to: Roger L. Stancil, Town Manager
from: J. B. Culpepper, Planning Director
Gene Poveromo, Development Manager
subject: Request for Expedited Processing for The Courtyard of Chapel Hill Zoning Atlas Amendment Application, Special Use Permit Modification Application and a new Special Use Permit Application
date: October 15, 2008
The purpose of this report is to respond to a request from Radway Design regarding expedited processing of three applications involving The Courtyard of Chapel Hill and the property surrounding it.
Adoption of the attached Resolution would authorize expedited processing of The Courtyard of Chapel Hill Zoning Atlas Amendment and Special Use Permit Modification applications as well as a new Special Use Permit application.
On September 8, 2008 the Town Council received a petition from Radway Design and referred it to the Town Manager for review and recommendation. The petition requested expedited processing for a Special Use Permit Modification application associated with The Courtyard of Chapel Hill. The request also included expedited processing of a Zoning Atlas Amendment and a new Special Use Permit applications for six parcels of land (three of which are encumbered by the Courtyard Special Use Permit). The Courtyard is located on West Franklin Street between South Roberson Street and Basnight Lane. The petition indicates the applicant’s potential schedule to have parking available for use in January 2009.
Expedited processing grants priority status for review at every step of the process and grants priority status in being scheduled on agendas of advisory boards and the Town Council. A Special Use Permit application normally requires nine months to a year to be reviewed by all the required boards and commissions and to be heard at a Public Hearing.
Following Council approval, an application normally takes four to five months to obtain approval of detailed construction drawings and final plans, prior to obtaining a Building Permit. The review process is often long because of the breadth and depth of review and analysis, and because many projects are usually being reviewed at any given time.
However, because of the other applications previously granted such status, there will likely not be much shortening of the review time for this project if expedited processing is granted.
We follow the Council-endorsed criteria listed below in making recommendations to Council on request for expedited processing:
The amount of public and private parking in downtown Chapel Hill will be reduced for the next several years due to downtown construction. There will be a loss of approximately 170 public parking spaces at Lot 5 (due to construction of the Downtown Economic Development Initiative-140 West). It is important that the existing parking be made available as soon as possible so that businesses dependent upon parking in the downtown area are not negatively impacted during the construction periods.
Because the proposed applications attempt to improve a difficult situation involving the availability of parking spaces for The Courtyard, and other nearby commercial establishments, we believe that the proposal meets the objectives for public interest, as describe in numbers 1 and 2 above. The applicant provides access to the parking lots containing about 60 parking spaces.
The typical process for a Special Use Permit would likely bring this proposal to the Council in late spring of 2009. The applicant believes it is important to get the Council’s review and approval of this application by January 2009 in order to get these parking spaces back into use as soon as possible in the spring to match the timing of construction seasons. Several development applications are currently working toward being placed on the Council’s Public Hearing schedule. The impact of granting expedited processing for The Courtyard of Chapel Hill and the new permit application is that one less space would be available on the Council’s schedule for which other applications are competing. Projects that have been granted expedited processing are identified in Attachment 4.
We have not received the new Special Use Permit or the Special Use Permit Modification applications for formal review. Therefore, it is difficult to respond to a request for action by a date specific.
That the Council adopt the attached resolution to grant expedited processing for The Courtyard of Chapel Hill.
