Elementary School # 11
Concept Plan Application to the Town of Chapel Hill
The program for the facility is to provide a new elementary school for 585 students planned as approximately 100,000 square feet of building area. This area includes classrooms and support space for Pre-kindergarten through Fifth grades. Several of the support areas will also be utilized by the public including, but not limited to, the multi-purpose room or gymnasium, cafeteria, and media center. The facility will be designed to provide after hours access and parking adjacent to these spaces.
The outdoor facilities to support the school will consist of playgrounds, open play field area, service access for the kitchen/cafeteria, vehicle parking including car drop off with stacking area, and bus turn around and drop off area. Given the limited acreage of the site and considering the Resource Conservation District on the West side around the stream, the facility will be designed with multiple floor levels. The owner desires as much site area be reserved for play space and open green space as possible. Parking will be placed to limit interrupting contiguous play space.
The facility is to be designed as a sustainable project and will be pursuing the highest level of LEED certification possible within the project scope. The building placement and orientation optimizes daylighting for academic classrooms. Site planning and installations will be environmentally sensitive. For example, rainwater collection will be used for some irrigation and to flush toilets within the building. This system along with water conserving fixtures will reduce the water use substantially. The design team will maximize energy savings through the selection and design of building systems. System and material selections will all be considered in this effort. Recycling and air quality measures will be incorporated in the construction process.
The goal of the project is to provide the highest quality educational space for the students and staff within the project parameters.
Statement of Compliance
The proposed project consists of a new elementary school campus constructed as a re-development of an existing site within the Northside neighborhood in Chapel Hill. The neighborhood enjoys a strong sense of history and identity, and has been designated a Neighborhood Conservation District (NCD) by the Town Council. Accordingly, land development within the Northside neighborhood is regulated not only by general Town ordinances, but also by the adopted Design Guidelines for the Northside NCD.
The subject property is currently used in a fairly intensive non-residential manner, under an existing Special Use Permit. Re-development of this site as an elementary school will not introduce a new non-residential site into the neighborhood; but will replace existing governmental and child care land uses with a more community-oriented use, providing important new elements of neighborhood support and identity.
Neighborhood Conservation District Design Guidelines
The Northside Design Guidelines appear to primarily anticipate residential development on small lots, rather than the type of development proposed. Many of the specific criteria, such as those referencing houses or homes, clearly do not apply to an elementary school facility. However, some criteria, such as lighting standards and landscaping guidance, can be reasonably incorporated into the project design. The Applicant proposes to apply the appropriate neighborhood design criteria to the new school facility, in a manner that will maintain or enhance the neighborhood’s distinctive character, while meeting community expectations for an environmentally-responsible public school facility.
The new building will be placed so that the public entry faces Caldwell Street, while maintaining proper orientation to optimize solar energy benefits. Both adjoining streets will have sidewalks and pedestrian connectivity to the building. The number of vehicle parking spaces will be minimized, and located in two separate areas rather than in a larger centralized lot. Consistent with the design guidelines for the Northside neighborhood, parking spaces will be located to the sides of the building rather than the front. New landscaping and lighting improvements will be designed to comply with Town standards, using the principles outlined in the design guidelines regarding safety and visual appeal.
Town Ordinance Requirements
Except for the overriding Northside NCD design guidelines, the necessary modifications to certain prescribed LUMO regulations, and any specific SUP conditions that may be applied, the project will comply with all applicable Town zoning regulations and design standards. These include, but are not limited to, regulations and policies relative to streams, Resource Conservation District, steep slopes, tree preservation, erosion and sedimentation control, rainwater management, solid waste management, parking, and utilities.
Environmental Responsibility
The proposed elementary school will include substantial energy efficiency measures, exceeding conventional standards for such structures, and exceeding current Town ordinance requirements. Program elements such as active and passive solar energy features, daylighting measures, and rainwater re-use will be considered and incorporated as appropriate into building and site design. The Applicant intends that the new school facility will be able to achieve a high level of LEED certification upon completion and final documentation.
Zoning Amendment
In order to accommodate the practical floor area requirements for the new school, the project will require a Zoning Atlas amendment. The Applicant proposes that the property be re-zoned from the current R-3 district to the R-6 district. This amendment would maintain a residential zoning designation but allow sufficient floor area for the intended purpose.
Special Use Permit and Modifications to Regulations
The project will be subject to the higher standards of review associated with the Special Use Permit (SUP) process. In conjunction with the SUP application, the Applicant will request appropriate modifications to the prescribed LUMO standards and Northside NCD design guidelines, as allowed by LUMO Section 4.5.6. The requested modifications will include increasing the secondary (maximum) building height, and, for a small portion of the building, decreasing the additional building setback for building heights above the primary height limit.
The Applicant has studied numerous configuration options for the site, taking into account the required program elements and relationships, including the quantity and quality of open space. In order to satisfy the project objectives on this relatively small site, the building must be a multi-story structure, with three levels for a significant portion of the building footprint. In addition, an angled building orientation is required to achieve optimum solar benefit. The practical combination of these criteria creates non-typical building height and setback conditions, which will require special consideration. The careful and selective modification of these prescribed regulations will allow the flexibility to provide a better project design than would otherwise be achieved.