Chapel Hill Town Council Considers Redevelopment of Southern Village Park-and-Ride Lot

The Chapel Hill Town Council is considering options for redeveloping the park-and-ride lot at Southern Village. The council hired a consultant to help plan the future of the town-owned 8.5-acre lot.

Victor Dover, the consultant from the planning firm Dover, Kohl & Partners, facilitated the discussion at Thursday night’s meeting.

Dover said a park-and-ride lot means “capturing an outer catchment or cloud of suburban drivers and hoping that we’ll intercept them so that they don’t ask us to store their big, expensive, space-consuming cars in the center of town or on campus or at the research triangle where we don’t have room for them, and instead store them somewhere on the edge of town and use transit for the rest of their trip  . . . Apart from the $2 they pay to park in the park-and-ride, which barely helps with recovering any costs, they’re not contributing economically to that place.”

Dover said putting shops between the parking space and the bus stop might entice drivers to spend money locally.

Dover listed several possible development scenarios to start the conversation about the park-and-ride lot. One scenario has surface parking with a few mixed-use buildings. Another scenario includes a parking structure, several mixed-use buildings, an access lane with on-street parking, and civic buildings.

Southern area resident Jeanne Brown offered suggestions to the council as they consider the future of the park-and-ride lot.

“Please make sure that your planning can be proactive and not reactive to what is being proposed across the road,” said Brown.

Council members are considering redevelopment as they negotiate with East West Partners, the future developer of the privately owned 120-acre property across the highway. This is the Obey Creek site, proposed as a residential, retail and office development of up to 1.6 million square feet.

Council members encourage people to come to Chapel Hill Town Hall for Friday’s 1:30 pm meeting facilitated by Dover and designed to get public input. The Town Hall address is 405 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. At 4 pm, council members will meet with Dover and the developer to discuss both the park-and-ride lot and Obey Creek.