Town offiials reject expansion property

In a search for expansion property, the Chapel Hill police, fire, and recreation departments came up empty-handed this week.

Chapel Hill Town Manager Roger Stancil released a memorandum Wednesday declining to purchase Dawson Hall, a site off of Interstate-40 with more office space.

“The site was not a perfect fit — it’s incompatible” Assistant Town Manager Bruce Heflin said.

The memo cites a lack of parking, incompatibility with zoning laws and the concern that the building is too far from the center of town.

Town staff said that while the building itself is acceptable, the site does not have enough space to suit the workers and other Chapel Hill businesses.

This decision poses a problem for the Chapel Hill Police Department, which expected to have a station in Dawson Hall.

Twice as many people are working in the station at 828 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. than planned for when the building was constructed in 1981, Chapel Hill Town Council member Ed Harrison said.

The size of the parking lot at the proposed site was a major factor in the decision to nix purchasing plans, Heflin said. When combined with police officers’ personal vehicles, the squad cars would fill up parking spaces, he said.

The board considered ways to avoid parking congestion at Dawson Hall.

In his memorandum, Stancil said police vehicles could park further away or officers could take squad cars home.

But the Town Council concluded there is not enough time to fix details to establish Dawson Hall as a permanent site, Heflin said.

“We couldn’t all get to the same point at the same time,” Harrison said, referring to the different town departments.

Some said the location wasn’t central enough. The current police station is by the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Hillsborough Street, but Dawson Hall is on the outskirts of town.

“The location is a bit too remote for our departments,” Heflin said.

The town also would have to obtain a special use permit for the site.

This leaves the police department still in need of a new station.

“Our priority is to get better space for these departments,” Harrison said.

Departments will have to make due with the current facilities until the council discusses the subject again in November.
 

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