To: Mayor and Town Council
From: CHALT signers
Date: April 25, 2018
Re: Elliott Road Extension
We request that the Town Council place the Elliott Road Extension on hold. We oppose any Council action to proceed with the final design and construction of Elliott Road Extension until these outstanding issues are resolved.
1. Flooding issues have not been fully addressed.
The general idea of the Elliott Road Extension is a sound concept but the design concept and routing are wrong. As you are aware, much of the “Blue Hill” district and the new road extension is located in the floodplain.
a. The Lower Booker Creek Watershed study results of 2017 are no longer current and do not take into account a number of recent factors that impact the outcome of future flooding conditions in the area. New construction is taking place in the nearby Booker Creek floodplain at 15-501 and Elliott Rd. We petition the Town Council to request that W.K. Dickson be asked to update the Lower Booker Creek Watershed Study to determine flooding implications for the current Elliott Rd Extension design. Otherwise proceeding with construction of a culvert and landfill plan instead of a bridge could well mean that the $4.2 million road will be underwater, contributing to additional flooding in Chapel Hill neighborhoods immediately downstream. (Current conditions are such that flood waters are not slowed in the area because there is no culvert.)
b. The Study (paid for by the Town) determined that a large flood storage area behind the Fordham Apartments was the key to reducing flooding. That impoundment will be built with bond monies recently approved by the Council. The Lower Booker Creek Watershed study results assumed a full size storage impoundment, not the smaller one now planned. This area has shrunk considerably due to the agreement Manager Stancil reached with the Fordham Apartments developer. This reduced capacity means that flood water will flow more quickly into the Park Apartments area and then further flood downstream into CH residential neighborhoods. The Town Council needs current data on which to make good decisions. Ignoring the Dickson study means ignoring their expertise and wasting the money spent on it.
Residents deserve to know if the Extension plan and the Fordham Apartments plans have cancelled out the reduction in flooding they were promised when the above Watershed Study was presented to residents last year!
2. Traffic issues on 15 – 501 are unresolved; internal road route has unresolved problems.
Del Snow has written you an eloquent letter about the importance of using the Town- wide model for assessing traffic impact in key areas of town.
In addition the Town has approved a number of permits in the “Blue Hill” District without addressing expected traffic impacts. Berkshire, Fordham, Hillstone, Tar Heel Lodging (if approved by the manager), and Park Apartment approvals together will significantly deteriorate conditions on 15-501 and major local intersections, not to mention serious traffic from Wegmans.
The HNTB 2030 mobility study predicts constant slow movement of traffic making it impossible for road safe pedestrian crossings and mandating expensive pedestrian bridges.
The general planning principle of concurrency means simply that town have in place the means to mitigate actions taken. What traffic mitigation steps will the Town take before approving additional permits for new roads and buildings?
This new taxpayer financed road will be with us for hundreds of years. Bisecting the Park Apartments property does not seem logical; the better choice being to run the road along the perimeter. The current diagonal design dramatically increases vehicle/pedestrian/bike crossing interactions with the certain result of increased accidents
3. Affordable housing plan does not meet needs of those pushed out of Park Apartments. District wide, we lose more affordable units than we gain.
The Council needs to rectify a problem made by a past Town Council when the Form- Based Code (FBC) was approved removing town requirements to build affordable housing and denied the chance to create affordable rentals through density bonuses. This Town Council needs to delay the Elliott Rd Extension now until we address the lost housing stock. $1000/mo is not affordable for the tenants now residing in the Park Apartments.
The numbers cited by the Manager don’t add up. Greenfield Place and Greenfield Commons will provide 149 affordable units and Park Apartments 201 (net total 350). If the latter are gone, 200 families and over 400-500 people will be displaced. Proceeding with this proposal would not exceed the goal of creating 300 new affordable housing units within the Blue Hill District because the Manager has ignored the loss of units! By supplying 155 at higher AMIs we are still 46 units short, in addition to all the people who can’t afford the new rents. The new net total will be 103 new units, less than those supplied by Greenfield.
Molly McConnell will share why we need to do better.
Conclusion: Because of the Town’s existing FBC district, the only leverage the Town has over what happens is the Town’s control over construction of Elliott Rd. extension. Therefore we strongly recommend you address each of these problem areas before granting the Manager authority to proceed with the construction of this new road. In addition, it makes sense to make the needed changes in the form-based code, such as the affordable housing, massing and footprint BEFORE final negotiations with the developer are conducted.
Signers:
Bill and Ann Brashear
Isabel Calingaert
Glen H Elder, Jr
Joan Guilkey
Bruce Henschel
Tom Henkel
Charles Humble
Julie McClintock
Molly McConnell
Amey Miller
Ingrid Moffie
David Schwartz
Del Snow
Sandy Turbeville
Diane Willis
Neva Whybark