Low-income portion of development gets OK

Not everyone was thrilled with the details, but the low-income component of a set of proposed developments made its way through the Chapel Hill Town Council on Monday night.

Crosland Inc. a developer, needed the Town Council to approve a change to its special-use permit in order to expand Dobbins Hill, an affordable housing development. The council voted 8-1 in its favor, with council member Dorothy Verkerk as the dissenting vote.

The expansion is an outgrowth of a the Wilson Assemblage, a development Crosland proposed next door.

When the council criticized the Wilson Assemblage’s lack of affordable housing in November, Crosland proposed the 32-unit addition to Dobbins Hill.

The developer planned to make the expansion affordable through state tax credits. But the tax-credit program has a very tight deadline, which led the council to fast-track the issue in January.

“This is very time sensitive,” said Roger Waldon, the town planning department’s director.

Dean Edwards, Crosland’s vice-president for affordable housing, said the town accommodated the developer’s timing constraints nicely.

“They’ve done a great job in getting us … on a fast track in getting this done,” he said.

Orange Community Land Trust Executive Director Robert Dowling said that one of the deal’s biggest pluses for affordable housing in the area is that his organization will be given the option to buy the properties at a vastly reduced price when the tax-credit program expires.

A separate IRS program permits the trust to purchase the buildings for their remaining debt, something Dowling expects to be a bargain.

“$3.2 million to build them today, and yet we’ll be able to buy them for $700,000 15 years from now,” he said.

But the deal also had it’s downsides. While the council passed rules protecting neighborhoods from crowding development and slowed residential traffic earlier in the night, the Dobbins Hill proposal would have the opposite effect by crowding buildings together and opening cul-de-sacs to traffic, Verkerk said.

“There’s a real stark contrast there,” she said.

“This one really makes me angry because it wasn’t thoughtful,” she added.

While council member Ed Harrison did vote in favor of the proposal, he noted some drawbacks to the plan.

“A lot of places in North Carolina would have had to have had a rezoning,” Harrison said about the entirety of the Wilson Assemblage and Dobbins Hill.

“In sum, we have maxed out this corner, and whoever comes next is in for a tough time,” he added.

Dowling admitted that the solution wasn’t perfect but said the density mirrors a growing local trend. In the end, he and Edwards emphasized the benefits they say the affordable housing will bring.

“32 units,” Edwards said. “You know, in the scheme of things I guess it’s not a large number of units, but 32 families will be able to come in and find an affordable rental unit.”

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.