Letter to Mayor and Councilors,
Davie Circle was formed long ago as a family neighborhood located just off Franklin Street near the UNC campus. But now the neighborhood might face a much different future.
Here are houses you see today in the Davie Circle neighborhood. A number of them have already been converted to rental property.
From Google Maps street view.
The so-called “text amendments” to the zoning ordnances that you intend to approve soon will allow developers to raid this neighborhood, zoned R-2, in search of houses they can tear down and replace with large rental duplexes like those already built in other zones, such as those on Hillsborough Street and Purefoy Road (as I reported in earlier letters).
Similar duplexes already built feature 8 bedroom suites that generate about $6,800 per month in rent, and so they will not be appropriate for most families. They will produce the usual problems that accompany large rental apartments: cars parked in the front yard, overflow parking on the street, trash containers left on the street, and excessive traffic and speeding. The increased traffic will have to exit using a narrow street on to Franklin Street near a dangerous curve.
This neighborhood will be a prime target of developers because of the more modest homes there and because it is so near the campus–less than a mile from the Old Well.
We urge you to prevent the homes on Davie Circle from being torn down and replaced with duplexes that, because of student demand for close-in housing, likely will become a dense complex of large rental duplexes.
This is just one example of the likely effects the proposed rezoning will have on Chapel Hill’s neighborhoods. The livability of all our neighborhoods and the welfare of our families depend on your good judgement.
— Don Liner