Orange County NC Website
acs <br />Appointed by the Orange County Board of Education: <br />• 1 Orange County Board of Education member <br />Mr. Barton suggested the concept of taking a second look at schools campus <br />versus park location at the last meeting of the CHATPEC Work Group on May <br />22, 2003. It was briefly discussed at that meeting, but was not pursued, as there <br />were no further scheduled meetings. However, Appendix 7 of the Work Group <br />report includes this proposal. Appendix 7 (in which members were encouraged to <br />submit any final comments or revisions to the May 22 Work Group report) notes <br />that the proposal was not pursued, and that a "school board member noted that <br />the schools as designed were within walking distance of the schools (defined as <br />1.5 miles)." <br />In the adopted CHATPEC Master Plan Work Group Process of May 14, 2002, <br />the charge to the Work Group included a guiding principle that stated that the <br />work group should develop a master plan for the site that was "within the <br />framework of the Pre-Concept Plan, Guiding Principles... and other <br />direction provided from the Board of Commissioners on October 22, 2001, <br />November 13, 2001, February 18, 2002 and at subsequent meetings." <br />On November 13, 2001, the Board adopted a Pre-Concept Plan to guide the <br />further site planning. This map was incorporated into the adopted May 14, 2002 <br />process as noted above (please see Attachment A). <br />The purpose of a Pre-Concept Plan (short for Preliminary Concept Plan) is to <br />identify the general types of uses for portions of the site (i.e., schools campus, <br />active recreation, low impact recreation, etc.). In the CHATPEC Pre-Concept <br />Plan, this map shows the portion of the site generally north of Jones Creek as the <br />"Educational Campus," and the areas generally south of Jones Creek as the park <br />(except for an area designated "Potential School Site, Pending Further Study"). <br />To my recollection, the Pre-Concept Plan reflects these locations based on the <br />following reasons: <br />1. Prior to the County taking over and completing negotiations for all of the <br />properties at Twin Creeks, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools <br />(CHCCS) had been considering purchase of the 44-acre former Hunter <br />property along Eubanks Road, and the County was involved in <br />discussions with John and Roderick Cate for 149 acres to the south. The <br />Pre-Concept Plan thus reflected the original land acquisition targets for <br />schools and parks, with additional lands from the Cate properties added <br />to the schools target site for the future educational campus. <br />2, The County's interest in locating a park site had begun by identification of <br />a number of different sites for the planned Chapel Hill Township District <br />Park (a park that was identified in the adopted 1988 Parks Element of the <br />Orange County Comprehensive Plan) by looking at their potential for a <br />combination of active and low-impact recreation. The existence of the