The Chapel Hill Town Council recently passed a set of amendments to its Land Use Management Ordinance that could make it easier to expand housing options in town. The changes look at 12 areas of the document and focus on creating missing middle housing options and streamlining town development processes.
The changes unanimously adopted at a Jan. 21 meeting are part of a broader ongoing effort by the town to modernize its Land Use Management Ordinance. The current LUMO establishing rules and uses for all constructed elements of the town has not been updated since 2003, and the rewrite aims to better advance Chapel Hill’s Complete Community goals related to transportation, affordable housing, climate change, and transit-oriented development.
According to Chapel Hill Mayor Jess Anderson, the process is taking “longer than anticipated,” and the amendments serve as a way to address high-priority areas until a new document is voted on.
“I think we came to very reasonable amendments,” Anderson said. “And I’m really, really happy that we’re moving forward with something that is offering additional options for people to live here who currently cannot live here, and also the people who live here will have additional options of other things they can do with their properties.”
Anderson told 97.9 THe Hill how a lot of the changes will hopefully help fill gaps in the type of housing Chapel Hill offers, while also meeting the town’s environmental placemaking rules and increasing its housing stock. Some of them include eliminating the site plan review process for all projects, streamlining the submission requirements for applicants, eliminating parking minimums for two-family dwellings, and reducing the amount of detail required in district-specific plans. Others eased various sign regulations for residential zones, addressed lot sizes for subdivisions, and will allow for multiple permitted uses on some properties.
The updates are a result of several council discussions from the last few months, and the decision to increase the maximum size for two-family dwelling units from 3,000 to 5,000 square-feet saw some of the most debate from the council. According to staff, the amendment creates the most opportunities for diverse housing types like duplexes, accessories, dwelling units, and cottages — an area the council deemed as a priority during early conversations. And while contributing to the council’s unanimous adoption of the changes, Council Member Amy Ryan still expressed how that change is a worry for her.
“I’m concerned by the decision to allow 5,000 square-foot duplexes the size of two generous single family homes in a market already incentivized to build housing that is bigger and often prohibitively expensive for most people,” Ryan said. “This change runs against the kind of smaller, more accessible housing I want to encourage.”
Anderson shared a similar sentiment at a Jan. 7 discussion, stating how she wants smaller units to better target the need for middle housing. But she said how this issue could be further addressed by the rewritten LUMO, especially if the amendment will increase housing stock in the meantime.
Another large discussion point for the council centered on whether to eliminate the concept review process for proposed developments, and the amendment ultimately passed in an effort to streamline the development process and produce better outcomes. During the Jan. 7 meeting, Council Member Melissa McCullough noted how smaller developers typically avoid Chapel Hill for its current review process.
“One of the difficulties in this conversation is that we’re trying to evaluate the value of a process towards getting us better outcomes of developments that we get,” McCullough said. “When in fact our biggest problem in the past seems to have been the fact that we’ve driven away all of the developers except the big money ones.
“And nobody small, nobody who can’t afford to spend years on concept plans, and site plans, and redoing plans, and bringing your lawyer, and bringing your landscaper [can build here],” she continued. “And my real question is how many people would come forward once that process is really streamlined.”
Council Member Theodore Nollert added how he hopes the updated LUMO will clarify what will be required of developers and zoning so there can be less need for a concept review. But moving forward, Council Member Paris Miller-Foushee said she believes there will be a greater responsibility to inform the community of ways to engage with the future projects if developers are no longer required to present plans in public hearings.
The town will hear an update from staff on the LUMO rewrite and its timeline on Feb. 11.
To view the Jan. 21 meeting, click here.
To see all the LUMO amendments, click here.
Featured photo via the Town of Chapel Hill.
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