Residents Vocalize Fears About Master Plan

The Carolina Environmental Student Alliance sponsored the event, which was meant to provide a voice for people on all sides of the University's Master Plan, a 50-year plan for campus development.

Panel members included Orange County Commissioner Margaret Brown, director of the Master Plan Jonathan Howes and Chapel Hill resident Diana Steele.

The responsive audience consisted of about 15 Chapel Hill residents and a handful of students.

Amy Levine, a senior psychology major who organized the event, said she wanted to initiate open communication among all involved.

"We have sought to include as many of the people as possible and not to exclude any of the issues attached to the Master Plan," she said.

During the introduction of panel members, Steele, who lives in a home on Mason Farm Road that would be destroyed by the current plan, stated her side of the issue.

"My specific issue is please don't take my house," she said. "I don't have a back-up plan if I don't have that house.

"People ask me what I'll do, and I don't know," she said. "There are times when I just despair -- it's just not right to me."

After introductions, Levine opened the floor to audience members, and the discussion quickly turned to the impact the Master Plan would have on residents living on property the University expects to develop.

Howes responded to an accusation that UNC had threatened residents with eminent domain, which gives the University a legal right to claim residents' land without their permission and compensate them with their property's market value.

"The University has never used the right of eminent domain to forcefully acquire a property," he said.

But some audience members were dubious of this claim. Chapel Hill resident Joe Capowski, a former Town Council member, said he is skeptical of Howes' claim. "Why would the University buy newly built houses in the Mason Farm area if they didn't plan to take over the neighborhood?"

Mary Beck, vice president of facilities planning for the UNC healthcare system, was one of few attendants defending the University's actions.

"We're not a business," she said. "No business would be open like this, inviting comments and criticism."

But residents continued to criticize the Master Plan. "It feels like there's an elevation of people's anxieties and fears toward the University that I've never seen," Brown said. "People are looking at the University as a bully."

The University Editor can be reached at udesk@unc.edu.