The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill invites local residents, faculty, staff and students to attend a Jan. 19 public meeting for updates on activities at the Carolina North site.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill invites local residents, faculty, staff and students to attend a Jan. 19 public meeting for updates on activities at the Carolina North site.
The meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. in the Magnolia Conference Room of the Giles F. Horney Building at 103 Airport Drive. Free parking is available, and Chapel Hill Transit serves the building via the NU route.
Carolina North is being developed as a mixed-use academic campus on University-owned property along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, two miles north of the main campus. Most of the planned construction for Carolina North will take place on or near the site of the Horace Williams Airport.
Topics for the Jan. 19 meeting will include the construction of a utilities ductbank, inclusion of a methane gas pipeline and design of a greenway in that utilities corridor and the design of a Research Building as the first building to be constructed at Carolina North.
Another major topic will be a proposed minor modification of conservation areas as described in the Carolina North Development Agreement, the July 2009 contract between the University and the Town of Chapel Hill that covers the first 20 years of development of Carolina North. The agreement includes the designation of 311 acres of the property for conservation. After fieldwork done to identify the features of the conservation areas and broader discussions on campus, University staff looked at ways to reshape the 311 acres to improve the ecological value of the conservation areas. The resulting modification consolidated some of the areas and extended others so they would meet, making it possible to preserve older, more mature forest and protect additional stream, stream buffer and wildlife corridors in the same amount of acreage.
The University first presented the proposal informally at a Town Council meeting Oct. 26 and has now formally submitted the minor modification to Town Manager Roger Stancil, who will review it.
News Services contact: Susan Hudson, (919) 962-8415, susan_hudson@unc.edu