The recently completed Trinity Heights development, just off the northern edge of Duke University's East Campus, offers 40 homes and townhomes to Duke employees and no one else. A similar arrangement will be in place for Winmore if it is built.
The development, to be located adjacent to the Carolina North tract, will offer 50 to 60 single-family homes priced under $175,000 for UNC, UNC Health Care and Carrboro employees.
But officials at both schools concede that the developments won't play a huge role in recruiting new faculty.
William H. Chafe, the dean of Duke's College of Arts and Sciences, said his department uses more traditional lures in recruitment, like championing the K-12 school system and Duke's relationship with the Durham community. Most of the Trinity Heights properties cost between $160,000 to $230,000, and they've all been gobbled up.
At UNC, Faculty Council Chairwoman Sue Estroff said that Winmore will be helpful but that it won't "tip the balance" for faculty candidates considering UNC. Although Winmore housing will be priced below market rates, Estroff said, new faculty might not buy right off the bat.
Today, Chapel Hill's pricey housing market forces most new faculty members to rent homes when they first arrive in Chapel Hill, according to Estroff. After a few years at UNC, professors begin to test the market, and Winmore could provide some potentially attractive homesites for veteran faculty.
"Winmore will help not so much the recruiting as it will the retaining (of faculty)," she said.
A Durham Success
Duke officials, wanting to spruce up mostly vacant, university-owned land, conceived of their 40-unit site in the mid-1990s. The university brought in Durham developer and Duke alumnus Robert Chapman to design the development. Chapman is a well-known proponent of the New Urbanism development technique that clusters housing and businesses within walking distance of each other.
When Duke unveiled the Trinity Heights project in the summer of 1998, it faced staunch opposition from a few nearby residents. The neighbors thought that the plan called for too many homes and that it would destroy the six-block neighborhood's historic character.
Duke officials calmed the residents by meeting with them several times before construction started. Today, the properties look much like the rest of the homes in the area, as they share a 1900s architectural style common to the entire neighborhood.
The main hang-up with the Trinity Heights project, Chapman said, was overcoming Durham's zoning ordinances. "We had to swim upstream against the city the whole time," he said.
Since the project's completion, the reaction overwhelmingly has been positive.
Nearby residents appear happy with their new neighbors. In a November 2001 editorial, The (Durham) Herald-Sun said Duke did a "splendid job" building a "barrier to blight" in a slowly deteriorating area. The development won historic preservation and design awards in 2000.
"No project is 100 percent a home run," said Jeffrey Potter, Duke's director of real estate administration. "But this one turned out as well as can be expected."
One caveat to owning property in Trinity Heights is the covenant homeowners must enter into when they buy their homes. The contract stipulates that Duke must authorize any sale of the property. The properties were built for Duke employees, and the university wants to keep it that way.
"That works just fine because (Duke) agrees to buy the place back if it doesn't sell on the open market," said Peter Malin, a Duke seismologist who paid $300,000 for his specially outfitted townhome directly across the street from campus. "But you give up the freedom to who you can sell to."
For Winmore, Questions Remain
UNC officials hope the proposed Winmore development, another Chapman project, also will draw positive reactions. Winmore will consist of two 60-plus acre parcels that will form neighborhoods complete with both homes and businesses. The goal: walkable, high-density living that minimizes traffic in Carrboro, one of the state's fastest-growing towns.
The units reserved for University and Carrboro employees total only the aforementioned housing units and 96 for-rent homes.
Despite the promise of cheap housing, the Winmore plans have drawn heated protest from some nearby residents and environmentalists. Opponents don't want the backyard development crowding local school systems and generating stormwater runoff that could harm nearby Bolin Creek.
Chapman said he hasn't been surprised that some residents have balked at the Winmore plan.
"They're well-educated people who take the time to be critical," Chapman said. "And that's a good part of the process. In Durham, we had almost no opposition."
The City Editor can be reached at citydesk@unc.edu.
