Neighborhood Conservation Districts at center of Chapel Hill’s LUMO debate

GOVERNMENT

By Adam Powell
Correspondent

CHAPEL HILL—As Chapel Hill continues to rewrite its Land Use Management Ordinance (LUMO), city planners and town council members are examining the fine details of the documentation to find ways to provide more sustainable and equitable housing.

One primary focus for town leaders in their final LUMO meeting on June 17 before the summer break was neighborhood conservation districts (NCDs).

According to the town’s website, the neighborhood conservation district designation has been used historically “to protect distinctive neighborhood characteristics.”

The town adds that the NCD designation for certain communities “is useful in areas that contribute significantly to the overall character and identity of the Town, but may lack sufficient historical, architectural or cultural significance at the present time to be designated as a Historic District’’

Chapel Hill currently has 13 neighborhood conservation districts, including three that were designated more than 30 years ago as local historic districts: Franklin-Rosemary Historic District, Cameron-McCauley Historic District, and Gimghoul Historic District.

The other ten NCDs throughout Chapel Hill include the neighborhoods of Northside, Greenwood, Kings Mill/Morgan Creek, Pine Knolls, Mason Farm/Whitehead Circle, Coker Hills, Highland Woods, Glen Lennox, Little Ridgefield, and Elkin Hills. Any changes to those existing NCD overlay zoning districts would require a public legislative process, including public hearings.

With the presence of so many current NCDs throughout Chapel Hill, town planners are recommending that the town council no longer have a process for adding new neighborhood conservation districts.

“A couple of meetings ago, there was, out of that conversation, I think some real interest in taking a hard look at our neighborhood conservation districts,” said Chapel Hill Principal Planner Tas Lagoo. “Based on some of the conversations and thinking that have come out of that discussion, staff recommends that in the new LUMO, we remove the process for creating new neighborhood conservation districts.”

The LUMO rewrite will not include adjustments to any of the existing NCDs throughout Chapel Hill, but would almost certainly severely limit their implementation in the future.

“We do want to be clear – we are not talking about making changes to any of the existing NCDs, but rather giving ourselves an opportunity to reflect on NCDs more generally, but in the short term, not perpetuate a practice that we know might not fit with best practices when it comes to equity in zoning,” Lagoo added. “We are only recommending removing the process for creating new NCDs, but not in any way, as part of the LUMO rewrite, changing the existing rules for any of our 13 existing NCDs.”

Lagoo indicated that the American Planning Association’s equity and zoning guide clearly and bluntly says that protective overlay districts should be limited to disadvantaged and vulnerable neighborhoods.

“[Neighborhood Conservation Districts] should not be used to create islands of housing in neighborhoods of wealth and privilege,” Lagoo said. “That’s the standard we want to make sure that we’re living up to in the new LUMO.”

Multiple town council members offered varying viewpoints about Neighborhood Conservation Districts, but they seemed largely united around the idea that limiting NCDs would promote the addition of missing middle housing and other types of much-needed residential dwellings that Chapel Hill sorely lacks.

“You all [town planning staff] are doing an excellent job of working with our DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] office and implementing equity on a policy level, and so I’m really happy to see this come before us,” said Council Member Paris Miller-Foushee.

“I support your suggestions, and getting that language out of LUMO will be great,” added council member Amy Ryan. “I think that that’s terrific.”

While she praised removing the NCD implementation process in the LUMO, Ryan also cautioned against creating standards allowing certain communities in Chapel Hill to become sites where lots and older homes are purchased and demolished to make way for upscale homes. 

“There are some of the NCDs that were established to kind of protect modest neighborhoods from tear downs that are from big redevelopment that would lose some naturally occurring, maybe not affordable housing, but very modest and more affordable housing.” How do we think about a strategy for helping to protect those neighborhoods?” Ryan inquired.

“We have an aging housing stock, where a lot of homes are starting to reach that point in their useful life where a full teardown and rebuild – or at least a significant renovation – starts to become a more and more likely option,” Lagoo explained. “If we give homeowners an opportunity to not tear down and rebuild as a McMansion, but we tear down and rebuild, you know, a triplex or fourplex, we can start to have that incremental increase in development without radical changes to a neighborhood.”

Council member Theodore Nollert expressed concern that the new language wouldn’t change much – that developers and like-minded citizens will still take actions to protect their interests.

“I’m feeling a little bit like it’s this sort of, you can have your cake and eat it too,” Nollert said. “Kind of like we’re taking away a tool that does something bad, but don’t worry, you’re not losing the ability to do anything you value. And I’m not clear on how that works and how that’s different.”

“The petition – the ability to petition your elected officials – is always going to be a right of residents of Chapel Hill,” Nollert continued. “What this does, in some ways, you know, I agree it’s a little bit of virtue signaling. But it’s kind of the best type of virtue signaling, of ensuring that we’re not codifying things into our ordinance – into our laws – that actively promotes inequitable outcomes.”

Council Members Elizabeth Sharp and Camille Berry reminded their colleagues of Chapel Hill’s unique status as a major state university town, which has its own advantages and disadvantages.

“I think we have a very specific situation here. Not only should we use specific language, but we should think of our specific goals,” Sharp said. “We really have to be careful to remember that we’re in a college town. And while we can’t control who lives where – nor should we, that is again the antithesis of equity – we are on a fine balance in a college town in terms of how our talent operates and functions. And I think a lot of our goals for complete community are incompatible with neighborhoods [in Chapel Hill] due to market forces turning over to more multi-family, non-long-term resident housing.”

“I personally do think that a lot of our neighborhood conservation districts, particularly those near campus and near downtown, are really out of sync with our goals, and that they are very much on land that we are talking about having other goals for – like denser housing, along transit corridors, etc, and making downtown more walkable,” Sharp continued. “I think that we do have a lot of neighborhood conservation districts that are outdated. And I very much support not being able to create new ones of that kind.”

“There’s always going to be a certain demand for student housing in a college town,” added Berry. “And we pretty much know what it’s going to be, based on enrollment, projections, and based on the amount of on-campus housing. We’ve generally known what the gap is in terms of what the University is providing, and what is going to be out in the community (in terms of available housing).”

“I’ve said for a long time that I think it’s really important that we address that together with the University, and I’m quite heartened at recent willingness on the part of leadership to kind of begin some conversations around housing,” Berry continued. “But I guess my question is, how do we say where we want student housing? Not necessarily where we don’t want it? I mean, we live in a college town. There’s going to be student housing. With the tools we have, how do we make it clear where student housing really makes sense? And where it doesn’t conflict with other goals?”

“I’m really concerned that we’re not getting it – that we cannot designate who lives where,” Berry added. “That includes students. I’d like to be clear about what we can and cannot do when it comes to designating who lives where.”

Berry asked for clarification from Chapel Hill town attorney Ann Anderson, who specified the differences between what town leaders were talking about regarding possible LUMO changes, and potential illegal mandates of zoning and land use.

“The town does not have authority to dictate who owns property or who lives in property. That’s a general proposition,” Anderson explained to the council. “One of the general principles behind zoning is encouraging uses and typologies in areas. That’s quite different from requiring or mandating.”

“The town does have the ability to talk about typologies of housing,” added Mayor Jessica Anderson. “I think that’s been the premise of all of this: how do we encourage the types of uses that we want in various places? There are fair housing laws and there are plenty of other things, and there are people who live in housing that may not be targeting their demographic, but we understand about encouraging different typologies.”

Berry and Anderson briefly disagreed about whether promoting student housing was a relevant topic.

Adam Powell is a reporter on local news and sports and an education communications professional. A 2001 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, Powell has served as managing editor of multiple local publications, including the Mebane Enterprise, News of Orange County and TarHeelIllustrated.com. The public information officer for Rockingham County Schools in Eden, N.C., Powell is the author of four books and lives in Mebane with his wife and two children. This reporter can be reached at Info@TheLocal Reporter.press