Agenda 03-19-24; 5-a - Zoning Atlas Amendment – 6915-UT Millhouse Road, Chapel Hill

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140 APPROVED WITH AMENDMENT 2.7.24 597 need one in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro area. Chapel Hill and Orange County would like to jointly develop one. 598 So that's the property we're talking about. 599 600 Beth Bronson: And the entrance to the east of those are privately owned, or there's a railroad track 601 there? 602 603 David Stancil: I think the Town of Chapel Hill owns the property that's further to the right of the two 604 Orange County labeled properties on this map, and then you're at Millhouse Road and the railroad tracks. But 605 as you can see, the concern that we addressed, and I hope that we found a solution to, you can see on this 606 map that the existing access road that was done years and years ago for Crown Castle to be able to access 607 their tower severs 20 acres of our site from the rest of it, and I can count on my hands the number of times I've 608 seen a Crown Castle truck go back to the cell tower. So, that's not really been an issue for us, but if that were 609 to become something that was much more frequently used, and we had parking or soccer fields, for example, 610 we don't want kids crossing a commercial driveway to go back and forth between future fields and parking. 611 And so that was the concern that we expressed in our memo. We looked at the possibly of diving down to the 612 southern boundary line adjacent to the grey area on this map. Not a great solution, but as mentioned earlier 613 we had a meeting today. We did identify the fact that there is another access easement on the northern part of 614 the property. This is the way in for the Crown Castle tower which is being proposed for use here. We had, in 615 our letter, suggested diving down and not separating this 20-acre section from the rest of the park. But, as of 616 today, I think we have a potential solution which will use this easement and wrap around the back side of the 617 soccer fields and the future facility. We haven't done a master plan yet because it wasn't time to build the 618 park. We've stopped doing those because we ran into situations where we had an adopted master plan and 619 10 years later, we were getting around to the construction, and things would change. So, we try to do master 620 plans now closer to the point of construction, and that's why we envision doing that in the next year or two for 621 this currently planned construction. But, what we have always envisioned is back here, backing up to Duke 622 Forest, this part of the property has nice hard woods, and is much more like Duke Forest than the rest of the 623 property. These areas in the front were former farm fields. This was the old Julia Blackwood farm. And so, 624 what we would like to do, and what we have talked today, and I think is a possible solution, is come around the 625 back side of the fields. 626 627 Beth Bronson: You don't anticipate development to the west? 628 629 David Stancil: No, this, I think, would be trails and hard wood buffer to Duke Forest. So, the anticipated 630 area of development of this property is in this area here. 631 632 Beth Bronson: Duke Forest does not have anything that backs up to those properties? 633 634 David Stancil: Duke Forest has access, their area actually goes right off the map to the south and to the 635 east. 636 637 Beth Bronson: They have separate access on that Orange County property? 638 639 David Stancil: No, they do not. There was originally a continuation of this easement that I've talked 640 about already that goes to the Duke property, but I'm not, without getting into some legal territory that I should 641 not get into, it's not clear to us whether this part of that easement continues to exist. But suffice to say, that 642 Duke has the ability to access this property from a number of other directions. This is also,just so you know, 643 this is a part of Duke Forest, the Blackwood Division of Duke Forest, that has the NASA research equipment 644 on it, so it's not one of the areas that's active for recreational purposes. There are not a lot of trails here. In 645 fact, they're kind of discouraged for that purpose because there is a lot of scientific research going on back in 646 this part of the property, so there's not a lot of access need in that area.