Carrboro Approves Overlay District for Downtown Neighborhood

In their last meeting of June, Carrboro’s Board of Aldermen voted to create an overlay district around the Lloyd-Broad neighborhood downtown.

The measure, which creates restrictions on existing houses and future construction in the area, is meant to protect the neighborhood’s identity. Historically an African-American community, Lloyd-Broad has recently experienced increases in student rentals.

Carrboro mayor Lydia Lavelle said the original complaints from the neighborhood centered on parking and towing. As time went on, however, the discussion around Lloyd-Broad shifted and residents approached the board in a combined effort.

“There became more of a concern about the integrity of the neighborhood being dismantled by tearing down the neighborhood houses and building up larger houses that were out of character with the community,” Lavelle said. “It was really a lot of back-and-forth on several ways to address that.”

Lavelle said the restrictions placed on Lloyd-Broad were influenced by overlay districts implemented in Chapel Hill not long ago. The Carrboro board set a square-footage limit for buildings, restrictions that encourage better parking habits and limiting the number of individuals unrelated by blood living in a household to four. Lavelle said she sees that as the right amount of students per house. She said this final element drew the most attention.

“That was one of the parts of this overlay that generated the most discussion in the springtime leading up to this,” she said. “One of the reasons we only have that applying right now to this particular district is because staff will look at how we might expand that to other parts of town in the fall. But we want to make sure we feel comfortable with the wording before we do that.”

Criticisms of overlay districts claim the protections ultimately make the neighborhoods more appealing to newcomers or investors. These elements could make housing prices go up, which would be less beneficial to current neighborhood residents. Lavelle admitted that while it’s a possibility and not the intentions of the board, it’s not a unique problem to Lloyd-Broad or Carrboro as a whole.

“We have neighborhoods all over town where this could be happening, where it’s starting to happen, where prices are going up,” said Lavelle. “It’s getting harder and harder for people to afford to live in Carrboro. But at the same time, we have lots of people finding homes to live in, so it’s a real dilemma.”

The Board of Aldermen declared the ordinance effective immediately to all new development but gave existing houses in the neighborhood three years to comply with the new standards.

Photo via the Town of Carrboro

Carrboro Creates Overlay District in Downtown Neighborhood

On Air Now: 97.9 FM