Development causes disagreement

Zoning in and around university campuses often is a divisive issue, though the town of Chapel Hill’s recent controversy with UNC-Chapel Hill officials seems moderate when compared with some other college towns.

University and town officials agree that municipal zoning is key to the relationship they have forged, even with the rough patches.

The bumps often stem from development at the edges of established campuses and the areas just beyond, where the town and gown not only interact, but also rub one another — sometimes the wrong way.

Chapel Hill Town Council member Mark Kleinschmidt said recent border disputes locally began in 2003 when the town approved UNC-CH’s combination chiller plant/parking garage, which will loom above the historic Gimghoul neighborhood.

“It’s just common sense that as those projects approach the edge of campus that neighborhood interests become more influential because at that point of juncture, the interests weigh the same,” he said.

The question of how to zone UNC-CH’s proposed satellite campus, Carolina North, has been at the center of perhaps the area’s biggest zoning dispute.

The Horace Williams tract, where UNC-CH plans to place Carolina North, now is zoned partly as residential, partly as Office/Institutional-3 and partly as Office/Institutional-2.

OI-3, used primarily on the main campus, gives UNC-CH more freedom that other zones. OI-2, a more restrictive zone, requires longer review before town officials.

Town officials recently voiced interest in zoning the entire parcel as OI-2, a move that University officials have protested as an unnecessary burden on the relationship.

“It certainly is our expectation that at some point, we’ll be sitting down with the town to come up with the appropriate zoning for that property,” said Nancy Suttenfield, vice chancellor for finance and administration.

Kleinschmidt said the move would do little harm but would greatly ease neighbors’ fears.

“Right now, we’re in an environment where the University has this extraordinary power and … it’s hard to negotiate and cooperate with someone who’s carrying a stick that’s a lot bigger than yours,” he said.

Partly in reaction to the chiller plant debate, the council also has considered changes to Office/Institutional-4, which replaced OI-3 as UNC-CH’s preferred zone and under which officials hope to have the Williams tract zoned.

Some resistance to the changes has been vocalized by the University, which was not anxious to have further delays and restrictions on planning for its developments.

But now, UNC-CH officials say, any bad blood seems to be gone.

“We are in agreement with virtually everything that the planning board has recommended,” Suttenfield said. “Maybe not literally, but we believe that what they would like to accomplish can be accomplished.

“The really good news, I think, is that there aren’t any areas of major disagreement,” she added.

But other colleges have not been as lucky.

In Washington, D.C., the Board of Zoning and Adjustment — just one arm of the bureaucracy that regulates zoning in the nation’s capital — recently approved Georgetown University’s 10-year plan for campus development.

Initially, the board attached substantial conditions to the plan, but it relented after Georgetown took the issue to court and received an appellate court ruling in its favor.

The process was relatively lengthy — the plan originally was submitted five years ago.

Georgetown spokeswoman Julia Bataille said the school — like all universities in the District of Columbia — operates on a special permit that requires officials to submit plans detailing its proposed expansion every 10 years.

She also said Georgetown faces scrutiny because it is located in one of the city’s historic districts.

“In terms of our development projects, depending on the scope of the project … there are typically several levels of approval that are needed,” Bataille said. “Often, it’s also a very complicated and lengthy time frame.”

Another school that has successfully weathered a lawsuit, but which rests at the opposite end of the regulation spectrum, is the University of California-Davis.

The lawsuit, dismissed in Alameda County Superior Court in 2004, claimed that a UC-Davis environmental impact report on a proposed university expansion was insufficient.

The Davis school is not required to comply with the land-use regulations of Yellow County, where the school sits.

Instead, the campus designs its own development plan and only needs to run environmental impact reviews by the Board of Regents, the University of California system’s equivalent of the UNC system’s Board of Governors.

Still, Marjorie Dickinson, assistant vice chancellor for government and community relations at UC-Davis, said the system values neighborhood input and makes an effort to hear residents’ input.

“Even though we’ve got this constitutional status, we try not to throw it in people’s faces because the bottom line is we don’t have all the good ideas,” she said.

But so far, UNC-CH officials have not expressed a yearning for laid-back West Coast autonomy, and their municipal counterparts have refrained from trying to impose a massive federal-style bureaucracy.

“By and large,” Suttenfield said, “I think that we and the town are doing our best to balance our two sets of responsibilities.”

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.