Development Briefing for Orange County

I attended the "development briefing" for Orange County last Monday.

Here are just a few notes that I jotted down, very much from the perspective of someone living in Southern Village.

The upcoming "parade" of homes reflects where the real estate action is. I think over 50 each in Durham and Chatham counties and only 19 in Orange.

I had not realized there were so many businesses in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. The Chamber of Commerce boasts 930 members.

There is Carrboro website that gives the status of all pending projects.

Chapel Hill's focus will be on transit-oriented development and increasingly on redevelopment. They want to reduce the number of cars driving about with only one person in them (I am reminded of this when I see all the SUVs lined up to leave the Catholic Church school on 15-501 after mother or father drops off student(s). Promote the buses, but I asked myself what it would have taken for me to take the bus to the Friday Center for the event. There is even a direct line from Southern Village but as bad as traffic was, it still would have taken longer and been overall less convenient. Somehow, we have to make that more appealing, I thought.

Carolina North was not presented by anyone which probably says a lot about how it "fits" into the region. It will be one million sqaure feet in the first 50 years and covers 1,000 acres. Area concern is very much on how many and what kind of "trips" per day it will generate for the people who work there.

Chapel Hill builds NO roads itself and relies on developers and then on the state DOT for the major roads.

Unhappily, sidewalks were barely mentioned.

It was encouraging to hear talk of how the rail lines in Orange County might get some use for transportation, possibly in conjunction with Carolina North.

There wer good maps shown, but largely balkanized. It sure would be great for us all to be able to generate maps that start where we want to start in looking around us. That might be home. Might be work. Might be shopping. Then "map" out what we want in connecting those dots or just being in any one of them.

It also occurred to me as I thought about that .... that each of us looking at where we spend our money in the course of a year between local businesses and those located a drive or a website away might be a worthwhile exercise. What assumptions do we all make about who shops where?

I wonder, too, if there are many ongoing studies of where people go when they park around the area. What are those patterns and how does it relate to the extent that local businesses and services get patronized. That could be downtown or UNC parkers or park and ride lots or parking for any commercial enterprise.

What is the status of the once-rumored development down 15-501 toward Cole Park Plaza where Smith Level Road intersects. That's the one where there was some talk of a Walmart. What's the plan now? I had heard it might be a new Lowes Home Improvement among other ideas.

There was a good question from Kathy IRWIN of Chapel Hill Magazine asking about the tax base and where development was headed to produce alternatives to homeowners to pay the cost of government in Orange County. The response included some of the rough figures on residential/commercial breakdowns - 86/14 for Carrboro, I think, and 60/40 for Durham. There is a plan to do another development briefing just on commercial development, Aaron NELSON said. The future of commercial office space in the area is certainly worth further analysis.

Chatham was barely mentioned except to note that there were 20,000 new units approved there either last year or are pending construction. That dwarfs Orange considerably.

My final note were some numbers from Aaron NELSON again. 40% of the people who work in Orange County drive here from outside the county and 40% of the people who live in Orange County drive to another county to work.