Bond May Help Sell Tract Expansion

A proposed aspect of the Master Plan, a blueprint for campus growth over the next 50 years, would expand the Horace Williams tract on Airport Road. The plan calls for a development that would combine research, residential and retail facilities, essentially creating a small subcommunity where families would live and work in the same place.

Some residents and town leaders voiced concerns that the influx of about 25,000 workers and their families would strain local resources, including its already overcrowded public schools.

But Master Plan Director Jonathan Howes said he does not think these extra families will be problematic.

"They're not going to descend like locusts from the sky," he said. "They're going to come gradually, over an eight- to 10- to 20-year period."

Howes said growth in local elementary, middle and high schools should be minimal on a year-by-year basis, and that the burden of caring for any extra students lies mostly with the schools.

"There will be incremental growth in the school system," he said. "We recognize the added employees will place requirements on the local schools, but the primary responsibility for caring for these students lies with the schools."

Howes said passage of the school bond should help sell the Master Plan.

"It certainly would help," he said.

The Orange County Schools' bond proposal totals $24 million and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools' bond is estimated at $71.18 million to build new schools and renovate existing ones to help alleviate overcrowding.

But Orange County Commissioner Moses Carey said the bond proposal has a lot to do with the general growth expected for this area, not just growth expected from the Master Plan and the Horace Williams tract. "We're just trying to prepare for growth, no matter where it comes from," Carey said. "There are only about 5,000 professors at UNC and most of the children in the schools come from families that just love to live in this area."

Orange County Board of Education member Robert Bateman said the schools will have to accommodate more students in the future, but existing facilities are already at or beyond capacity.

"The projection is for the Orange County Schools to grow," Bateman said. "The schools are already busting at the seams. We have to have somewhere to put (the students)."

Bateman said growth will only increase in the coming years. "There are already trailers at the middle schools, and it's only going to get worse," he said.

The proposed bond could help alleviate the pressure on the Orange County Schools by allocating money for building a new middle school, he said.

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools also want to build new schools if the bond passes next year.

Teresa Williams, a Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education member, said two elementary schools and an expansion of the high schools are planned if the bond passes. "I can't really say much about it. There are always concerns about growth."

The City Editor can be reached

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