corrected and it could be a part of the BRT system if you took out half that parking,” Lyons said. “For me, that is a really serious issue in terms of how much is dedicated parking in this project.”
CDC Chair Susana Dancy, who is working as a land-use planning consultant on the 15-acre development, did not participate in the commission’s discussion and will not vote on the project.
This story was originally published March 24, 2021 at 9:22 AM with the headline "Chapel Hill weighs big apartment project planned for old tree farm on MLK Boulevard."
