Town-gown talks are key

Carolina North, special zoning districts, chiller plants and parking decks. In the last two years, the list of conflicts between UNC and Chapel Hill officials appears to have grown at an exponential rate.

The two entities, which once enjoyed a friendly, close-knit relationship, now share a tense, and what some would call a combative, association.

But while universities sometimes have shaky interactions with the towns they call home, other towns have forged much stronger relationships.

Rick Cotton, city administrator for Clemson, S.C., said his city has developed a close relationship with Clemson University.

“We have a very cordial, very open relationship,” he said. “It’s probably as good a relationship as you’ll find anywhere.”

Cotton said he believes the town and university are able to work closely because of good communication between the city mayor and university president.

“They have a good personal relationship that goes beyond business,” Cotton said. “That makes a huge difference. It’s in both of our best interests to get along.”

He said the camaraderie between both leaders also has helped to create a dialogue between the two institutions and a much closer working relationship.

“The key is open communication,” Cotton said. “There are very few surprises when we meet with the university.”

Jim Kosteva, director of community relations for the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, also said communication is key to maintaining cordial town-gown relations.

“It starts with communication,” he said. “Hopefully, at a minimum, we’re talking with each other and listening to each other … trying to find where that mutual interest is.”

Roger Fraser, city administrator for Ann Arbor, said city and school officials meet at least each quarter for lunch to help develop a camaraderie between both sides.

That, he said, goes a long way toward making sure that both institutions’ concerns and needs are adequately addressed.

“We’re always trying to be friends first,” Fraser said. “There is a need to build trust and understand each other. One person on either side can mess it all up.”

But the relationship between university and Ann Arbor officials has not always been so smooth.

“There’s been some periods when there were some definite concerns,” Kosteva said. “There is almost always an underlying tension when you have two independent entities.”

Fraser said relations between the city and university reached an all-time low about 10 years ago when the school went through a period of expansion.

Former Chapel Hill Mayor Pro Tem Joe Capowski said expansion — such as in planning for UNC’s satellite campus, Carolina North, and construction of the chiller plant — has had a chilling effect on town-gown relations in Chapel Hill.

“It hasn’t always been this way,” Capowski said. “Without the rampant growth on campus here, there wouldn’t be this problem.”

He noted that at the beginning of Chancellor James Moeser’s administration, he and the UNC Board of Trustees began plans for expansion — plans that weren’t necessarily welcomed by the town of Chapel Hill.

“The Board of Trustees became a little more corporate-minded,” Capowski said. “It was a major blow to town-gown relations.”

In much the same way, Ann Arbor residents became enraged when university officials began purchasing off-campus buildings to create more student housing.

“The university hadn’t built new student housing since the ’60s, but the student body had gotten bigger,” Fraser said. “That creates all sorts of interesting problems.”

But, he and Kosteva noted, after problems subsided, both sides were able to learn.

Fraser said city officials developed an understanding that, more often than not, the university will have its way.

“It’s sort of like playing with an elephant,” he said. “Whatever the elephant wants … is usually what happens.”

Kosteva said university officials also have learned to compromise since the conflicts 10 years ago.

In particular, he said, school officials have begun focusing expansion efforts on building up, not out, to avoid extending into surrounding communities.

“We recognized that we have mutual interests, and we have found the way to identify those,” Kosteva said. “In particular, we are intensifying use of current land.”

Fraser said those efforts by university officials have helped drastically improve their relationship.

“The university, to its credit, has recognized that there are concerns in the neighborhoods,” he said. “They’ve been honest and open in addressing that, and we work at it on an ongoing basis.”

But while Chapel Hill and Ann Arbor have both experienced tense relationships because of their respective universities’ growing pains, Ross Norton, public information director for Clemson, said the town has had no such problems for a simple reason.

The city was founded about half a century after the university, he said, and neither entity has much need to expand.

“It’s a really small place,” he said. “This city can’t grow a whole lot.”

But whatever the reasons for cooperation, interested parties in all three college towns were quick to acknowledge that at some point, there will be head-butting between sides.

“This will never be 100 percent smooth,” Capowski said. “Sometimes, it gets frustrating.”

Fraser echoed that opinion.

“There’s always these moments,” he said. “You just have to work at it. You have to talk to folks, and sometimes, you have to move on.”

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.