Growth foments a fuss in Chapel Hill
The kitchens and bathrooms were small, the air-conditioning spotty. But families felt safe, and on the weekends, neighbors hung laundry together on clotheslines outside.
Updated: Aug. 3, 2008 2:44 AM
Full story http://www.newsobserver.com/news/growth/story/1163407-p2.html
Sadia Latifi, Staff Writer CHAPEL HILL - The kitchens and bathrooms were small, the air-conditioning spotty. But families felt safe, and on the weekends, neighbors hung laundry together on clotheslines outside.
It wasn't perfect, Alice Simmons said, but Glen Lennox was home.
Simmons was reading the newspaper in her nursing home when she learned developers planned to tear down the neighborhood and its companion shopping center off the N.C. 54 entrance to Chapel Hill. Having lived there in the 1970s and again in the early '90s, Simmons, 76, said the news made her heart drop.
"It would just be a terrible thing to lose it," she said. "Everything about the place is just wonderful."
The side effects of growth -- cranes, noise and higher rents -- are ubiquitous in the Triangle. But when growth comes to Chapel Hill, developers often meet a particular kind of resistance. It comes in the form of petitions, T-shirts and a Web site generated by a population that often prefers keeping things the way they are.
"People are on guard for not having Chapel Hill become a generic place," Mayor Kevin Foy said. "Not everything is open for redevelopment."
Grubb Properties, the owners of Glen Lennox, recently withdrew its design plans after neighbors lobbied hard against them. The two sides will now enter talks that could lead to new zoning rules and a new redevelopment plan next year. Residents and preservationists remain cautious.
In downtown Chapel Hill, construction is beginning on the 10-story Greenbridge condominium project. And across N.C. 54 from Glen Lennox, more condominiums are coming. Some observers say the future of Glen Lennox itself, the one-story apartments built for returning GIs, seems crucial.
"This is almost a test case; it's a line in the sand for how Chapel Hill is going to grow," said Ernest Dollar, executive director of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill. "There has to be a delicate balance to preserve the idealized Chapel Hill that people come here for but still grow as a town. And I think that unwise growth and unwise development could really hamper and destroy the things we love about this town and brought us here."
Conservation option
Molly McConnell figured she'd die in Glen Lennox.
"Really, I thought this was my last stop before God," she said. But now, she said, she's thinking about finding a new place for herself and her beagle, MercyMe Lily Grace Happy Dog.
McConnell, 62, learned about the plans when Grubb called a meeting with homeowners bordering Glen Lennox. One homeowner, Mary Dexter, petitioned the Town Council around the same time to designate Glen Lennox a Neighborhood Conservation District. If approved, the district would restrict development to protect the area's character. Ten-dollar T-shirts and a Web site, save glenlennox.org -- soon followed.
Foy said the public outcry shows how many people feel about the neighborhood.
"Glen Lennox has become one of the iconic places in Chapel Hill, not because of its architecture and not because of its layout, but because of the people who have lived there and the life experiences they've had over the last 50 years," he said. "When you take that and say we're going to take out every trace of that neighborhood, I think people are justifiably appalled."
Glen Lennox Apartments opened in 1950 to address the housing shortage after World War II. Early residents included veterans, married students, retirees and new families -- much the same as its residents today.
"It's easy for ... someone who is not attached to the community emotionally to say this is going to be make us look better," said Delores Bailey, director of Empowerment, a neighborhood advocacy organization. "But when you own property and are raising children and you've been here for awhile, it's difficult to say, 'I will give up my way of life for the betterment of Chapel Hill.' "
Kate Hilgenberg, 23, went to day care in the neighborhood, playing beneath big oak trees and making her first friends. Now, having graduated from college, she's back.
"It's so homey. It feels so safe, and there are just so many people here that are completely different -- families, retired folks," she said. "It's very inviting and safe, and I can't believe they are going to turn it into a parking lot."
The Town Council has approved the first step of the Neighborhood Conservation District process: a meeting for residents to decide whether they want to pursue the conservation designation. Grubb Properties president Clay Grubb had asked the council to delay that process. He apologized for submitting a plan that was "done hastily" and failed to respect the neighborhood's historic character.
A rushed proposal
The decision to rebuild Glen Lennox was something Grubb said he wrestled with for a long time. He remembered the fervor of the community from his days at UNC-Chapel Hill's law school and anticipated the reaction to the proposed plans to be strong.
But Grubb and his team of architects had a vision: Build a great urban development and help the town grow.
The plan was sweeping: Tear down the neighborhood and shopping center and replace it with 908 new homes, three parking decks, a 700-seat movie theater and a seven- to nine-story hotel. Costs for maintaining the apartments were rising, he argued. Most of the longer-term residents had died or moved away, and the neighborhood was in a state of decline. When residents started to mobilize, the company rushed its design plans to the town's planning board.
"We probably -- no, we definitely -- submitted prematurely as a reaction to the neighborhood conservation district proposal," Grubb said. "At the time, people were probably like, 'Oh my God, what is this guy -- a fool?' "
Grubb was at a board meeting in Raleigh a few weeks later when someone said losing Glen Lennox's green spaces and quaint homes would be a loss for Chapel Hill.
"It really hit me, and so I kind of said, 'Well gosh, my momma probably hates the plan we came up with,' " he said.
Negotiations first
Developer Roger Perry, who built Durham's Woodcroft and Chapel Hill's Meadowmont projects, said Grubb Properties may have "underestimated the community's psychological ownership" of Glen Lennox.
He said he empathizes with some of the difficulties Grubb has faced.
"What is always troubling to people in my business is people who are not rational and not interested in building consensus and not willing to understand practical realities," Perry said.
"Chapel Hill has been changing and evolving for 215 years," he said. "You can't counter someone's emotion because that's their personal attitude, but the fact of the matter is that things do change. There are things that are worth preserving, and there are things that aren't worth preserving. It's highly interpretive and individual."
Facing strong criticism, Grubb Properties pulled the design plan June 27. The company will participate in discussions about the neighborhood's designation as a conservation district but still intends to come up with a new design. This time, Grubb said, they'll take their time.
"I think there's a great opportunity for it [Glen Lennox] to become as special as it used to be," he said. "It doesn't have to happen immediately."
<>
