A new Chapel Hill Police station may be in the works as part of a joint venture with UNC.

Materials for the upcoming Chapel Hill Town Council meeting include an agenda item authorizing the Town Council and university Board of Trustees to “initiate a discussion” about the possibility of a joint development on university-owned property on Estes Drive between Airport Drive and Seawell School Road.

When listing key issues for the item, the first point from town staff is that the need for a new police station had previously been identified by the town and that staff had worked to identify potential sites that would meet the needs of the department. The meeting material also says the town saw this as an opportunity to “facilitate increased collaboration, shared training, operations, and public services with other Town operations, such as Parks and Recreation and Fire.”

The current police station is located on Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard and was built on a coal ash deposit site.

Proposed site for potential Chapel Hill – UNC joint development.

The town identified sites that led to a conversation with UNC officials about “joint uses and shared interests,” on the university property, according to town documents.

The site has already been preliminarily tested, according to the town, and shows that there is a “significant opportunity to develop a plan for the property that respects the site constraints and the neighboring properties and complements the planned Carolina North campus.”

The UNC Board of Trustees is scheduled to receive the same information at its upcoming meeting scheduled for next week.

If both bodies authorize representatives to take part in further discussions, the Town Council and Board of Trustees would hear options for shared use of the site and funding at a future date.

This follows a trend of co-locating services in Chapel Hill as in December the Orange County Board of Commissioners agreed to fund a portion of a development of town-owned property that will house a new fire station and office space being build by East-West Partners.

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