What’s Next for Ephesus-Fordham, a.k.a. Blue Hill?

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Overview

Another enormous, 521′ long, luxury apartment development, the Fordham Apartment,  was approved and is under construction under the form based code located along Fordham Boulevard (Highway 15-501) by Town Manager Roger Stancil.  High end apartments are not the type of housing that Chapel Hill needs, certainly not next to a creek and in a flood zone.

So far the Manager has approved two other projects under the form based code similar to this one.  A possible three more potential sites remain.

Since 2015 the Town Council has thought about how to improve the Code that sets the rules for the entire Ephesus-Fordham “Blue Hill”District. However despite modest changes to the Code, the changes have failed to deliver the kind of redevelopment called for in the Ephesus-Fordham Small Area Plan – a plan developed by citizens and approved by the Council back in 2011.  Imagine a new code that would ensure a walkable and bike friendly community, excellent public transit, parks and other community amenities, strong schools, less flooding, housing we can afford, and a healthy natural environment! Despite changes to block size, modest additions to public space, and a very undemanding requirement for 10% commercial – retail or office- instead of expensive apartments.

 

June 2019 Update

 

Brief summary of June 5 Council work session discussion

Tony Sease, the town’s consultant, explained how minor tweaks made in complicated ways would address the public and council concerns about size while we believe they do not address the major concern about massive buildings. He suggested some ways to make the buildings seem less massive .  We wish he had taken the direct approach of limiting the size and the footprint of the buildings. A number of council members pushed back on his approach. It seemed the consultant seemed most interested in what would be most financially advantageous for the developers rather than how to achieve the vibrant walkable district the council wants.

Council members Jess Anderson, Hongbin Gu and Rachel Schaevitz pressed for solutions that would rid us of the apartments circling parking decks, and would create public spaces where people would want to visit. These council members particularly  emphasized the importance of a shared vision for the district that would bring town benefits. Nancy Oates said the tall buildings would be OK if they provided affordable housing. Michael Parker wanted to know how more commercial and office could be built. Answering Allen Buansi’s question, if the code is not changed,  then Eastgate, Ram Plaza, and Staples area all could be redeveloped under the present Code, along with many smaller properties. After more than an hour of discussion it was understood that the consultant would bring back more options based on the feedback.  There were no formal votes because it was a work session.

 

Council materials for June 5 work session

CHALT Newsletter article with more information

 

May 2018 Update

At the April 25th Town Council meeting, CHALT presented vigorous arguments why the Town needs to delay giving final approval to the design of a new road in the district. However, by a disappointing vote of 5 to 3, the new Council voted to approve extending Elliott Road through a flood zone to join up with Ephesus Road.   Read CHALT letter to Council .

Mayor Hemminger and Council Member Nancy Oates voted to proceed along with Council members Michael Parker, Donna Bell and Karen Stegman, despite ample evidence that many elements of the planned extension will cause serious adverse consequences, including worsened flooding, major traffic difficulties, reduced pedestrian safety, and the unrecoverable loss of affordable housing. Council Members Allen Buansi, Hongbin Gu, and Rachel Schaevitz counseled caution and voted no. See the area flood map.

• More Affordable Housing Lost. In one fell swoop, the vote guaranteed the destruction of the affordable Park Apartments (200 units including many families), replacing them with precisely what we don’t need: more luxury rentals in a flood plain. Letter re Park Apartments
• Stormwater and flooding challenges remain. We requested more review to evaluate stormwater issues related to the road extension.
• Traffic issues on 15-501 remain unaddressed. Letter re traffic.

With this vote, the Town Council majority continues the disastrous legacy of the 2014 Town Council, whose members adopted the code in 2014. That was the Council that put in place the fast track approvals and weakened standards which have attracted the out-of-town investors who built the Berkshire Apartments on Elliott Road. Other developers are building three more similarly designed “Texas Donut” apartments that are antithetical to the kind of green, lively, pedestrian-oriented, district Town leaders said they had hoped to create in this part of town.

Read about the Council votes here. See list of Ephesus-Fordham, aka Blue Hill projects in the pipeline here.

Improving or abandoning the Code – a major CHALT goal. Improving the Ephesus Fordham (aka “Blue Hill”) form-based code has been a central focus of CHALT since the organization’s inception in 2015. As we feared at the time it was adopted, the form-based building code, which lowered standards for new development and excluded the public from the permit review process, has failed to deliver on the goals of bringing significant new retail and commercial development, moderately-priced housing, improved mobility for cars and people, and reduced flooding. In fact, 98% of the new development approved so far has been high-density apartments and parking decks, almost all of it priced for the most affluent households.

Before the code was approved in 2014, its proponents referred to the affordable retail and useful services in this part of town as a “blighted” area.  Now, unfortunately, the description rings true, as we see the new but mostly empty apartments and storefronts the code has produced and our beloved merchants, such as Plaza Cleaners, Twig, Tarheel Barber Shop, and Grimball’s Jewelers, have fled or been forced out.

Form-based codes don’t address many important planning issues, such as how to obtain a desirable mix of uses (e.g., residential and commercial) in a given area, or providing transit. If the Town continues to side-step these major planning problems, we have a troubled future in store. These are the major planning issue that need to be addressed by the Council and the new manager.

• Transportation infrastructure is lagging behind town growth.  Responding to citizen and advisory board encouragement, the Town of late has done some good work to get a town-wide mobility study up and running, but the model has deficiencies that have not been addressed. The most recent mobility study predicts gridlock on 15 – 501 (Fordham Blvd) by 2030. But to date, no measures have been taken to address the increase of people and cars townwide, and the immediate impacts of adding thousands of units to the Ephesus-Fordham District. The proposed Durham-Orange light rail line won’t help congestion on 15-501. In one short decade it will likely be physically impossible for pedestrians to cross the road.
  See Del Snow’s letter to the Town Council.

 

• Flooding incidences are getting worse.  Initial promises from the Town that the form-based code district would reduce flooding problems in the lower Booker Creek watershed, one of the redevelopment’s major selling points, have not materialized. The code does require water quality treatment, but a number of  factors guarantee that flooding will increase: (1) Adding impervious surface near the lowest point of the subwatershed; (2) thousands of square feet in the upper Booker Creek watershed have been permitted but not yet built; (3) a lack of resources, which are preventing the Town from implementing most of the measures recommended in a recent Lower Booker Creek watershed study; and (4) taking into account the reduced size of the water storage impoundment, additional impervious surface in the RCD resulting from the construction of Fordham Apartments, and the new buildings that will be added along the new road.

 

• The proposed affordable housing plan does not meet needs of those pushed out of Park Apartments (that will be removed under the District plan).  District wide, we are on track to lose more affordable units than we gain, despite the addition of the town subsidized affordable units on Legion Road. We had asked the counicl  The Council needs to rectify a problem made by a past Town Council when they opted not to include in the form-based code (FBC) the requirement to build affordable for sale housing and denied the use of density bonuses to create incentives for developers to provide affordable rentals. The current Town Council, therefore should delay construction of the Elliott Rd Extension until we address the lost housing stock. $1000/mo is not affordable for the tenants now residing in the Park Apartments. The numbers cited by the Manager don’t add up. Greenfield Place and Greenfield Commons will provide 149 affordable units and Park Apartments 201 (net total 350).  If the latter are gone, 200 families and over 400-500 people will be displaced. Proceeding with this proposal would not exceed the goal of creating 300 new affordable housing units within the Blue Hill District because the Manager has ignored the loss of units! By supplying 155 at higher AMIs we are still 46 units short, in addition to all the people who can’t afford the new rents. The new net total will be 103 new units, less than those supplied by Greenfield.  
  Molly McConnell shares the details of how we can do better.

 

As a result of the past two municipal elections, only council members Donna Bell voted for or promoted the code at the time of its adoption. This gives the new Council members an opportunity to make a clean break with the mistakes of the past and, with the benefit of experience, create the conditions for the kind of redevelopment in Ephesus-Fordham that the community has long said it wants.

Calling the Ephesus-Fordham redevelopment so far a “train wreck” is not an exaggeration because our Town Manager and his staff have dragged their feet on long-range planning for nearly a decade.  Form-based code is a planning tool which, when well designed, can encourage the type of new development a community wants. Chapel Hill’s form-based code, however, still needs a major overhaul.

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East West Partners built a massive 90-ft. tall building and parking deck on South Elliott Road that was approved by Town Manager Roger Stancil on December 31st, 2015.  Then they sold it for over 70 million dollars.  The project includes 266 apartments, 15,600 sq. ft. of retail and an attached parking deck. The project was sold for 72 M dollars just before completion. The town contributed 24,000 toward a local marketing effort to rename the district “Blue Hill”.

In 2014, the Town Council approved a new method for development review for 180 acres in the Eastgate, Rams Plaza and Village Plaza shopping areas of town.  The vehicle is called Form Based Code which removed the requirement to hold public hearings for new projects.

This project (first called the Alexan and now the Berkshire) was the first of a number of projects that are fast tracked and approved by the Town Manager without a public hearing.  Read about why the Town developed this district and if the town’s goals have been achieved –  see this page.

 

                                              Benefits for a few, costs for the rest of us

 What did the community  say we wanted in the Ephesus-Fordham District?

• Improved traffic flow
• A participatory process with some public review of projects
• New affordable and workforce housing
• A walkable and transit friendly area
• Energy efficient buildings
• Expanded shopping opportunities
• Less flooding
• More public green space and recreation areas
• Attractive, human scale urban design (i.e., 2-4 story buildings)
• New tax revenues that exceed new costs, i.e. office, retail,and light industrial

What are we getting?

• Thousands of new vehicles with inadequate public transit and parking = more congestion
• No public review for all projects going forward in this zone;  Town Manager approves all
• Net loss of affordable and workforce housing (possible net loss of 118 units)
• The Code does not mandate shared parking nor promote a good pedestrian experience; planning for safe biking and walking is coming along too late, after plans are submitted
• Old basic conventional energy standards that cost more to build and operate
• Loss of locally owned small businesses, e.g. Plaza Dry Cleaners, Yarns Etc.,BP station, Eastgate Barber shop, Evo, Best Buy Mobile, Eco-Design Architect
• Increased flooding when up stream projects are built out
• No public green space, recreation areas or public amenities (Council added a modest 5% public space this year)
• Seven story buildings permitted in most of the district
• Non-existent urban design yields unattractive new buildings
• Increased taxes, because the costs of the redevelopment will exceed the new revenues. (Upscale residential apartments are not what we need.)

What are the landowners and real estate developers getting?

• Millions of dollars worth of new land entitlements. The Town Council that approved the Code in 2014 were Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt, and council members Lee Storrow, Donna Bell, Sally Greene, and George Cianciolo and Maria Palmer. Maria is the only incumbent running who strongly supports the Code.

What can we do now that it is passed?

• Write to our elected officials and ask them to fix the Ephesus-Fordham zoning code; if it cannot be fixed, start over.
• Stay informed: Visit www. chalt.org  and sign up for the CHALT newsletter
• Spread the word: Tell your friends and neighbors what is happening and what needs to be done
• Vote this November in the local election for four town council members and the Chapel Hill Carrboro School Board. Ensure that new development in Chapel Hill follow the community’s vision and serves the public interest.

What is the Ephesus Fordham District?

In May 2014 the Town Council rezoned 180 acres with the goal that the entire area needed a face lift and that redevelopment would bring vitality, walkability and new revenues to the town.  Those goals have not been achieved so far.

• The new building on Elliott resembles a beached cruise ship and strangles the surrounding space making the previously convenient shopping center much less walkable than before. It’s unlikely that these overpowering new buildings lacing in community amenities will bring new vitality. The building footprint uses every inch of space forcing the reconstruction of a greenway and the removal of canopy oak trees along shaded Elliott Road.
• The town’s own fiscal analysis demonstrated that the town investment would not yield net positive revenues for twenty years;  the Orange County staff and commissioners expressed similar doubts when asked to invest in it. Usually developers pay a contribution for affordable housing units, and a % of road improvements for nearby intersections,  but this code allowed the developers a free pass. The tax payers will pay for the road improvements.

What is Form Based Code?

The Town Council approved a special type of zoning for the Ephesus-Fordham District called Formed Based Code.  Where this type of zoning has worked the best in the United States is when a community consensus is translated into standards for the Code.  Most people who participated in the community process to develop a small area plan did so in good faith.  They were upset to learn that the Town Manager and the Town Council approved a Code that did not resemble the plan endorsed by the community.  See 2011 Small Area Plan. Missing are the promised parks, green space,  graceful buildings that would have created livable walkable spaces, affordable housing units, and community amenities.

Read more here….

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September 2017 update

Berkshire Apartments, a.k.a Alexan before it was sold,  was the first project permitted under the new Chapel Hill fast track approval process known as the form-based code adopted by the Town Council in May, 2014. This project sits on just one parcel of what is a 180 acre district planned for redevelopment.

Now this first project is complete, it is a good time evaluate how well the Ephesus-Fordham (E-F)  redevelopment plan measures up to the Town Goals it was meant to achieve. (The district was recently renamed “Blue Hill”.)

The Town Council’s announced purpose to rezone was to: (1) improve the local revenues, and to (2) create a transit friendly area that would provide pleasant walking experience, a mix of commercial uses, upper story residences and offices, bike paths and sidewalk cafes.

The vision for the zone was first developed with some public input through several visioning workshops with residents and business owners that began in July 2010. The community vision was memorialized in the Small Area Plan adopted by the Council in 2011. “Human scale” stepped buildings, restaurants and small parks and gathering spaces and excellent transit  characterized this plan. The Town staff assumed that the increased density of people could be accommodated by more transit and road improvements. The Town Council approved the new zone despite the comment from the Town’s budget director stating that “there was no forseeable funds for future transit service”.

This is the picture staff featured at the E-F public hearings. What is happening on Elliott Road (picture above) does not resemble the building heights, the broad sidewalks and inviting greenery pictured here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Has the product achieved the Council’s stated purposes?

1. Has the project improved our local economy and local business?

The Form-Based Code was intended to stimulate new interest in developing and investing here. There is no doubt that has happened as out of town investors have moved in to take advantage of the relaxed standards and the quick review. Since the zoning change, three parcels have changed hands at least once.

Local retail at risk.

2. Have the road improvements relieved congestion?

3. Is the area more walkable?

New projects in E-F are not creating a walkable, pedestrian friendly experience.  Since the Alexan provides no pedestrian pass-through, the route from businesses on the east side of the building to those on the west side—e.g., from Thimble Pleasures to Whole Foods—is a long, unpleasant experience, especially on a hot summer day. The block size of this structure is about 400 feet – too large for good pedestrian mobility. Curbs with narrow sidewalks along the street front of Elliott Road crowd pedestrian travel and the enjoyment of a pleasant walk.

Tree canopy has been replaced by concrete and glass. Beautiful mature willow oaks, such as these on the south side of Elliott Road, were cut down on t he north side of the road to make way for the more “urban” streetscape of the Alexan building. The form-based code (FBC) encourages loss of tree cover during redevelopment by permitting construction right up to the property line. How will redevelopment in E-F deliver the tree-lined pedestrian streetscape that residents want if the FBC does not require building setbacks to make that possible?

A missed opportunity to enhance the Booker Creek greenway.  A replacement greenway pictured here skirts Booker Creek, located just to the left. On the right side of the greenway path will be a new connecting road and the garage and garbage bays of the 90-foot tall Alexan apartments. Those additions will turn what was once a pleasant walk through natural surroundings into an uninspired sidewalk route surrounded by pavement. Booker Creek and the adjacent wooded landscape would have provided a perfect backdrop for a park and an enjoyable public space.

 

Is the district transit friendly?  Code approved before bikepaths and mobility plan developed.

 

Code approved before design guidelines developed.  The Alexan has been compared to a beached cruise ship.

Major problems yet to be tackled. These are just a few of the changes we’ve observed on the ground since the Town Council approved the FBC and applied it to the nearly 200 acre E-F district.  The pictures illustrate only a few of the problems that need to be fixed in the FBC.  Other problem that need to be addressed include the lack of affordable housing requirements, lack of incentives for energy efficient construction, and building densities and heights that threaten to overwhelm our infrastructure.

 

We see at least three barriers to success for improving the FBC.

• The fragmentation of property ownership in the district restricts opportunities for green space and large scale storm water planning
• Need for parking coordination across parcels: If every property owner provides exclusive on-site parking, this will cause additional auto congestion and undermine “walkability”
• Increased height and density, currently allowed “by right,” must be made contingent on provision of affordable housing, energy efficiency and other community benefits.

Central Questions

Will the Council adopt any of the significant changes suggested by the participants, e.g. lower building height (50 ft vs 90 ft), reasonable setbacks, adequate publicly accessible green space in every development, pedestrian/bicycle connectivity (other than street-based sidewalks) between developments, energy efficient construction, stormwater controls, and incentives for affordable housing units?

Of paramount importance to all citizens is this question: what happens between now and when the FBC is “fixed?“ We worry every second of every day that yet another “Alexan” will be approved, or that The Park Apts. will submit their redevelopment application. In fact, some of us have heard that the new owner of the property adjacent to the Alexan wants to construct another building just like it!

Will the minor fixes the Town intends make enough difference for community members feel it worthwhile to engage in this process?  Will the Town Manager and the Project Managers allow the hired experts to make an honest assessment about what needs to be done to really fix the code, so the town staff can begin to rebuild that trust with community members?

 

A brief history.  In 2014,  the Town Council rezoned 200 acres with the idea the entire area needed a face lift and that redevelopment would bring vitality and new revenues to the town. That belief fails on both counts. The town’s own fiscal analysis raised doubt that rezoning would bring in net revenues and Orange County commissioners expressed similar doubts. Usually developers pay a contribution for affordable housing units, and a % of road improvements for nearby intersections, but this code allowed a free pass.

The Town Council’s vote in June 2014 to approve a new zoning Code did not follow the small area plan or the community vision.  Thousands of residents who depend on this area for needed services became concerned

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The first project under the poorly conceived new district are these luxury apartments built by East West Partners — a massive 90-ft. tall building on South Elliott Road that was approved by Town Manager Roger Stancil on December 31st. The project will include 266 apartments, 15,600 sq. ft. of retail and an attached parking deck. It is the first project to be approved under the form-based code adopted by Town Council for the Ephesus-Fordham redevelopment district.

As long as the Form Based Code stays in place as is, there will be no public review and more poorly conceived projects will be approved by the town manager.

Citizens Objections to the Current Code:

• Too much residential, not enough office, retail and no light industrial space resulting in negative cash flow for at least the first 20 years of the project
• Not enough green space
• Limited public gathering site
• Overly tall buildings allowed
• No carbon neutral construction required
• No appreciable affordable housing
• No additional transit service to serve the development
• Council has no authority to “plan” anything in the area

Here are some photos of what we think this area could look like. Let’s work together to make this happen!

 

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