At the January 21 UNC Board of Trustees meeting, we got a glimpse of what the university is planning at Carolina North. Much attention has been paid to whether a new Dean Dome will be built there but Chancellor Roberts (who I occasionally suspect was sent by Duke to destroy UNC athletics) said little on that topic: “We haven’t made any decisions about the arena. We’re continuing to have discussions and sincerely seek as much advice and input and feedback as we can.”
Instead, Roberts (who I occasionally suspect was sent by Republican leaders to destroy the non-athletic parts of UNC) articulated his plans for Carolina North as a significant campus expansion with a new engineering school and a side of live, work, play.
Here’s what we learned (we haven’t found the meeting slides, yet – please share if you have them: [email protected])
NC is growing, the Triangle is growing, STEM is growing, and we have a housing crunch
This is where Roberts tries to win me over.
STEM programs have unique needs
OK he’s still making sense. None of this is untrue. But the same could be said if we were talking about expansion on South Campus for STEM, which is basically what the 2019 campus master plan called for.
UNC and Chapel Hill need more housing
I’m all in. A bunch of housing on a BRT line? Sign me up. If I had my druthers, we’d add housing here AND on South Campus (which is also along the BRT route).
It would be a mixed-use neighborhood
But the only housing he mentions here is student dorms. When do we get workforce housing? When (and how) do we get dedicated affordable housing?
Roberts is oddly obsessed with interstate access
This is not the first time he’s brought this up. He talks like he’s planning to build an Amazon distribution center. It makes you wonder just how many North Carolinians he sees coming to the site, and why, and which parts of campus or Chapel Hill are simply too far from 40 and 85 for people to access. Is there a father in Morganton right now texting his homesick sophomore daughter “I’ll visit and meet you at the corner of Estes and MLK, but not a goddamn inch farther”?
It’s also strange to talk about a live-work-play campus, which requires really thoughtful planning and consideration of the social aspects of public places, in the same location as what he apparently envisions as North Carolina’s largest and most visited cul-de-sac.
This is a large project
Roberts says they will develop 250 acres while protecting the beloved forest on the remainder of the state’s land here. The math isn’t mathing for me (and I haven’t seen the map he mentions). By my very rough estimation, you could develop about 75 acres of Carolina North around the old airport strip without felling a single tree or encroaching on parts of the land with trails. Seventy five acres would be about the size of two University Malls, including the Harris-Teeter and the sea of parking on the site – that’s a lot of room for mixed-use development, including classroom space and housing. Roberts wants something more than 3 times that size (perhaps a $700 million arena with a 3,000 space parking garage that will add $180 million to the cost?).
Here’s a map showing the 75 acres outlined in blue.
Here’s one of the two parcels that make up Carolina North (the other is about 700 acres and mostly wooded with trails). I’ve superimposed trails from the university’s Carolina North Forest Trail Map – it’s hard to see how Roberts gets to 250 acres without removing parts of the forest and trails.
Carolina North will encourage cross-discipline collaboration
(The type of which seems to be already happening without Carolina North)
Carolina North will have AI
This is where things get weird. We’re going to be collaborative and give silos the old heave-ho. On a totally different campus. Focused on STEM. With a bunch of engineers and AI “embedded in every single aspect.”
With all due respect to engineers, they are a different breed. Not bad, just different. Now we’re going to stick them in a satellite campus far removed from scholars of arts and humanities and social sciences and law and policy on the main campus? Have we learned nothing? Are we trying to create the next Palantir? What Roberts describes as a vibrant and fun neighborhood is starting to sound more like a wannabe Silicon Valley and dystopian hellscape.
Carolina North should have food
These trustees make good points. South Campus is poorly planned, with too few options for those who live there, especially those exiled to Baity Hill. But making Carolina North a better neighborhood doesn’t change the needs of South Campus. But it does probably guarantee that resources that could be deployed to improve South Campus will not be.
Speaking of food, remember that UNC has a 20-year contract with Aramark to, it seems, provide shitty food in soulless spaces. Perhaps you’re reading this and imagining going for a run on the Pumpkin Loop, then grabbing an IPA and some Carrburritos with friends in their new Carolina North location. But unless you have at some point found yourself wondering “man, how does Subway manage to get such fresh bread and quality vegetables?” you will probably never want to set foot on this new campus to eat. Let’s hope Aramark’s bland but merciless paws are in no way associated with it.
We’ll keep following the plans
The Blog is not opposed to development in Carolina North. We’d like to see dense development in the 75 acres of open space, which allows great opportunities for new housing (walkable to Estes Hills and Guy Phillips schools), supports the BRT line, and support commercial development on site and at Aura across the street. Keep the forest and trails as is.
And the good news is UNC does density quite well. Here’s a similarly-sized chunk of campus with a massive amount of square footage.
As for a new Dean Dome, we think it should be on the main campus. It’s better for students, it’s better for retail on Franklin Street, and it reduces the need for a massive new parking garage in Carolina North (presumably above and beyond whatever parking will be needed for other uses).
And while we can appreciate that building on campus is more challenging than Carolina North, UNC recently figured out a way to build a new business school wing, and new surgical hospital, and an expanded Carrington Hall. How are those different?
Roberts has suggested a reason to move the Dean Dome to Carolina North is to preserve the area around the current arena for future hospital expansion. Again, how can South Campus both be a challenging place to develop but also a good location for a hospital? Especially when UNC Health wants to shift new construction to Eastowne? It just doesn’t add up.
As for an engineering school, or a STEM/AI village, Roberts may have a vision but his sales pitch needs some work. Aside from being 1.5 miles closer to an interstate, there’s nothing that has been said about the potential at Carolina North than can’t also be said of South Campus.
Rather than launching Carolina North with 2,200 undergraduate units, whose residents will likely be a) broke and b) on meal plans – and thus not going to attract much retail beyond some smoothie, vape, and coffee shops – start with faculty housing that’s better suited for this part of town.
We’re open minded and eager to learn more as plans emerge, but right now this feels more like a real estate solution in search of a problem than a cohesive vision for campus growth.