They Paved Paradise, and Put Up a Parking Lot

A perspective from Pam Cooper

 

Jay Street is a quiet cul-de-sac on the border of Chapel Hill and Carrboro. It is a forested tract, home to animals and lively with birdsong. Jay Street is one of the last pieces of pristine woodland in a townscape increasingly dominated by concrete, tarmac, and walls of every description. I moved to this area twenty years ago, having come to Chapel Hill via Canada and South Africa in 1990. I love not only my neighborhood but Chapel Hill itself — its beauty, ambience, rich cultural life, and marvelous opportunities for both adults and children. I was pleased to raise my daughter in a place that offered her a fine education and space for adventure in the outdoors. We have a unique and delightful town.

Now Jay Street is being drawn into the building frenzy that is giving developers and their allies on the Town Council huge influence over the shape and character of Chapel Hill. These powerful monied and political interests are, I believe, actively damaging our town. Projects such as Aura and 66 Jay Street threaten the fine balance Chapel Hill has always achieved between the ease and natural beauty of college-town life and the vibrancy of a sophisticated milieu. The Jay Street development proposes two 3-storey rental apartment blocks designated as affordable or high-density housing. These, along with parking for 100 cars, are to be crammed onto part of a 7.5-acre lot which has already been judged unsuitable for building. In a survey conducted in 2017, experts recommended that the land be left undeveloped for the recreation and enjoyment of citizens. Crucially, this tract was purchased by the Town in 2005-6 with Open Space Bonds dedicated to the preservation of open land. Yet the town is preparing to develop a site not only problematical in its topography and location, but previously earmarked as greenspace. This plan may very well constitute a misappropriation of funds; it certainly speaks to short-sighted Town leadership, greedy developers, and the urgent problem of unfettered building in Chapel Hill.

Obfuscation has characterized the actions of both the Town and developer regarding Jay Street. This project began in 2018, despite the findings of the 2017 survey, and has been steadily progressing through the Town’s approval process ever since. Yet residents of the adjacent neighborhoods were not notified until March 2021. Some received a postcard, others got nothing at all. The people most affected were blindsided. By the time they were notified, the concept plan was already in place: the Town had selected the Taft-Mills company of Greenville to build the development, and a hearing with the Town’s Design Board was already scheduled. The communities most affected are Village West, Estes Park Apartments, and homes along Jay Street which abut the Tanyard Branch Trail. The general disregarding of neighborhood input and the Town’s lack of transparency flagrantly ignores the well-being of existing communities and raises unanswered questions. Why has a company from Greenville been chosen for a Chapel Hill project? This seems to be part of a pattern of using out-of-town developers for local projects. It is not surprising that local conditions and wishes are ignored. Why is Dustin Mills, president of the company, also a member of the Housing Advisory Board of Chapel Hill? The Town Council seems unperturbed by this conflict of interest.

The opposition of the surrounding communities is emphatically not directed at high-density housing as such. Village West is a low- to moderate-income community and Estes Park Apartments are designated affordable. Such opposition is based on legitimate concerns about the negative impact of this development regarding not only environmental damage and the disclosure process, but also traffic congestion, and infrastructure problems affecting Village Drive, Estes Drive, the Tanyard Branch Trail, and Umstead Road. The desire to build high-density homes is laudable and Chapel Hill strives to do its part. Yet the relationship of Town leadership to the complex issues surrounding the construction of affordable homes appears to be unexamined. Why, for example, did the Town vote to demolish the 250-unit, high-density Park Apartments on Ephesus Church Road in order to build expensive housing in its place? Perhaps after the Council elections in November, a thorough conversation about development of all kinds in Chapel Hill could be opened and the input of the town’s residents actively sought. After all it is us, not the developers, who are the Council’s constituents.

Taft-Mills plans 48-52 rental units at 66 Jay. The only road for ingress and egress will be Jay Street, which is a narrow and partially unpaved driveway between the Village West townhomes and the historic African American veterans’ cemetery of West Chapel Hill. Taft-Mills proposes no widening of this road and no building of another road for accessing the buildings. Traffic along Village Drive is already congested and will become more so, and the parking problems in Village West will be exacerbated. The neighborhood association, Save Jay Street, which has organized against this project believes affordable housing to be essential; but even a cursory survey of this parcel makes clear that the project involves dire consequences for the health of established communities while offering the proposed new residents a problematical and challenging living space. If this development goes ahead, a high price will be paid by all residents, current and future.

As has been acknowledged at several meetings of the Town advisory boards, the topography of the Jay Street site is inhospitable to development. It is small, steep, and raises problems of drainage and flooding in the immediate neighborhood and down onto the Tanyard Branch trail and its environs. The concept plan and supporting materials submitted by Taft-Mills contain no specifics about the site’s water issues. Clear-cutting and paving 66 Jay will create runoff problems for Bolin Creek and exacerbate the flooding that regularly happens on Umstead Road after heavy rain. It seems the developer has no plans to address these issues. Taft-Mills also has no plans to address the question of possible unmarked graves on a site abutting a historic cemetery —an ethnically and culturally disrespectful oversight. The company is also downplaying the difficulties of pedestrian connectivity in the area due to lack of infrastructure. The walk to and from Rosemary Street and Northside is a very long one and unsuitable for all-weather commuting on foot. There are no direct pedestrian routes to shopping or business centers and Carr Mill Mall can only be reached after a long tramp to North Greensboro Road or an (illegal) walk along the train tracks. Absurdly, Taft-Mills further claims that the proposed buildings will integrate easily into their surroundings and be an aesthetic asset. Yet the two apartment blocks are an eyesore – the utterly generic cross between a corporate office and a dormitory which town residents have come to expect. These buildings are of a completely different character to the surrounding homes. The loss of greenery will affect the vistas currently enjoyed by residents and drastically alter both the appearance and unique character of the area. As Taft-Mills applies for a Special Use Permit from the Town, these proposals surely constitute doing harm to the neighborhood – which the terms of such a permit expressly forbid.

The environmental impact of the Jay Street development will be overwhelmingly negative. The housing crisis is acute, but the climate crisis is as well. This is the painful situation faced not only by twenty-first-century town planners but by everyone who cares about their community, the world, and all its inhabitants. Greenspace and species diversity is essential to both community well-being and the health of our deteriorating planet. The Town of Chapel Hill should do its part responsibly to preserve these. Around Jay Street a rich natural habitat will be sacrificed to accommodate a project that offers low-income citizens only a rental opportunity rather than an ownership one, and which relegates them to a cramped and awkward site on the edge of an active railway line. Little will be gained in quality of human life and much species diversity lost if this project goes ahead. Deforestation is exacerbating climate change and global heating everywhere; many communities in the United States are planting trees rather than felling them. The global impact of local actions is vitally important as we confront the costs of unchecked development at the level of daily life. In the words of zoologist Jane Goodall, who this year won the prestigious Templeton Prize for her life’s work in conservation: “There’s a growing awareness, partly elevated by this pandemic, of the fact that we really need a new relationship with the natural world.” Climate issues need to be prioritized as Chapel Hill pursues the absurd but lucrative goal of ‘urbanizing’ a town famed for its greenery and possessing the basic infrastructure of an overgrown village.

Finally, the Jay Street project, while clearly offering few workable amenities to future residents, also congregates together three communities of low- to moderate-income housing in an uninviting spot. As responsible citizens of Chapel Hill, we must question the wisdom of such a location: the Town apparently intends to group affordable homes and communities together rather than integrating them throughout the town. It has demolished communities like Park Apartments while seeking sites that emphatically separate low-income citizens from more affluent neighborhoods. The Jay Street plan, like others in Chapel Hill, should be recognized as misguided. The Council is robbing Peter to pay Paul while pursuing on a broader front the dangerous fantasy that untrammeled growth can come without exorbitant cost.

For more information including petitions and research into the history of the site, see http://stopjaystreetdevelopment.com.

 

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