Last year the Town Council hired a consultant to study northern Chapel Hill around the Timberlyne Shopping Center with the intention of guiding new development to achieve Chapel Hill goals. On December 4, 2020 the Town updated a Council Committee.
Here is the full letter CHALT sent to the Council opposing the proposed plan that was presented by Town staff. Chapel Hill NOrth Plan.Dec2020
An excerpt follows:
_______________________________
December 4, 2020
Dear Mayor and Town Council.
There are serious problems with the North Chapel Hill Planning proposal. We strongly oppose the Council investing in this plan, and the town taking on the role of “master horizontal developer” directing and in subsidizing the project further.
Taxpayers’ experience is that the town staff underestimates infrastructure costs and forgets about the costs of providing services to new development. Blue Hill is a good example where infrastructure costs were consistently underestimated and the cost of services caused net Town expense increases, not budget savings.
The main reasons we oppose this plan proposal are the same ones we put forward in our letter to Brian Peterson last summer.
- First we oppose the Council potentially or actually subsidizing infrastructure for development that is badly planned, lacks community benefits and will turn out to be costly for the Town. Please provide the total extent of the Town resources spent so far along with the cost of hiring consultants for this proposal.
- This proposed plan displaces residents from the nearby trailer park.
- Council needs a plan in place for how to house trailer park residents who are turned out of their homes before submitting plans for redevelopment.
- Proposed apartment sizes restricted to studios, and one and two bedrooms are not family oriented.
- Affordable homes should not be placed next to I-40 in low lying areas.
- Placing affordable homes along I-40 is a bad plan because noise and particulate matter are unhealthy, especially since DOT has definite plans to widen I-40 producing even more noise and pollution.
- To learn more about the problems with this plan, read the full letter.
Staff presentation of proposed plan