COMMUNITY NEWS
By Adam Powell
Correspondent
CHAPEL HILL– The remnants of Tropical Storm Chantal – a tropical depression when it came through central North Carolina on the evening of July 6, 2025 – left a lingering impact on the Chapel Hill business community with its torrential rains and threatening winds.
For Eastgate Crossing, the storm brought anywhere from six to nine inches of sustained rain over a few hours, which overflowed Booker Creek and left many surrounding properties inundated with multiple feet of standing water inside their buildings. Town estimates indicated that the storm ultimately caused over $11 million in damage to Eastgate Crossing.
Floodwater has been a problem around Eastgate for decades, since its original construction. But with the onset of Tropical Depression Chantal, the town has now dealt with at least three, if not more, 1-in-100-year storms so far in the 21st century.
1-in-100-year storms are defined as storms with a 1-in-100 chance of occurring in any given year. But with a recent study showing that hourly rainfall intensity in Raleigh/Durham as well as other areas of the state, increased by 22% between 1970 and 2024, so-called 1-in-100-year storms are starting to become much more frequent. This will require more innovation – and likely more money – on the part of local leaders to reduce the lingering issues.
Built before restrictions on floodplain areas
Constructed in 1958, the original Eastgate Shopping Center featured tenants including an A&P grocery store, an ABC liquor store, a gas station, and a bowling alley. It was the second-oldest shopping center built in Chapel Hill, behind only Glen Lennox, which was constructed in the early 1950s. Today, Eastgate Crossing houses such local staples as Trader Joe’s, Aldi, Great Outdoor Provision Company, Petco, J. Crew, Jersey Mike’s, Guglhupf Bake Shop, The Loop Restaurant, Kipos Greek Taverna, and Shake Shack, among others.
Built essentially atop Booker Creek and within its floodplain, Eastgate has experienced occasional flooding since the very beginning. Today, such a large-scale commercial development wouldn’t be constructed in such a sensitive floodplain area – particularly one that lies between two major creeks such as Bolin Creek and Booker Creek. But in the 1950s, flood plain zoning wasn’t nearly as restrictive as it is today.
Around 1973, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) began implementing regulations for floodplains and floodways. Approximately a decade later, in 1983, the Town of Chapel Hill established its Resource Conservation District Ordinance, which began regulating and restricting the types of developments that could be constructed within floodplains.
But over the past two and a half decades, three major flood events – Tropical Depression Chantal in the summer of 2025, Hurricane Florence in September 2018, and another unnamed storm in July 2000 – have brought new scrutiny to the flooding issues within the Eastgate area, and its impacts on local businesses and residents.
2000 flood was a harbinger of future concerns
A quarter-century prior to Tropical Depression Chantal, Chapel Hill was hit with a remarkably similar weather event – one that set the tone for years of subsequent discussions on best practices for mitigating floodwater in certain water-prone areas of town.
In the early morning hours of July 23-24, 2000, Chapel Hill received estimates of five to eight inches of rain in a six-hour period, with as much as eight inches or more projected to have fallen in the Booker Creek and Bolin Creek watersheds. The result was a flooding event in Eastgate comparable to the effects of Chantal last summer.
According to OWASA (Orange Water and Sewer Authority) records dating back to 1948, the 2000 storm marked the first time that so much rain had fallen in Chapel Hill in such a short period of time not caused by a hurricane. According to a 2001 town memorandum, the July 2000 flood event resulted in significant physical and financial damage to the shopping center owner and its tenants.
“All tenants of the Eastgate Shopping Center incurred some degree of physical flood damage during this event, varying from minor floor flooding to inundation of workplaces by several feet of moving water,” the memorandum stated. “Damages also included loss of business while repairs were accomplished and, to date, the permanent relocation of two businesses to other commercial sites.”
The memorandum also indicated that Eastgate is directly affected by floodwater from three directions due to the natural topography of the surrounding area and the shopping center’s physical location. Stormwater runoff flows toward Eastgate from the north, east, and west. The only exception is from the south side, where Booker Creek emerges from beneath Eastgate and continues south toward Elliot Road and Fordham Boulevard, where it eventually meets with Bolin Creek to form Little Creek.
Nearly two decades later, in September 2018, Hurricane Florence made its way through the region, dumping over six inches of rain on Chapel Hill in the span of a few hours. When a Tropical Storm came through Chapel Hill, Florence required emergency crews to rescue approximately 40 people in and around the Bolin and Booker Creek floodplains that rainy night. In many ways, Florence was a prelude to what would happen when Chantal made its way through town seven years later.
What can be done about flooding in Eastgate?
Opinions on stormwater mitigation in the Eastgate area have been mixed over the years. While businesses can be partially made whole following major storm and rainwater events through insurance claims and community assistance, the ultimate goal would be to find a way to reduce the impacts altogether, thereby minimizing time and business lost to repairs, replacements, and lost days of operation.
In the case of high rainfall storm events such as those in 2000, 2018, and 2025, the water simply had nowhere to go.
“Every time we have any sort of large weather event with water, we have places that predictably flood,” Chapel Hill Mayor Jess Anderson said in February to WRAL. “The data is clear. We are getting not only more severe storms, but they’re happening more often. It’s no longer something that could happen in the future — it’s here.”
The Local Reporter reached out to Mayor Anderson for comment on this story, but we did not receive a response as of press time.
Many around town have called for more natural infrastructure, such as parks, shrubbery, rain gardens, and other grassy areas, to help mitigate the effects of stormwater runoff by increasing surfaces pervious to the earth and thereby allowing some of the water to soak in.
Impervious surfaces, such as the parking lots and footprints of local businesses throughout Eastgate Crossing, prevent floodwaters from seeping into the ground, thereby increasing strain on underground pipe infrastructure and associated creeks and waterways, which absorb the extra water and help distribute it.
According to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, only about 50% of runoff infiltrates the ground in highly developed areas such as Eastgate Crossing. And with Eastgate Crossing part of the roughly 57% of flood-prone developments in North Carolina sitting in the middle of a FEMA hazard zone, having more breathable space – no matter how challenging in may be in a thriving business district – is the best long-term solution short of major underground infrastructure updates.
Other possible mitigation efforts include stream stabilization, a process in which landowners adjacent to Booker Creek and nearby tributaries collaborate to reinforce the stream’s banks and bed. This can include the use of natural elements such as large rocks, tree trunks, and riparian vegetative growths.
Chapel Hill adopted a stormwater plan in 2014, while the town’s engineering department conducted a study of the Lower Booker Creek sub-watershed in 2018. The study recommended improvements, such as storage basins to retain more floodwater. While the town constructed one of the seven proposed storage basins near Eastgate, it eventually relented on constructing the other six, in part in response to community objections about potential impacts on local natural habitat. A 2023 Booker Creek Working Group report indicated that adding storage basins would cost approximately $4.6 million and require cutting 15 acres of forest.
There are other options as well, such as retrofitting buildings and additional measures to capture stormwater to reduce the risk of rapid rainfall. The town can also look into possible improvements to pipe and drainage infrastructure, particularly in ditches and other water paths throughout the greater Booker Creek floodplain, but these also carry high costs.
With opinions varied on how to move forward, the Town of Chapel Hill continues to seek the best path on stormwater mitigation at Eastgate – with a hopeful eye that the next 1-in-100-year storm will actually be decades, instead of a few years, away.
Adam Powell has been a correspondent for The Local Reporter since 2023. A 2001 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, Powell has served as managing editor of multiple local publications, including the News of Orange County, the Mebane Enterprise, the Caswell Messenger, and the ACC Sports Journal. The author of four books. Adam currently resides in Mebane with his wife Julie and children Colt and Jenna. This reporter can be reached at:Information@TheLocal Reporter.press
It should be returned to the cow pasture that it was in 1955, with Booker creek running through it.