Chapel Hill considering 155 townhomes adjacent to Southern Village

Press Release

Compiled by Adam Powell

Correspondent

CHAPEL HILL–In mid-January, the Chapel Hill Town Council reviewed a concept plan for a project that would construct 155 three-story townhomes at 1609 U.S. Highway 15-501, a heavily wooded area to the immediate south of Southern Village.

Town leaders would have to conditionally rezone the property from its much less dense current zoning of just one home per acre to zoning of more than four units per acre to allow for the townhomes, which would sit within a community called Flintrock Knoll.

BOLD Development, led by Chapel Hill area residents Chris Ehrenfeld and Jason Dell, is the proposed developer for the project. BOLD Development has been highly engaged in Chapel Hill and Chatham County’s real estate development scene over the past two decades and donates a portion of all its development projects to an initiative called the BOLD Foundation, which aims to serve needy children in Orange and Chatham Counties.

“They (BOLD Development) are painfully aware of the need we have now in our community for more housing, particularly missing middle housing,” said Dan Jewell, PLA, a landscape architect with Thomas & Hutton, a Durham-based firm assisting BOLD Development.

Numerous residential developments and amenities are adjacent to the proposed project, including Southern Village, Our Promise Care Homes at Heritage Hills (an assisting living neighborhood at 303 Yorktown Drive), the Southern Community Dog Park, the South Grove neighborhood, and a nearby Walmart Supercenter.

The proposed site is outside Chapel Hill’s current town limits, which means annexing the city limits could be part of the final approval of the development. The site lies to the immediate west of Chapel Hill’s jurisdiction boundary and utility service boundary – not in those specific zones. Nor is the site within Orange County’s rural buffer, meaning it can be rezoned for more dense development than the current one-home-per-acre zoning mandate.

Flintrock Knoll first project to come before Council following OWASA expansion

More than a year ago Chapel Hill and other local municipalities, including the towns of Hillsborough and Carrboro, as well as Orange County, modified its Water and Sewer Management, Planning and Boundary agreement to allow more than 350 acres near Southern Village to be within the service boundary for OWASA (Orange Water and Sewer Authority).

“This is reflecting the expansion that council and partners approved (for extended OWASA services), and this site is within the boundary,” stated Corey Liles, Chapel Hill’s Planning Manager. “Meaning, while it does not have direct access to public utilities, it is eligible to receive public water and sewer service (from OWASA through the agreed boundary update). This project does provide opportunity for council to consider complete community goals as you’re offering feedback to the applicant.”

“The Flintrock Knoll residential community is probably the first proposal you’re going to see within the expanded urban services area,” added Jewell. “I think you all remember that you (the Town of Chapel Hill), Carrboro, Orange County and OWASA all voted to extend the services area south along 15-501. It (the proposed site) is still a ways away from where the sewer is, but we’re going to figure out how to get it down there.”

Jewell indicated that the current property owners have been looking at possible residential development of the property as far back as 2017. But the limited zoning made what was determined to be possible on the site unfeasible, given the existing zoning, for any residential developer, based on Chapel Hill’s commitment to more dense zoning and adding so-called “missing middle” housing, which attempts to fill gaps in the town’s residential zoning with options for more affordable and low-income development.

“They (the property owners) said, ‘What can we do from a residential standpoint?” Jewell told town leaders. “So we had the soils evaluated and found out that you could do 16 four-bedroom houses (based on existing zoning). That’s all you could do on this 36 acres. And we felt that was not what was best for The town of Chapel Hill. In fact, at the time, I had a conversation with our previous mayor (Pam Hemminger) and she said, ‘Dan, please don’t let your clients do that. We’re going to figure out how to eventually get water and sewer down there so that we can fill that need for missing middle housing (particularly missing middle housing) that has an affordable (housing) component to it.’”

Nearly half of the proposed site would remain developed

With the new urban services boundary extending all the way to the Chatham County Line, Flintrock Knoll could be the first of a series of dense residential properties coming to this area of south Chapel Hill. But with existing streams within the 36-acre tract that are part of the local Resource Conservation District, the developer will be limited as to how much tree cover can be removed, and how much residential footprint can be developed, compared to what will be left alone as existing foliage.

“This will sort of set the precedent to bring the sewer down so that more growth like this can happen in the future,” added Jewell. “One of the reasons that this site is, I think, so special is that there are two or three large streams that go through the property; those represent the Resource Conservation District. What it’s going to do is dictate where the construction can happen on the property, and where it should not happen on the property. And because of that, we’re going to end up with at least 40% of this site in a tree coverage area and undeveloped, because that’s where the Resource Conservation District is. There are slopes throughout the property, many of them within the Resource Conservation District.”

“We will probably need to encroach a little bit into the very outer zone of the Resource Conservation District to put our stormwater management in. That’ll be a topic for discussion,” continued Jewell. “We think we need to encroach a little bit in that outer 50 feet of Resource Conservation District in a few places in order to maintain the number of units that we have on (the site plan).”

Jewell added that there is already an existing break in the median in 15-501 south, which can be utilized for the main vehicular entry for the Flintrock Knoll project, with a proposed road connection eventually coming in from Dixie Trail. But for the beginning of the project that road connection would only be “stubbed out” by the developer, with potential for a future connection if the available land (which is currently privately owned) could be zoned for similar development.

“The town has a connectivity policy, which is a good thing,” Jewell said. “So what we will be doing is just building a stub up to the property line. We’re certainly not going to build across the (private owner’s) property. We have no right to do that; they have no right to allow us to do that. But if someday in the future–maybe that’s 100 years from now–if that property is developed then, if the town’s ordinance is still the same and in place, that road connection will happen at that point. But we’re not going to build it (the road connection to Dixie Trail). We have no right to build it, and we certainly don’t want to infringe on their gardens and all the stuff that they’ve enjoyed over the years, which sounds like a wonderful place.”

One Council member, Adam Searing, expressed his concerns about the proposed stubbed road offered by the developer, and concerns about having to use eminent domain to obtain the property necessary to complete the road connection.

“We’d have to use our eminent domain powers to take their property and run a connection through there,” said Searing. “I would say I would feel much more comfortable with this if the stub was not built. I would feel much better if you just didn’t build that stub. I mean, if at some point the future Council wants to exercise its eminent domain powers and take away someone’s property to put a connector road there through, then we can have that discussion then. But until then, why do that? I don’t see any reason; why spend that money?”

Multiple local residents, including neighbors in the nearby South Grove community, expressed concerns about traffic, pedestrian safety, and stormwater management related to the project, as well as the proposed stub and future road connector.

Developer proposes 20 affordable-housing units within project; parking undetermined

BOLD Development is proposing to include 20 of the 155 apartments to be designated as affordable units, available for local residents at or below 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI) for Chapel Hill. Plans also call for a sanitary sewer extension, the construction of a greenway trail, along with 7,500 square feet of non-residential development along the frontage of US Highway 15-501 that could be utilized for a future daycare center.

“Hopefully, at some point we’ll have public transit that we can tie into,” added Jewell. “We also see doing an extensive network of greenway trails throughout the neighborhood that would connect all the areas to the open space. We’ve actually set up four or five areas throughout the neighborhood that would be set up as sort of improved open space, with picnic areas and seating areas and open play areas. We see space for community gardens and a playground for children, because we certainly know and hope there will be lots of children living in here.”

Responding to an inquiry from Council member Karen Stegman, Jewell indicated that the developer has not yet finalized plans for parking.

“It’s probably something we’re still pondering,” explained the landscape architect. “Typically you would try and provide maybe two spaces per unit on average. I don’t know if we thought about whether these would have one-car garages or driveways. Certainly there’s also room to have some on-street parking, so that we didn’t have to necessarily build parking spaces and that sort of thing. I think, more than anything, we’d like to hear (the Town Council’s) input on what you think is appropriate. Now, certainly, since these are for-sale units and presumably people need to get a mortgage, banks sometimes have an expectation for parking. But if you’ve got thoughts on that, we’ll see if we can figure out how to make that happen.”

“I think this is the kind of use that we envisioned when we extended the boundaries,” said Stegman. “I really like the concept. I think it kind of works out in the plan’s favor that there’s so much undevelopable land, because it’s really green and so much natural area. That’s really an asset.”

“I’m seeing this as a really important area for us to know where we want greenways and bus stops for the future,” said Chapel Hill mayor Jessica Anderson. “So I’m wondering, do we have a sense of that? Can we bring that back if and when this comes (back to the Town Council)? How are we thinking through kind of the bigger picture?”

“I don’t know that this part of town really has that developed,” explained Liles, regarding potential greenway and transit infrastructure. “When we’re looking at greenways and other existing components of our comp plan, it doesn’t suggest a lot of anything. There’s opportunity to develop that, although understanding that this project will have its timeline, and then just seeing what we can put forward before the conditional zoning process has occurred.”

“I want to say that we don’t have transit here yet, and it will be a while before we have transit here,” said Council member Camille Berry. “And these homes need vehicles to get to their homes. And when you live in a home you would like to have people over. So making sure that there is a way for people to come and visit you. So I think parking is a necessity here.”

Flintrock Knoll will now go through a process that includes technical review on the part of Chapel Hill Planning staff, as well as a public information process that will include public meetings and conversations with neighbors, addressing their concerns. The project could come back before the Town Council sometime later this year or sometime in 2026.

Orginal Source: https://thelocalreporter.press/chapel-hill-considering-155-townhomes-adjacent-to-southern-village/