Nearly three years since submitting their first application to the Town of Chapel Hill, the owners of University Place mall say we’re not far from seeing some major redevelopment begin — perhaps as soon as this fall.
University Place and its owner company, Ram Realty, completed an initial phase of renovation and development during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Empty wall space was turned into three new retail areas, which have since been filled by Hawkers, Flying Biscuit Café and, soon, CycleBar.
Ram Realty has also held public information meetings and public hearings through the Town of Chapel Hill, receiving approval of its special use permit for the site in June 2021. During this period of working through reviews, much of the mall space on the south end, which housed the store Southern Season until early 2020, has sat vacant.
The empty Southern Season space at the end of University Place mall facing Fordham Boulevard. The retail and gourmet food store closed in January 2020.
But according to Vice President of Development Jeff Kurtz, that part of the mall building won’t be around for much longer. In a conversation with Chapelboro, Kurtz said once the zoning compliance permit for University Place is approved, construction equipment will start coming in by the end of September.
“The redevelopment will include the demolition of the Southern Season box,” he said, “turning about 87,000 square feet of interior facing mall scape into outward-facing retail suites, activating the edges of the mall [and] creating more of a mixed-use environment.”
The demotion is a big step in the larger redevelopment Ram Realty has sought since acquiring the University Place property in 2018. The goal: to upgrade to 350,000 square feet of retail space, while adding a hotel, 60,000 square feet of office space, more than 250 residential units and more than two acres of greenspace.
The mall owners have designated the site into five different pods, which will be filled with different developments compared to parking lots or wings of the current mall. Many tenants have moved to outdoor spaces as part of the shift within Pod B — the existing mall building. Plans for Pod A along Willow Drive include multi-family apartment homes, while Pod C includes a variety of businesses being constructed.
The map of development “pods” around the University Place property. (Photo via Ram Realty.)
The master plan for University Place’s redevelopment, which displays current and future business spaces, as shared in August 2022. (Photo via RAM REALTY.)
One example among them a new Chick-fil-A location at the site of the old K&W Cafeteria. Others will be built along the property edge to Fordham Boulevard and in the redesigned space on the south side of the mall building.
“We’re really excited about this being a much more walkable site than it is now,” said Kurtz. “By demolishing the Southern Season box, we’re going to take about a third of the length off the existing mall. So, it’s going to be easier to navigate from one side of the mall to the other.
“We’re going to be creating a main street sort of development that is there within the footprint of the Southern Season,” he continued. “And that main street is going to be flanked by two new mixed-use office buildings that will contain [an] office component, as well as ground-floor retail.”
Before that demolition, however, Kurtz said to expect some work to be done on intersections around and near the mall site. Approximately $4 million worth of improvements are planned, like making new turn lanes from Fordham Boulevard onto Willow Drive, a bike lane connecting Willow to Estes Drive, the extension of Chapel Hill’s upcoming multi-use path from Estes, updating crosswalks and installing new pedestrian signals.
Kurtz said during this upcoming phase, as well as the demolition of the Southern Season space, Ram Realty aims to prioritize maintaining access to the rest of the mall. He said existing tenants and mall patrons should be on the lookout for upcoming messages about timing, detours and details on what areas will be off-limits.
“So, what people [should] expect to see is a lot of signage on site, fencing blocking off areas,” he said. “And the existing tenants will receive updates to let them know what work is going to happen when, so we’re all on the same page.”
Kurtz said Ram Realty is targeting the major redevelopment of the existing mall space to finish in mid-2024.
“We think that, upon execution,” said Kurtz, “the new uses that are there, the redesign, more community-oriented and pedestrian-focused development is going to be something that all of Chapel Hill will be proud of. The amount of use that is going to be out there is going to be exponentially bigger than what it is now.”
On Tuesday, University Place and Ram Realty shared a vision website for the mall’s redevelopment. You can find more details, as well as ongoing updates to the redevelopment process, here.
Editor’s Note: Chapel Hill Media Group is a tenant of University Place, having first moved there in 2016.
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