Part of the extensive redevelopment of University Place mall in Chapel Hill may include the addition of a Chick-fil-A location with drive-thru lanes. But a popular church directly neighboring the property is asking for some of the plans to be reconsidered.
Ram Realty, the development company who purchased University Place in 2018, is in the process of rolling out significant changes to revitalize the site, which includes businesses inside the mall building being moved to have exterior entrances or buildings. Chick-fil-A appears to be one of them, having closed its interior location in November 2021 and now seeking to house the site previously leased to K&W Cafeteria.
The empty K&W Cafeteria building on the northeast portion of University Place’s property. Chick-fil-A is considering a franchise location on the site.
Not far from the empty building is one that experiences much more activity: Binkley Baptist Church. Initially led by Rev. Robert Seymour, the church moved to its current address off Willow Drive not long after being founded on UNC campus in 1958. Described by members as being a “conscience to the community,” the church beat other development to the Chapel Hill neighborhood, but grew its reputation based on its community connections, service and progressive faith.
Charles Coble, a Binkley Baptist Church member, says his church quickly saw the notion of new mall development as an exciting opportunity. Like how the church “embraced the mall” upon its initial construction in the 1970s, he says Binkley aimed to cooperate with mall ownership to share their ideas and, in the words of Pastor Marcus McFaul, “be good neighbors.”
McFaul says, however, that some church members do not feel as if they’re being treated the same way by the mall’s ownership – especially when it comes to plans for the parcel directly beside Binkley’s property.
“We’re not anti-development and we’re not anti-mall,” the pastor says. “We want the mall to thrive and be a significant player in the Chapel Hill community as historically it has been. So, we wish it very well.
“But Ram Realty has not been transparent with us,” McFaul adds, “and I don’t think they’ve been transparent with other community players.”
In 2019, a Binkley visioning committee reached out to University Place leadership to provide its input and hear updates on the mall’s redevelopment plans. McFaul says Ram Realty kept a regular line of dialogue until the COVID-19 pandemic made things more challenging. Even then, the two groups met in June 2021 to discuss plans for redevelopment near Binkley’s property, like the access from Willow Drive and the former K&W Cafeteria site.
Coble says while congregation members stressed their interest in a green space or park being next to their property, the church was prepared for a business to take the space. But he says both Chapel Hill planning staff and Ram Realty leadership indicated it would not be a drive-thru restaurant – which was low on the church’s wish list.
Coble says that led to Binkley membership being surprised this last March when the News & Observer reported Chick-fil-A’s goal to establish a franchise at the parcel of land. Part of the initial site plans included two drive-thru lanes running parallel to the border of Binkley’s property.
Site plans submitted by Chick-fil-A to the Town of Chapel Hill’s Community Design Commission for a March 10, 2022 meeting. (Photo via Chick-fil-A/GBC Design Inc.)
“I read this article and I was stunned on several levels,” says Coble. “Because when we met with them, there was no indication. We asked specifically, ‘will this property become a likely site for a drive-thru?’ And the answer was no.”
Coble says the reason why Binkley initially held – and still maintains – opposition to a drive-thru is because the church has daily operations. In addition to church services, Binkley also runs a day care and holds congregational events on its Peace Plaza right beside the mall property. The space is separated only by a small parking lot and a ten-foot buffer with some trees.
According to Coble, the visioning committee is worried about children being so close to lanes of parked traffic, which is expected to be present around 12 hours a day.
“These young people are going to be exposed to those noxious fumes [from cars],” says Coble. “It has been stated to us by Ram Realty, ‘well, you’re right next to a bypass and cars go by all the time.’ But we’re not naïve to the distinction between a car moving down a highway and a double lane of, by their own drawing, up to 40 cars stacked up there.”
Ram Realty’s Vice President of Development Jeff Kurtz says he remembers the June 2021 meeting differently.
“No, I did not tell them there would not be a drive-thru during that meeting,” he told Chapelboro.
In a statement to Chapelboro, Chapel Hill’s Assistant Planning Director Judy Johnson said — based on her knowledge — no town staff told Binkley representatives the site would not include drive-thru lanes.
Kurtz recalled, like McFaul and Coble, that much of the discussion last summer was about the proposed changes to Willow Drive and Fordham Boulevard, which aimed to improve vehicle and pedestrian access to the redeveloped mall. Kurtz said plans for the addition of a turn lane on Willow and a multi-use side path along Fordham would have cut into Binkley’s property – although that meeting helped lead those ideas to be tweaked.
“Out of that conversation,” Kurtz said, they followed up with a list of their key concerns. Each of those concerns was addressed and was captured in some manner as a stipulation within our approved special use permit. We included a stipulation where we would work with Binkley to enhance that buffer and add additional vegetation, add additional screening between those two properties.”
Coble says some of that additional screening offered by developers is a tall wall, which he believes is antithetical to the church’s goal of being visible for the mall community.
“That makes Binkley [like] Fortress Binkley,” Coble says. “It walls us off and that’s exactly the opposite of what we want to have happen – so that all those customers coming by Chick-fil-A won’t even know there’s a church over that wall. Because we have to protect ourselves from what’s on [the mall] side of the wall.”
The Chick-fil-A location inside the existing University Place mall building was a popular one before closing in November 2021.
Kurtz said there was not any communication between his Ram Realty team and Binkley between June 2021 and Chick-fil-A sharing their plans with the Town of Chapel Hill this March. He said it’s also up to the fast-food franchise to create its plans and submit them to the local government – a portion of the process mall management is not involved with. But Ram Realty did include in its approved special use permit the ability to add six drive-thru lanes to the mall site and that the K&W Cafeteria parcel is a “very good fit” for a restaurant with such lanes.
Kurtz said he believes considering that lease negotiations between mall ownership and potential tenants stay confidential, Ram Realty has kept a good balance between the legal requirements and communication with nearby properties. He said, in his mind, Ram Realty did work closely with Binkley Baptist.
“I understand Binkley wanting to be kept in the loop,” said Kurtz, “but there are some legal responsibilities we have that will dictate how much we can share.”
The plans submitted by Chick-fil-A were critiqued by the town’s Community Design Commission. The franchise has yet to submit new plans, which may include reconfigured drive-thru plans – although many of the town commission’s comments were focused on the visual aspects of the restaurant building. In its master plan for mall redevelopment shared Tuesday, University Place has yet to confirm Chick-fil-A at the parcel and Kurtz said he was unaware of any changes yet made.
McFaul says he and other church members hope that if a drive-thru must be included, the restaurant explores moving the lane from running beside the church’s buffer. But if that is where it gets constructed, the pastor said it will not change the church’s approach to community or cooperation.
“I can assure that if these plans materialize,” says McFaul, “we’re still going to be preaching, teaching and living out our mission. It will have meant, though, that we, the [town] and the mall lost an opportunity – and that would be the worst part of this whole thing.”
Editor’s Note: A previous version of the story incorrectly quoted Kurtz, leaving out an additional “not” in his statement regarding communications with Binkley about the prospects of a drive-thru.
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If they want the space next to them to be a park or green space, then they should buy the land. The rest of their arguments hold little water: children should be watched by their parents so they don’t run into traffic and a dividing wall also isn’t good enough. I’m all in favor of positive relationships between community members but the church is making a lot of demands to be involved in the development of land they don’t have financial stake in.
Thanks for the detailed article. This tells a much more complete story what went wrong with the RAM permit and is a lesson learned that redevelopment works best when the party making radical changes reaches agreements with their neighbors. I believe that most Council members who voted for the RAM permit wish that the language that allowed additional drive in businesses and the stripped down farmers market space had been highlighted by the town staff, but it was buried in the fine print of the design guidelines. Surely they would have made changes had they known.
T: Apparently you’ve never seen a Chick-fil-A. The increased traffic that will result from this horrible idea will be backed up on Fordham and in the mall in both directions – it will affect seriously affect shopping at the Harris Teeter and I feel terrible for the Church which is a progressive Baptist Church. Isn’t it a little ironic that the founders of Chick-fil-A are deeply religious family of Southern Baptists? I guess that means that at least on Sundays it will be quiet there – Chick-fil-A’s aren’t open on Sundays! But the rest of the week Katy bar the door.
The “noxious fumes” thing is a joke – I sit in traffic on 15-501 every single day, right in front of Binkley and every other business on that street. I think we’ve all seen how efficient Chic-Fil-A is with their drive thru…guarantee it moves faster than traffic on 501.