CHAPEL HILL – Plans are on hold—at least temporarily—for the redevelopment of an apartment complex on Ephesus Church Road, as Town officials prepare to discuss rezoning.

“The applicant had (seen) that the Town was beginning to move forward,” says Chapel Hill economic development officer Dwight Bassett, “so the client felt that it made sense for them to step back into the sidelines and let us get through with the conversation about the rezoning before they proceed with their application.”

The complex in question is The Park at Chapel Hill (formerly The Colony), located at 1250 Ephesus Church Road behind the Chapel Hill University Inn. The plan is to redevelop it as a mixed-use project, with 10,000 square feet of retail and 800 apartments and townhomes.

View the Town’s page on the Park project.

See the concept plan.

That plan is part of a larger undertaking by the Town to revamp the entire Ephesus Church-Fordham Boulevard corridor—including a redevelopment of Ram’s Plaza and the construction of new roads and road extensions to better handle traffic. The Town Council approved a Small Area Plan for the area in June of 2011.

Click here to see the plan itself, with details about the new roads–including extensions of Elliott and Legion.

But that project requires a rezoning, and Bassett says the developer has decided to withdraw its concept plan for the Park at Chapel Hill until the rezoning process is finished. Bassett says the rezoning will be done by the end of this year—at which point he expects the developer to resubmit.

“They’re continuing to plan, continuing to consider, continuing to move forward,” he says. “They still have the desire, hopefully, to come out of the ground with beginning some redevelopment in 2014, and we think that this path can still meet that goal.”

The Chapel Hill Town Council was set to discuss the concept plan at its meeting next Monday, but that has been postponed. Once the Council discusses the concept plan, the developer will come forward with a more formal development proposal.

The Park project is not without some controversy: that complex has been known as a primary source of affordable housing in Chapel Hill, and some have argued that the redevelopment is making affordable housing even harder to come by.
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