Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger has calendared the Greene Tract resolution for a vote at town council’s Nov. 17 meeting — after the election, so that voters can’t hear candidates’ views on development of one of the last remaining natural areas in Chapel
Hill, but before new council members who might be more committed to the interests of people of color can vote on it.
Residents and elected officials have been battling over what to do with the Greene Tract for decades. The 164-acre parcel is jointly owned by Orange County, Carrboro and Chapel Hill and abuts the Rogers Road community, a historically black neighborhood that has been treated shabbily by the municipalities. In 1972, then Chapel Hill Mayor Howard Lee persuaded Rogers Road residents to accept an 80-acre landfill nearby in exchange for paving Rogers Road and for the landfill to be converted to a recreation area once it was full. Instead, the county expanded the landfill in the 1980s, and pollutants from the landfill seeped into nearby wells, compromising the drinking water.
In 2002, Orange County Commissioners Chair Moses Carey led an effort to dedicate 18 acres of the Greene Tract adjacent to the Rogers Road neighborhood for affordable housing while preserving the remaining acres as green space. That was affirmed by the commissioners in 2007. In 2016, the Rogers Road residents crafted a master plan for the Greene Tract, expanding the affordable housing to 20% of the acreage, keeping 80% as natural forest.
In 2019, residents of the area participated in an intensive series of meetings with a consulting firm to decide on the type of development for that 20%, and agreed on gentle density of affordable single-family, row houses and duplexes, along with space for independent small businesses.
Then it got ugly. At a Chapel Hill council meeting on July 15, 2019, after leaders from the Rogers Road community, other adjacent property owners, and environmentalists urged adoption of the Rogers Road master plan, people who had no skin in the game lobbied council for “mixed use” high rises, selling portions to private developers for market-rate housing, and building roads through protected headwaters (state law allows this). Designating a few acres for a school would enable the town to seize land by eminent domain to build a road. Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board chair said the school system had no need for a school there, but if it did in the future, state law would require more land.
During a break in the meeting, council member Jess Anderson huddled with the Rogers Road master plan supporters, pressing them to cede more land for development. When the meeting resumed, a split council passed a resolution to develop 66 acres, with the only vehicle access being through the Rogers Road neighborhood. Council refused to remove the mixed-use high rises from consideration.
Since then, small numbers of elected officials from Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro have met repeatedly behind closed doors, have prevented the public from listening in and have not released any minutes of what has transpired.
Elected officials and town and county staff doubled down on obfuscation at the Nov. 7 community meeting. Elected officials circulated among the large crowd saying there were no plans for a vote in November, despite materials handed out by staff showing the vote scheduled for Nov. 17. Multiple staff members and council member Karen Stegman said it was “too soon” to think about vehicle traffic to the development site. Staff members confirmed that the Rogers Road residents had not been apprised of the traffic impact. Stegman went so far as to say the Greene Tract might not have any development on it at all.
One wonders what elected officials have promised the Rogers Road residents this time. The healthy recreation space they now have access to for free will be destroyed. The roads presented at the July 2019 meeting will make their neighborhood a shortcut to Carrboro. And some council members expect acres to be sold to private developers for high-density development in hopes of sharing the cost of infrastructure.
The newly elected council members might object to this systemic racism. Let’s hold off voting until they can have a say.
Staff will hold a follow-up Zoom meeting tonight, Nov. 8, at 5:30 p.m. Register to attend here: https://www.townofchapelhill.org/Home/Components/News/News/17423/4048
— Nancy E. Oates
