VERBATIM MINUTES OF PUBLIC HEARING OF THE CHAPEL HILL

TOWN COUNCIL, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1998

Mayor pro tem Capowski called the hearing to order at 7:00 PM.

Council Members in attendance were Flicka Bateman, Joyce Brown, Pat Evans, Kevin Foy, Julie McClintock, Lee Pavão and Edith Wiggins. Mayor Rosemary Waldorf arrived at 7:07. Also in attendance were Town Manager Cal Horton, Town Attorney Ralph Karpinos, Assistant Town Managers Sonna Loewenthal and Florentine Miller, Planning Director Roger Waldon, Engineering Director George Small, Current Development Planner Gene Poveromo, and Acting Town Clerk Toni Pendergraph.

Item 1- Proposed Development Ordinance Text Amendment

regarding the definition of “Contiguous Property.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the October public hearing night of the Chapel Hill Town Council. We have on our agenda tonight three public hearings. The first one is a Development Ordinance Text Amendment. And the second two are public hearings on individual projects within the Meadowmont complex. We will probably have action on the first one. It’s highly unlikely that we will take any action, other than to hear citizens, on the Meadowmont-related issues. Mayor Waldorf is doing soccer-mom things and she will be a few minutes late. (I think it’s basketball mom things.) The first item is a public hearing on the proposed Development Ordinance Text Amendment regarding a definition of ‘contiguous properties.’ Mr. Manager, is there a report?”

Mr. Horton: “Mr. Mayor, we will briefly review the options that we believe are before the Council. Roger Waldon will make our report.”

Roger Waldon: “Thank you. This item has been before the Council previously. The issue is what does the term ‘contiguous property’ mean. There is a finding that is required as part of the special use permit considerations that calls for the Council making a finding that the value of property contiguous to an application would be maintained or enhanced. And the term contiguous property is not defined anywhere in the ordinance, and there has been discussion about the need to do so. There are six options that we have identified as we’ve talked about this over the last couple of months, ranging from a definition of contiguous property that would call for property being in actual contact (touching along the boundary) being contiguous to definitions that are broader in their scope and allow more flexibility.

“In one of the Council’s recent discussions about this you discussed the idea of the possibility of a sliding scale, whereby the definition of contiguous property would vary depending upon the scale and scope of what was being proposed and what application was on the table at that time. We do have that option within this set of alternatives in two ways. Option five has a defined sliding scale for the area that would be considered for purposes of considering property value
determinations. This would vary, specifically depending on the size of the application. Option six is more flexible. It basically suggests that if the development application is large in size and in scope that the area in which property values would be considered would be correspondingly large.

“There may be more than six options, but those are six that we have identified and have written up for your consideration. You’ve got a recommendation from the Planning Board in the packet. Note that at your last discussion of this there was some interest on the part of some Council members of the possibility of taking some action tonight immediately following the public hearing. So we have included in this material procedural alternatives that would allow you to both consider this and act on it tonight if the Council so chooses. And we stand ready to respond to questions.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “Thank you, Roger. Are there any clarifying questions for Roger? [There were none.] We have…. Is there someone from the Planning Board—John Hawkins? Are you here to present your recommendation?”

John Hawkins: “Good evening, Madam Mayor and members of the Council. The Planning Board considered this issue for the second time at our current development meeting and voted five to three to recommend approval of option five. The one item on which there was most agreement (this time more than last) was the importance, we thought, of giving a clear definition to the word contiguous, or whatever standard we would apply, and be short of using words as we did before—like neighboring, adjoining, nearby—that could be fairly widely interpreted and open the possibility of misunderstanding or disagreement. I think the Board felt that (as in perhaps legal matters ) clarity is of benefit to all parties regardless of which side of an issue you happen to find yourself on.

“By the same reasoning, there was also more support among us this time for option one, which is arguably the clearest definition. But the majority of the group felt that the sliding scale included in option five gave Council the additional flexibility to consider the effects on properties farther afield, while still being clear about those distances. Option five also is in a sense inclusive of option one for developments up to twenty-five acres, which takes in a large majority of what you’d be likely to see in the near to distant future. We noted, however, that you may want to (if you consider option five seriously) consider whether or not those distances in the project scale that they’re associated with makes sense, or versus some other values that you might consider or come up with. There were three dissenting votes on our motion, and each of those were supporting one of the other options. So, thank you very much.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Thank you very much. We have one citizen who signed up to speak—Richard Williams. We ask that people limit their comments to three minutes, please.”

Richard Williams: “Thank you, Madam Mayor, members of the Council. I am somewhat hesitant to speak on this subject. I understand the desire to clearly define, I guess, terms. I wish that there wasn’t the need to define, within an ordinance, particular terms. My personal preference, of course, is option number one, since, in my opinion, it’s the clearest. But the Council seems to have a desire for a sliding scale. My only request is that if the Council moves in the direction of a sliding scale that they do lean toward option number five, which is clearer as far as that definition of contiguous property—exactly what is—than number six, which, in my opinion, makes the definition murkier than what we’ve currently got.

“And if the Council decides to use distances that are different than what’s currently listed in number five, I hope that there’d be some opportunity for citizen input, rather than the Council simply deciding on these without opportunity for us to offer some insight. So, again, number one seems the clearest to me, but if you’re going to use a sliding scale, I want to suggest number five.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Okay. Thank you very much. Anybody else wish to comment on this matter? Mr. Attorney, do we need to close the public hearing before we proceed to discuss this?”

Mr. Karpinos: “Well, you need to close the public hearing and, technically, under the ordinance, you should have the Manager give a report to you after you’ve heard all the evidence. So I think that would be appropriate if you intend to act tonight.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Okay. Is there anyone else in the audience who wishes to speak. We have the evidence that the staff has put forward. Is there anybody on the Council who wishes to put forward any evidence?”

Council Member Evans: “What about the memo that was at our place?”

Mayor Waldorf: “Okay, well this is not really…I just have glanced at this, but this is more about …not about contiguous property as a definition, but it’s information about which development applications were in process, and it seems to be information about whether Development Ordinance Text Amendments are effective upon adoption or at a later time. So I guess my judgment is that the memo is not relevant to this particular issue. Mr. Attorney, would you agree to that? [Mr. Karpinos indicated that he agreed.] Okay. Julie?”

Council Member McClintock: “I just wanted to share with the Council that I spoke with UNC Law Professor, Arnold Lowie, and he thought an option which did not specifically quantify feet offered more opportunity for judgment on the part of the Council. It is true that there’s a trade-off between being clear and being flexible enough to accommodate a unique situation. So he was encouraging us to go in the direction of something like what the Planning Board recommended, but specifically defining “contiguous,” as what I would view as what the staff really has done in option six.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Okay. So, Mr. Attorney, do we need to close the public hearing officially?”

Mr. Karpinos: “Yes, so that you can get the final report or comment from the Manager that the ordinance requires. I mean, if this went over to another meeting, then the Manager would give you a follow-up report. But, since it may not, you need to hear from him before you act.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Is there any further evidence or comment that anybody has? Is there a motion to close the public hearing?”

COUNCIL MEMBER McCLINTOCK MOVED, SECONDED BY MAYOR PRO TEM CAPOWSKI, TO CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING. THE MOTION WAS ADOPTED UNANIMOUSLY (9-0).

Mayor Waldorf: “Okay. Let’s hear a follow-up report from the Manager and the Attorney.”

Mr. Horton: “The briefest one you’ve ever heard. Nothing further.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Okay. Mr. Attorney? Anything further from you?”

Mr. Karpinos: “Not unless there are any questions.”

Mayor Waldorf: “All right, it’s open for Council discussion.”

Council Member McClintock: “I’d like to move Ordinance A, with option six.”

Council Member Foy: “Second.”

Council Member Evans: “I’d like to speak in favor of option one. I think part of this is before us is that we did not have a definition of ‘contiguous,’ and it seems to me that the people out and about think of ‘contiguous’ as what is the first definition in the dictionary. And that’s what option one is. And it seems to me that when we get into words such as ‘nearby,’ we could look that up in the dictionary and I’m sure there would be many definitions. And the same for ‘adjoining,’ and so it seems to me that the clearest definition is the most precise one, which is ‘property being in actual contact, touching along a boundary or at a point.’ And that is option one.

“I’d also like to speak to the fairness of this issue and our taking action. I’m not bothered by taking action tonight if the action does not affect those that are already in the pipeline. I think that if it affects applications that have already been filed, we’re changing the rules in the middle. And it seems to me that, although it’s legal (we have heard from our attorney that it’s legal and that we can take that action), it doesn’t seem to me that it is quite fair. So I would be very opposed to that.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Just as a point of clarification. It’s my understanding that all of the options before the Council, options 1-6, are drafted to be effective upon adoption. Is that right?”

Mr. Horton: “Yes, Ma’am.”

Council Member Brown: “I would like to offer an amendment, which I would hope would be a friendly amendment, on the one that’s before us. And it’s in the middle…. It’s to add a sentence, or add a phrase, that’s in the middle beginning with ‘For large development proposals and proposed uses that are significantly different from existing uses nearby…’ ‘Or proposals that have significant topographic features that could impact nearby properties’ after ‘from existing uses nearby.’”

Mayor Waldorf: “Would you please repeat that? Because I didn’t get it. It took me a while to find exactly where you were.”

Council Member Brown: “Okay. ‘Or proposals that have significant topographic features that could impact nearby properties’ after ‘from existing uses nearby.’”

Council Member McClintock: “So after ‘different from existing uses nearby’ you would add… again?”

Council Member Brown: “‘Or proposals that have significant topographic features that could impact nearby properties.’”

Mayor Waldorf: “Okay. That’s offered as a friendly amendment. Let me ask if that’s friendly to the mover and the seconder. I think the mover was Julie, and I think Joe and Kevin both seconded it.” [All agreed that it was okay by nodding.]

Council Member Bateman: “Julie, I wonder, in option six, in what you moved, if there was a way that we could put in some guidelines? Because what troubles me about option six, as opposed to option five, is that it’s just one more thing for us to spend so much time in a very muddy area deciding on. And I think if we could put in there—not something that said ‘this has to be,’ but ‘the suggested guidelines are’—that we give the Council some jumping off point to at least react from.”

Council Member McClintock: “Well, maybe you could put something on the table. The problem I’ve got with option five—and we’ve talked a little bit about this, Flicka—is that the way five is written a development which is 25 acres—which is the size, for example, of Lowe’s or the power plant (which is only a few acres)—could have a tremendous effect on a neighborhood. And yet, the way this is written it wouldn’t have any. Then it could expand to 1,000 feet, in the case of a development that’s over 100 acres. But we’ve seen in the case of the first Meadowmont proposals that the distance from Rogerson Road to Finley Center Drive, which is the figure that Roger just put forward on the table, is 3,800 feet. Well, that’s a huge area. That’s because Meadowmont is huge and it’s going to exert a huge effect on that neighborhood.

“So, my problem is arriving at figures which we’re going to be able to agree on. It’s really going to be tough. And what I observed in looking at ordinances that were in that memo that was attached was that most of the cities tried to come up with qualitative ways to try to express things rather than quantitative. To me, what’s been written in option six does define further and leads to less ambiguity than what we’ve got. It broadens it, but it also means less ambiguity. I mean, it clearly says that development proposals that are small in scale would use a lower hurdle.”

Council Member Bateman: “So we would just expect staff to sort of read our minds in terms of what we have in mind if we vote for option six.”

Council Member McClintock: “Well, the Manager would come in with a recommendation, like he always does, and we would apply our legislative discretion (which is what we’re supposed to do to every proposal that comes in), and figure out what we think is most appropriate.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “Actually, I’m addressing the same thing, Flicka. The original idea was that if you have a project that’s this big it’s got this wide an impact. If a project is that big it’s got a much bigger impact. I actually like option six for two reasons. The first reason is—when you consider the diversity of special use permits from the power plant, which is physically small but very impact heavy. Though it’s not a hundred acres, it means a wide area in light, dust and noise. And to try to legislate numbers in advance for that as well as legislate numbers in advance for things like Lowe’s would be very difficult. And that’s why I think it has to be up to the discretion of the elected officials.

“The second thing that I like about number six is that it is the only one that is based on something other than simply size. It recognizes that the type of use means something. We recognize that a gas station at the corner of Estes and Franklin—one more gas station, there’s already two there—is going to have a smaller impact than a gas station in the middle of what is currently a quiet residential neighborhood. So I think being able to have some flexibility when we decide these things, coupled with being able to look at not only the amount of use but the differences in types of uses between the proposal and its surroundings, is very valuable. So I guess I’m lobbying strongly for number six.”

Council Member Bateman: “So you don’t think even guidelines are necessary. I wasn’t saying, ‘write in stone.’”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “How would you legislate in advance the UNC power plant and Lowe’s? I mean, they’re apples and oranges, and I think no matter what we tried to do we’d have trouble.”

Council Member Bateman: “You’re saying that the guidelines really wouldn’t be helpful.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “Yes.”

Mayor Waldorf: “I’d like to follow up on something Julie said earlier. Julie, you made reference to similar definitions that other jurisdictions had. Are you talking about what we have on page twelve of the memo that we originally got, where Ralph reports what the Asheville ordinance says and what the Carrboro ordinance says?”

Council Member McClintock: “Right.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Well, I read these again today and they’re all pretty much more conservative than any of the options we have before us. For example, the Carrboro ordinance says a special use ‘must not substantially injure the value of adjoining or abutting property.’”

Council Member McClintock: “How about Greenville? Do you consider that more conservative?”

Mayor Waldorf: “‘A special use cannot be detrimental to the use or development of adjacent properties or other neighboring uses.’ I think they’re pretty vague, and my own preference is for something more specific.”

Council Member Wiggins: “I guess I’m kind of thinking like Flicka. I have no opposition to us enhancing our definition of ‘contiguous property’ to help our development review process, but option six doesn’t seem to be helpful. And I think we want something that is helpful for us as well as for applicants. And, while we want to protect the property values of existing neighborhoods—which I support 100%—if we go with number six it would seem to be that we’re setting up a process where applicants really don’t know what the playing field is and they are submitting their applications in the dark. Option number six, I think, would work well if I thought the community really trusted this Council to make decisions that are in the best interests of the entire community.

“And recently I have just picked up a lot of feedback that the community is losing confidence in us as a group to work together. And I think option six would create a situation where it would be difficult for this Council, as it is composed, to work together. So I support option six with some more guidelines in it that would give us some more structure for how to evaluate applications or proposals. Joe asked Flicka for some suggestions. I don’t think we can sit here tonight and come up with what those guidelines would be that we could add to help strengthen option six. But maybe the staff could. The staff could talk with people at the Institute of Government that Julie talked to, and help us find a way that all of us could be comfortable moving forward with either number six or doing something with option number five.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Other comments on option number six as amended?”

Council Member Foy: “I’m supporting that option because I think that it is a reasonable balance. It says ‘for small developments, contiguous property would be properties immediately adjacent, and, for larger developments, it would be properties likely to experience negative impacts.’ I think that that does strike a good balance for the Council, and for citizens, and for development applicants. And I don’t think that we need to be overly concerned about this definition because all it really does is open up the evidence that we can receive.

“It doesn’t force us to give any greater weight to that evidence. If, in the judgment of the Council, we hear evidence from a property owner who considers himself or herself to be within the definition of ‘contiguous,’ and we don’t think that that’s particularly relevant evidence, we don’t have to consider it. So I don’t see it as binding us. I see it as helping to give some leeway to the Council, but also providing a pretty strict definition in almost all cases. So I think it’s a good compromise.”

Council Member Wiggins: “But Kevin, didn’t we experience recently a situation where we had neighbors who said they were affected, and their properties fell outside of what we were using as contiguous property definition then, and if we wanted to disregard their testimony that was looked upon as negative, as not being open and sensitive and wanting to hear what neighbors said? So I really don’t want to be put in a situation where some neighbors might look at this definition and feel that they are affected and then I have to sit here and judge, without specifics, whether or not I think they are affected. That’s just a very uncomfortable position for me, and the two words in option six—what is ‘small’ and what is ‘large?’ Who’s going to define ‘large’ and ‘small?’ I think that’s open to relativity—what’s large and what’s small.”

Mayor Waldorf: “If we actually adopt a definition, this is a definition that the Council would use to determine whom it accepts testimony from and whom it accepts proofs from. Is that right Mr. Attorney?”

Mr. Karpinos: “Not exactly. The Council is required to make a finding regarding whether the project would maintain or enhance the value of ‘contiguous property.’ It’s not from whom the evidence can come but what evidence can be used to support the Council’s determination as to whether that finding is made. In other words, if you had evidence to indicate that a proposal would be inconsistent with the value of property some distance away, but you determined, based on whatever evidence you had, that property was ‘contiguous,’ then that evidence would support your determination and finding that it was not maintaining value. It’s not who, it’s what it is that is being presented.”

Council Member Pavão: “I do not feel that I can support option six. With the way it’s drafted, I agree with Edith and with Flicka. If there was some way to include guidelines…. I think we lose objectivity the way it’s written. I think we’ll be open to subjective decision-making. It’s just too vague and open for different interpretations. I actually prefer option number one, but I could live with five—or maybe six, if we can find some sort of guidelines to tighten it up a little bit and give us some direction. I don’t feel this gives us any direction at all. I think we’re all over the lot if we have to address ‘contiguous property’ with these terms. And I agree with Edith in that if we are going to add some wording to this to make it clearer or more to the point that we need more time to do it.”

Council Member Bateman: “When I first read this I liked option five—mainly, I think, because it was my idea and we always like our own ideas, even though I didn’t have the exact values in mind. Then, when I read option six, I said ‘gee, that’s good because that gives us more flexibility and discretion and you’re not locked in so rigidly.’ But I still keep wondering if we can at least put in something that says ‘minimum distances,’ or something.”

Council Member McClintock: “Could you put something on the table?”

Council Member Bateman: “Ralph, could you help me put something on the table?”

Mayor Waldorf: “That doesn’t have to be done tonight. Or, it could be. Either way.”

Council Member Bateman: “Can I ask a question, too? Or just make sure I understand, Ralph, what you said. I would be concerned if we adopted this tonight and it meant that every one of these folks that already have their applications have to go out and do something differently. But, from what I understand, Ralph, you to say—the difference is that it’s what we can legally and legitimately consider. And, if that’s the case, I will support a change. But I would like to see if you could suggest some language that puts in these values from option five as a minimum for option six.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “Minimum which? Acreage or distance?”

Council Member Bateman: “Distance. Well, both. If the development is over 25 acres but less than thus and so, we should consider at a minimum 500 feet from the boundary.”

Council Member Foy: “But you could consider more.”

Council Member Bateman: “You could consider more, but this is just a place to jump off from.”

Mr. Horton: “If I may, just one thought about a minimum. If you wish to have something greater than what was stated in the sliding scale in option five, you could use 5,000 feet as being the same number that we use as a notice requirement. And then you might scale up from there, but with a thousand being the minimum. And if it’s over 100 acres, 3,000 or 3,500 feet—or some other number—whatever pleases the Council.”

Council Member Brown: “I think that when we usually think of any kind of impacts we think of things that we deal with real often, like traffic and like stormwater run-off and those kinds of things. But having been on two noise committees now, I’d like us just to think about the fact that there are other impacts that can have a fairly wide range. And I think about the first noise committee that I was on, and the committee working blocks away from Franklin Street up in the Northside area and still, from very small properties in the Franklin Street area, being able to hear and know that those were noise impacts there. So that’s why I prefer the language in option six. And I would hope that we wouldn’t change it too much because I think that that gets at a wider variety of impacts than the things that we sometimes consider. But impacts that are there.”

Council Member McClintock: “I want to throw out another idea here, Flicka, to follow up on your request for more specificity. I feel more comfortable not having the numbers in there because it really does tie our hands. But, if they’re minimum, maybe that doesn’t as much. But what about the idea of drafting these minimum guidelines and making them like separate guidelines which we’d give the staff and say, ‘keep these in mind in terms of your recommendations to us.

“This is the minimum sort of distance we would have in mind.’ As opposed to wrapping it into actually the special use, because if you read all the special uses—health, safety, welfare, the different ones—they do tend to have more of a general application. It just seems so detailed to put this into one of those findings. And, I’m just tossing this out, is there a way that we could get the specificity but not necessarily have it sitting there in the ordinance, but it would be something to be referred to.”

Council Member Wiggins: “If we go in that direction, then we don’t really need to make a change in what we have now. We could just simply set about working up some guidelines to give to the staff when they’re working with projects. I mean if what you said just followed.”

Council Member McClintock: “No, because what our Town Attorney has told us is that the definition of ‘contiguous property’ in affecting property values—the definition that we must take —is the most common definition which is found in the dictionary, which means touching. And that limits us.”

Council Member Wiggins: “No.”

Council Member McClintock: “That’s my understanding of what our Town Attorney has told us. Am I right, Ralph? Did you follow that?”

Mr. Karpinos: “The position I took when a case was in court a few months ago was, the word being undefined you determine what it means by looking in the dictionary. You basically apply its common and ordinary meaning, that ‘contiguous property,’ by definition, means touching with some common boundary. And, I believe that without a definition in the ordinance the standard that you have now means that the question which must be determined by the Council on special use applications is whether or not the value of adjoining property is maintained or enhanced. That’s what I think the current standard that you have is.”

Council Member McClintock: “That’s correct. That’s what I understood. And so I think what the principle here is…. And so we don’t get too far away from the principle involved here…. I think the reason we’re all looking at this is that that was really so restrictive. I mean, it’s obvious if you have a huge development that it’s going to affect property values more than just the one little property that’s touching the application. So I think that’s the purpose of why we’re here. So I would like to see if we could move towards something that we could agree on here. I’d like to vote on it.”

Council Member Evans: “Well, I just raise two questions. If it’s up to the discretion of the Council to determine what we mean by ‘contiguous,’ then when does the applicant find out what the Council has decided we mean by ‘contiguous?’ The first time we talk to the applicant is when they come in for a special use permit and have public hearing. To me, that’s very late for us then to decide what we mean by ‘contiguous.’

“When Joe goes like this and like this…. To me, these things fall into the health, safety and general welfare because even if we write in 1,000 or 3,500 feet, or whatever, we all know that flooding and traffic and light and air don’t stop at boundaries. And those are the issues that we deal with in health, safety and general welfare. What we’re just talking about is property values. And, to me, if the property value of abutting property is not affected, then it’s only logical to me that something 500 feet away—or a thousand feet away—is also not going to be affected.”

Mayor Waldorf: “It seems to me that whether you’re an applicant or whether you’re a property owner it’s hard to know what your burden of proof is if you don’t know who has to prove it. And that is why I would like to have fixed numbers in this, or fixed guidelines. I don’t want us to adopt something tonight that is mushy and vague because I think if we do that it’s just going to be a matter of time until it goes to the courts. And if a majority of the Council’s intent is to give the Council more latitude when it gets taken to the court that may well not happen. So, I’m for something that’s concrete. And I just want to make one other point, which I’ve been waiting to make, about Joyce’s amendment to option six, which was to add in ‘or proposals that have significant demographic features that could impact’….”

Council Member Brown: “I said ‘topographical.’”

Mayor Waldorf: “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you said demographic. That takes away what I was going to say. I didn’t like that demographic business. I thought, ‘Wooah! This is big trouble.’”

Council Member Brown: “I wouldn’t have proposed such.”

Council Member Bateman: “I would like to submit this as a friendly amendment, and I will read it: ‘But, in every case, for property over 25 acres but less than 100 acres at a minimum, all property within 500 feet shall be considered contiguous. For a proposal over 100 acres at a minimum, all property within 1,000 feet shall be considered contiguous.’”

Mayor Waldorf: “Okay, so this is a mixture of five and six. Would you mind repeating that because I’m not sure I got it.”

Council Member Bateman: “‘But, in every case, for a proposal (or a proposal with the property) over 25 acres but less than 100 at a minimum, all property within 500 feet shall be considered contiguous.’ Do you want me to keep going?”

Council Member Evans: “What’s the definition of ‘contiguous’ if it’s under 25 acres?”

Council Member Bateman: “I would think that that’s where the greater discretion comes in.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Meaning what?”

Council Member Foy: “It already says in the first part of that, ‘for small developments, or for proposals that are small in scale and similar in proposed use to the existing use, contiguous property shall be construed to be those properties immediately adjacent.’”

Council Member Evans: “We don’t define ‘immediately adjacent.’”

Council Member Foy: “‘Immediately adjacent,’ I guess, means touching.”

Council Member Evans: “It means immediately adjacent, contiguous.”

Council Member Wiggins: “I just want to understand what I’m voting for because I’m moving toward supporting this. So, for proposals smaller than what you started with—that would be considered a small proposal and it would go with the current definition. Is that what you’re saying?”

Council Member Bateman: “That’s basically what is in both option five and six now.”

Council Member Wiggins: “Okay, but that’s the definition of ‘small.’ Less than 25 would be small.”

Council Member Bateman: “Right.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “I would like to ask you, Flicka, based on a couple sizes for special use permits, to change your numbers a little. The Lowe’s special use permit—and Roger, correct me if I’m wrong, please—is 21 acres. “

Mr. Waldon: “The lowest special use permit could be anything. Could be one acre.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Lowe’s. He thought you said the lowest.”

Mr. Waldon: “Oh, Lowes. That sounds about right. I’d have to check, but that sounds about right.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “And that’s 130,000 square feet of big box and retail, and 700 parking spaces. Now, certainly that has an impact greater than 500 feet away. And that would not be covered by your guidelines, Flicka. So what I’d like to ask you to do is to start the threshold a little smaller. Shall we say 10 acres? Okay?”

Council Member Bateman: [Nodding in agreement,] “Want me to read it again? ‘But, in every case, for property over 10 acres but less than 100 acres, at a minimum, all property within 500 feet shall be considered contiguous. For development proposals that are over 100 acres, at a minimum, all property within 1,000 feet shall be considered contiguous.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Are there other hands up, or can I ask a question?”

Council Member Wiggins: “Joe, give me a…. I need to visualize ten acres. Do you have another project in mind that’s about 10 acres?”

Mayor Waldorf: “Well, the Meadowmont hotel is about nine acres.”

Council Member Wiggins: “That’s nine acres. But one that I can look at. Something that’s already built.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “The power plant. It’s 11 acres.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Well, I think that’s reasonable. I have to ask about this ‘at a minimum’ though. That is a definition that’s defined on one end but not on the other end though.”

Council Member Bateman: “It’s not as rigid as option five, but it’s not as open as option six. It’s some beginning point. And that’s what I was after, because what we are looking at is what we are going to legally consider as evidence.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Right, and we’re saying on one end what we’ll legally consider as evidence, but we’re not saying on the other end what we’ll legally consider as evidence—which leaves it open to the interpretation of the neighbors, the interpretation of the applicant, the interpretation of the staff (God knows what they’re going to do with this), to the interpretation of the Council, and to the interpretation of the courts as to what is the other…. To me, it’s setting half a standard but not a whole standard.”

Council Member McClintock: “I think that therein lies the strength of it, though, because it’s the Council that has to use its legislative discretion to reach a specific decision based on the facts before us. It could be a power plant that obviously is going to have certain effects. It could be a Lowe’s store, as Joe said. It could be a supermarket. And every one of those things is different in terms of its affect on the surrounding area, depending on its use. So this compromise proposal would get us the minimum so it would give us some clarity. But it would also give us the flexibility so if we’ve got something unusual we can use that to make a really intelligent good decision. And that’s something that the Council really is supposed to do. We’re supposed to be making these complicated decisions. They’re not fun to make, but we make them and then the courts very seldom question our legislative discretion. We’ve gone back and forth and have made that decision, and that decision, I believe, would hold.”

Mayor Waldorf: “But in setting this standard, as I understand it—and somebody correct me if I’m wrong—we’re not saying whose got the burden of proof. We’re saying whose got the burden of proof on one end but not on the other. Do I have that right?”

Council Member McClintock: “I don’t think it’s about burden of proof. I’m not sure….”

Mayor Waldorf: “Mr. Attorney. Do I have that right?”

Mr. Karpinos: “There’s no line at the other end.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Right.”

Council Member Evans: “So we’re not defining it.”

Council Member Foy: “Can we just vote?”

Council Member Brown: “Flicka, are you offering this as a substitute motion?”

Council Member Foy: “An amendment.”

Council Member Bateman: “As an amendment to six. I was putting it as the last sentence.”

Council Member Brown: “Okay, that’s fine. I wasn’t quite sure what you were doing. That’s fine. No problem.”

Council Member McClintock: “So it’s not a substitute motion, but it’s an amendment?”

Mayor Waldorf: “Is the amendment accepted by the mover and the seconder?” [Council Members McClintock and Foy nodded agreement.]

Mayor Waldorf: “‘Topographic features,’ are they defined in the ordinance? I mean, what are we talking about there? I don’t like definitions that don’t define. Are ‘topographic features’ something again that we’re going to go to the dictionary about, and then….”

Mr. Horton: “You would go to the dictionary. Roger says there’s not a specific definition for that.”

Council Member Wiggins: “Joyce, what did you have in mind? She had something in mind when she offered it.”

Council Member Brown: “Sure. Property that has a much higher elevation than anything neighboring is going to impact more than a flat piece of property. That’s just one thing that comes to mind. There could be other things as well.”

COUNCIL MEMBER McCLINTOCK MOVED, SECONDED BY COUNCIL MEMBER FOY, TO PASS ORDINANCE 1, OPTION SIX, WITH AMENDMENTS. THE MOTION WAS ADOPTED 5-4, WITH MAYOR WALDORF AND COUNCIL MEMBERS PAVÃO, EVANS AND WIGGINS VOTING AGAINST.

AN ORDINANCE AMENDING THE CHAPEL HILL DEVELOPMENT ORDINANCE REGARDING THE DEFINITION OF CONTIGUOUS PROPERTY (98-10-21/O-1)

WHEREAS, the Council of the Town of Chapel Hill has considered the proposed amendment to the Chapel Hill Development Ordinance to add a definition of the term contiguous, and finds that the amendments are appropriate due to changed or changing conditions in a particular area or in the jurisdiction generally and achieve the purposes of the Comprehensive Plan;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT ORDAINED as follows:

SECTION I

ADD Subsection 2.29.1 to the Chapel Hill Development Ordinance to read as follows:

2.29.1 Contiguous Property: Property adjoining, neighboring, and nearby the outer boundary of the development proposal. For development proposals that are small in scale and similar in proposed use to existing uses in the immediate vicinity, contiguous property shall be shall be construed to be those properties immediately adjacent. For large development proposals and/or proposed uses that are significantly different from existing uses nearby or proposals that have significant topographic features that could impact nearby properties, contiguous property shall be construed to include those properties in a larger area, and those likely to experience negative impacts resulting from the proposed development. But, in every case, for property over 10 acres but less than 100 acres, at a minimum, all property within 500 feet shall be considered contiguous. For development proposals that are over 100 acres, at a minimum, all property within 1,000 feet shall be considered contiguous.

SECTION II

That all ordinances and portions of ordinances in conflict herewith are hereby repealed.

SECTION III

This ordinance shall become effective upon adoption.

This the 21^st day of October, 1998. (First reading)

Mayor Waldorf: “So this ordinance is effective immediately upon adoption.”

Mr. Karpinos: “It needs to have a second reading.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Ah, so it’s not effective until the second reading. Okay. Monday night.”

Item 2-Public Hearing on a Special Use Permit

Application for Meadowmont Hilton Garden Inn

Mr. Waldon: “The master plan that was approved by the Council for Meadowmont covers 435 acres [indicating highway 54 on a map of Meadowmont on an overhead slide] and the bulk of the proposed development at Meadowmont is north of Highway 54: the proposed Village Center, apartments, swim and tennis club, school site, town park, and a series of residential areas of varying types of housing. The Council has previously approved five special use permits for areas north of Highway 54.

“Other than the master plan, there hasn’t been a special use permit and so no consideration of development south of 54. The two proposals tonight are the first examples of that. [Zooms in on area south of 54.] What the master plan called for in this area was an office park. This white square is owned by the University. Then the Friday Center. Then, across Friday Center Lane, was proposed a hotel in this location and then retail shops in this southeastern corner of the site. The first application this evening is for the hotel, and the second application we’ll be looking at is for offices.

“Here’s a blow-up of the master plan for the hotel area. There is an existing pond, and the master plan calls for a stormwater retention pond here—a permanent pond here for controlling stormwater and filtering out pollutants. Then the building, and then a green buffer area. I have not colored in the retail area here because that’s not part of this special use permit. The special use permit only covers the hotel, the buffer in front of it, and the stormwater pond.

[Zooms back out.] “I thought it would be helpful to have on the same graphic up on the wall what the master plan proposed, which is here, and then this, up on the left-hand side, is the site plan that’s proposed as part of this special use permit for the hotel. [Zooms in on site plan.] Just to show in a little more detail. What we’ve got is a 180-room hotel that’s being proposed—94,000 square feet overall, 195 parking spaces. And this area that’s shown here is approximately nine acres in size.

“The existing pond that’s there would remain. But for stormwater management purposes and water quality purposes, a new pond would be constructed here as called for on the master plan. You might recall that part of the stormwater management plan for Meadowmont calls for a series of ponds—permanent pools that are designed to hold stormwater for specified lengths of time that let pollutants settle out before water is released. So one of those ponds appears right here.

“In our packet of information for you we have information about this proposal. We also have three resolutions that all call for approval and a resolution that would deny the application. The reason that we have three resolutions of approval is that we have different recommendations that come to you from the Manager, and from the Planning Board, and from the Transportation Board. There were slight differences in each of those recommendations that came to you, and so page seven of your memorandum on this topic highlights the similarities and differences among those three resolutions.

“I also want to point out something else that I just handed out to Council members.… There’s been discussion over the last few business days about new water quality data that is being released. Some has been released, some additional work to be released by the state. We’ve had some inquiries about that, and we’re very fortunate that we have an employee of Triangle J Council of Governments, Pat Davis, here tonight, who is extremely conversant on these water quality issues and works for us out of Triangle J, trying to keep up with what’s going on on the water quality front. Pat put together, at the request of several Council members, the best and most current and up-to-date water quality information with respect to Jordan Lake.

“We don’t have any staff response to this. This information is literally hot off the presses. So Pat was good enough to bring it by tonight so it could be distributed to Council members so that we could all be studying the data and the information. And, when this item comes back to the Council’s table for your subsequent consideration, we will have some comments about these data to offer you. But since the information is available it seems important enough to distribute it and get it into the record both of this hearing and of the hearing on the next application to follow. I’ll stop there, answer questions that you might have at this point, or later, and then you’ve got Board representatives and the applicant here to speak.”

Council Member McClintock: “I just have two real simple questions. Number one, what’s the lowest point on this property. Kind of give us a rough topographic look at it. And two, all the access points, which I think are pretty simple. I mean, it’s off of Friday Lane, right? And then it connects to…. If you could just clarify the points of access for us.”

Mr. Waldon: “There’s just one. It’s off of Friday Center Lane.”

Council Member McClintock: “Is there an intention to connect that road to something?”

Mr. Waldon: “Well, if we zoom back into the master plan…. There is the intention that this access road coming off of Friday Center Lane would continue on and also serve as access point for this retail building. And let me go back now to the big master plan. You can see that the long term plan calls for this also to be connected to Barbee Chapel Road when this retail building were to come in. So it would be a drive that comes off of Friday Center Lane and also connects to Barbee Chapel Road. And that would be then serving both of these. Right now, it’s just the hotel that’s in so….”

Council Member McClintock: “And the retail building your referring to is not part of this application. It’s like 100,00 square feet, or something.”

Mr. Waldon: “I don’t remember the square footage, but it’s not part of this application.”

Council Member McClintock: “And then the topo? Do you have any information on that?”

Mr. Waldon: “My recollection is that it’s at the location of the stormwater pond so that’s where the water would drain to. The applicant can probably be more precise than that. But that’s the general low point.”

Bruce Ballentine [Ballentine Associates, representing Winston Hotels and the Meadowmont Hilton Garden Inn]: “We have a number of the design team here tonight who will assist me with the presentation. I will first discuss the site and the existing conditions and the proposed site plan. Roger already has oriented you to the site. We are looking first tonight at the Hilton site, which is in this location. And I’ll show you that graphic so that we can zoom in and look at the site analysis.

“This is the site analysis that the Town requires. This was part of the Design Review Board’s process for years and it now is part of your regular submittal. It’s meant to show existing conditions and features and items that the designer and the reviewer should take into account when analyzing a development proposal.

“There was a question about topography. This site has two drainage features (keep in mind that this eastern portion is a vacant lot that is not part of this application) that come through the site, join here, and flow south into the open space play area of Finley Forest. This existing pond that Roger mentioned is a very small farm pond that was probably created just to provide a source of water for cows that were in that area at one time. It’s not even located on the stream. It’s up on the side of the hill, so there’s no water that flows through it.

“It’s stagnant. It’s green. There’s a basketball sitting out on the middle of that little pond that looks like the surface could be this table. The ball is sitting up that high. The pond is in very bad shape. It’s not a good feature. We originally looked and talked with the staff about the possibility of draining it, incorporating that piece of property into the site plan, reconfiguring, doing something a little different. But we ran into a stumbling block there. Technically, the staff had already determined that was a perennial stream (this is an RCD) and that is what is shown on the master plan [indicates location].

“So it was really too difficult to eliminate that. We worked around it. We’ve left the RCD line. We’ve asked each Board that we’ve appeared before for permission to go in and try to clean it up. We had a lot of support from the advisory boards to eliminate that pond, but we’ve elected not to ask you for that because of the complication of the RCD. We’re working around it. We’re following the master plan, and we want permission to go in there and clean it up as best we can. It’s an eye-sore right now.

“This portion of the site—which is to the north, and the northwest, and some to the west—is the area that was the old meadow. And again, if you think back to the master plan of Meadowmont, this is the meadow that I’m referring to. This was a meadow probably 20 or 30 years ago that has grown up in small cedars and pines and sweetgums. There are larger trees around the pond, around the property line to the south, and up here along Highway 54.

“Julie, you were asking Roger the elevations. The low point is about 277 and you can see the high point here (it’s hard to read). It’s 291. Then there’s 299 over here on the undeveloped site. But on this property it’s from 291 draining down to 277.”

Council Member Evans: “And what’s the elevation of the existing pond?”

Mr. Ballentine: “280-something. So it’s up. And the little dam that’s around it is kind of along this property area here. And the drainage area. Here’s the top of this hill. The drainage area of this pond is like that [indicating on map]. So it’s virtually the rain that falls in it, plus a little sliver upstream. So there’s not enough flow to flush this thing out.”

Council Member McClintock: “Is the Finley Condos lower than the pond then, or the same?”

Mr. Ballentine: “Well, it’s downstream. I don’t know if these…. The creek certainly is in the drainage way. These buildings are probably not. They’re probably pretty close to that elevation…. We have tried very, very hard for many, many months in the beginning of this process to follow this master plan as close as we can and convert it into a real project. The master plan has a lot of thought gone into it, but the master plan was looking 435 acres. This is just a little spot on that big picture he was looking at.

“So, as we get in and start refining and detailing one particular site, its going to be a little different. But we have tried to follow the concept. You’ll see that the building is in the same location. The drive connection is the same. We swing our drive around the site and connect to this future development as the master plan required. The parking is in the same general location. We’ve respected the meadow and the buffers. And the site plan that we’ve come up with conforms to the master plan. It’s a little bit less intense in development than the approved master plan, which had 200 rooms. This has 180. The master plan has 140,000 square feet of floor area. This has 100,000.

“The first plan that we did we took to the public information meeting. And the neighbors to the south—several neighbors from Finley Forest—were concerned about traffic. They were concerned about drainage and concerned about buffers. And the plan that we showed at that time followed this road alignment, which begins at Friday Center Drive in this location and then parallels the property line and then swings around the RCD. It did leave some trees along the property line, and there are some trees on the Finley Forest side that of course would remain. But still, the folks who lived in these units were asking for as much protection as they could get.

“They also would like stormwater protection. The stormwater pond is here. This [indicating small existing pond] provides no stormwater management assistance at all. There’s no water going into it. This pond, to catch more water, needs to get bigger. They asked if this drive could be moved away from their property to leave more trees. We took that information back. We revised the application drawings before they were submitted for a full application, and we did move this road back. It looks slight, but it’s significant because there are some nice trees in this location.

“So, we have tried to accommodate that request. We have also…. At the Planning Board meeting we were asked by the staff to consider a 25-year storm requirement, rather than 10. They were debating that at the time. All of the Town’s legal requirements were for 10 years. All the projects that you’ve approved and that have been built have been for ten-year design, pre- versus post-development. But, in this case, with a neighborhood downstream, they asked the Planning Board and then asked us, basically shared with us their thought about requiring and asking for a 25-year design.

“At the Planning Board, we discussed that at length. We also looked at a couple of other conditions, that were in the initial staff report, that dealt with saving trees around the stormwater pond. So there was a request to save trees around the stormwater pond, move the road and create more tree save area here, put in a bus pull-off in this location (which is more asphalt, less trees). So what was happening was in this portion of the site, by saving the meadow, by saving the RCD, by saving trees, by trying to save trees here, everything was getting so squeezed in to that urban center that something had to give.

“You could not achieve all those things. And what the Planning Board and the applicant agreed to that night was the applicant agreed to voluntarily overdesign the pond as much as he could with the goal of trying to achieve a 25-year detention requirement instead of your normal 10. But in doing that we ask that the requirement to save trees around that pond be eliminated, that the requirement to put a bus pull-off be eliminated, and I’ve already mentioned that we had already moved the road over to try and save trees in this location.

“The Planning Board agreed with that. The applicant was happy with it. And that’s one of the reasons that you have some differences in Resolution A and Resolution B. We are comfortable with the 25-year requirement, but not if we save trees around that basin. It’s just physically not possible. The planting that will be done around that pond, though, is illustrated by the drawing that’s on the easel. It will be extensively relandscaped and Linda Harris, with Jerry Turner and Associates, will present her landscape plan in a few minutes and talk more about that. But saving existing trees around that pond is what we ask to be deleted, or modified, from Resolution A. If you support Resolution B, as we do (which is the Planning Board’s recommendation), those things are all taken into account.

“I mentioned the bus pull-off. Friday Center Lane is a four-lane divided road. The amount of traffic on it is light. The speed is low. About ten years ago, when George Small was heading up a committee to relook at the Town’s design manual, he had a number of consultants along with a number of staff members sit in on long, long meetings. And one of the items that came up was when do you require a pull-off with a bus stop. It’s a burden and a hardship to put these pull-offs in and we should only put them in where we really need them. It’s less trees, more asphalt, all the things which if we don’t need them we shouldn’t put them in. The bus only stops there for a few minutes, then it’s gone for 10 or 15, then another one comes.

“So, the logic…. Someone presented the idea that on a two lane road it would be a hardship on the traffic and the citizens for buses to stop in that road and block traffic. But if it was a four lane road (such as out here on Airport Road), you have many stops that are nothing more than pads, benches and a sign stuck in the ground. You did not build pull-offs on Airport Road, Raleigh Road, Columbia Street, Franklin Street. There’s not a single one. You just put a sign in the ground and called it a stop. Now, the reason it works is there’re four lanes. The bus stops for a few minutes. Cars go around it. It’s no big deal. But all those pull-offs…. Again, that’s less green, less trees, more asphalt. So it’s a small item. And if you want the pull-off, it’s not that big a deal. But it seems like it’s defeating the purpose of what we’ve all been trying to do for the last year.

“So for that reason we asked, and the Planning Board agreed, that there just be a stop on Friday Center Lane. On 54, the Planning Board proposed, and the applicant agreed, that a bus pull-off there was reasonable. It’s much more traffic, higher speed, and it makes much more sense to put the pull-off there. But not in this location.

“That’s the background on that, and that’s why there’s a difference. So, if you look on page seven at your summary chart, you’ll see where the Manager has listed the differences between Resolutions A, B and C. And they had to do with site plan issues. The first is the pull-off. And you’ll see that the Planning Board recommends ‘no’ and the Manager ‘yes.’ The T Board recommends yes, but we had a couple of members at that meeting and one of the T Board…. Joe, I believe you were at that meeting also. One of the T Board members supported no pull-off, there was no other discussion, but somehow it ends up here as a ‘yes.’ So I’m not sure that the T Board actually….”

Mayor Waldorf: “The T Board chair is here tonight, and he’ll present their position.”

Mr. Ballentine: “Oh, okay. Good. The third and fourth items have to do with the 10-year storm[water] versus the 25, the tree loss versus the reconfiguration of the pond, and I’ve already addressed those points. As Roger mentioned, there’s been a lot of discussion in the recent past about stormwater management. In the Manager’s report, in all three of these resolutions, page 19, stipulation six addresses the permanent retention basin installation. There’re conditions A through M. Two pages of detailed requirements that the Manager has placed on this applicant if you approve any of these three resolutions. They’re very detailed. They tell you exactly what is required.

“The Town has its requirements. The State of North Carolina has its requirements. There’s a list of approvals that we have to go through—the Town, the State, the Corps. And there’re performance bonds that have to be posted. There’s an owners association for maintenance that has to be created. There’s emergency drains, anti-seepage collars. There’s a whole list of things that are very specific and these are items that are not required elsewhere in Town. They’re only required within this water quality overlay district that has to do with the distance—I think it’s a five mile distance—from Jordan Lake. And this particular site falls within that distance and we are going to meet all of those requirements.

“Included in our application is the applicant’s Statement of Justification, where he addresses the four findings of fact. That’s part of your application. It’s part of the record. Included is finding number three, which addresses maintaining and enhancing adjoining property values. We listed our reasons why we believe we’ve met that finding. We’ve asked Mr. Tom Heffner, a local real estate appraiser, to look at that issue as well. Tom has looked at the site plan, visited the site, and was prepared to come tonight, but two nights ago he had emergency eye surgery. He’s not able to attend.

“He’s okay. He’s at home. He’s doing well. We’ve talked to him in the last couple of days. He’s fine. He said that he would like to issue a statement to the Council, which Cathy brought to our office today. I’ll pass this around. Could this be entered into the record? He could be here when you reconvene to discuss this issue if you have questions of him. If your public hearing is still open, you might ask him any questions that you might have at that time.

“With that—unless you have specific questions of the site plan, or if you want to ask later—I’d like to have three other of our design members make presentations. First Mike Horn will briefly speak on the traffic study that he prepared for this project. He was also the consultant for East-West on the master plan and on the overall project, and he did an update for this project. After Mike, Linda Harris, with Jerry Turner and Associates, will present the landscape plan. And Tom Hogan of RHOR Architects in Atlanta will present the building architecture. Thank you.”

Michael Horn [Kimley, Horton and Associates, Cary]: “We performed the original TIA for the Meadowmont master plan, which was approved back in 1996. We provided an update to that TIA on December 8, 1997 to the Town of Chapel Hill for this SUP that you see in front of you right now. The original master plan proposed a 200-room hotel. We are currently looking at a 180-room hotel, 20 rooms less. Both TIAs identified several roadway improvements, one of which is the widening of NC 54 to a six lane facility. These improvements have been identified by your staff and are shown as requirements in the SUP. With these improvements, the inter-sections along NC 54 that are adjacent to this site will operate an acceptable level of service with the build-out of Meadowmont. That’s about as brief as I can make it. If you have any questions, I’ll be very happy to answer them.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Thank you. We may have questions later.”

Council Member McClintock: “Yeah, I’ll have some questions about your figures later.”

Linda Harris [Jerry Turner and Associates]: “We have worked on the Meadowmont master plan and I’m pleased to be working with Winston Hotels on this project as well. Our landscape plan was based on the entranceway corridor guidelines which most if not all of you are somewhat familiar with at the very least by now. Conceptually, as Bruce alluded to earlier, the guidelines describe the type of landscape development along the corridor as a series of open spaces or meadows interspersed with wooded areas. As you can see the meadows along all the sides of 54 and some of the wooded areas left along the sides as well. I’m going to, as quickly as I can, give you an overview of our plan to show you how we are consistent with those guidelines.

“Along 54, there are two distinct areas established as buffers. The first area is the wooded area along 54, which will be left in its natural state. It exists right now as a mixture of pines, cedars and some hardwoods. On the southern edge of that wooded buffer we will supplement with a solid screen of evergreens, which will keep the parking area from being visible along 54 at all times of the year.

“Passing that natural woodland area, we would continue into the meadow area which we propose 170 feet deep, which would continue from the wooded area all the way to Friday Lane. This area is currently characterized by a mixture of pine, cedar and hardwoods. It used to be a meadow, and our proposal is to reestablish that as a grassy meadow which would have to be mowed periodically to maintain it in that condition. In addition to reestablishing the meadow, we would propose to keep some of the existing cedars, groups of cedars, and other trees along the edge along 54 wherever possible, to create view corridors across the meadow to the building to a more formal arrangement of planting framing the rear of the meadow and softening the building.

“Now, the tree groupings on this plan are conceptual only because we have not done a tree survey. We don’t know precisely where the groups of trees would be. So we will have to field locate those in the future and establish which ones we want to remain. We also propose to transplant some trees that are in areas to be disturbed to other areas of the site, perhaps supplementing some of those along the highway, along the hedgerow along 54.

“Because the land slopes, as Bruce described, away from 54 down to the hotel, the trees along the upper part of the meadow will have much more importance and will be very effective in helping to bring the building into scale with its surroundings. The existing trees that Bruce was talking about in the rear of the property that we plan to save would be visible above the top of the building, further creating a nice scale to the building.

“The western part of the site is currently characterized by an existing formal street tree planting along Friday Lane, which may possibly be replaced as a result of some road widening activities. We propose to continue the formal planting beyond its present limits to the southern property line. Along the 50 foot buffer along this western portion, we would propose to keep some groups of existing trees if possible. But, if not, we would want to either transplant our material that we’re to move from the disturbed areas, or perhaps supplement it with nursery material to create new groups of trees along that border. Where the parking comes in contact with that 50 foot buffer, we would, of course, screen that with evergreen material.

“Now, relative to the location on the master plan, the entrance drive has shifted northward as described earlier, giving us an additional amount of room to maintain material and to supplement where grading activities occur. Our plans are to supplement those existing trees with a heavy screen of evergreen material—from tall to medium to low—to create a solid screen as it matures. Now, since the retention pond is an important visible element from its proximity to Friday Lane as well as the entrance to the hotel, our plans are to make it into an amenity, using appropriate plant material. In addition, we would group trees near it or around it from the transplanted material, or supplemental materials, to further enhance it as a feature. Having worked with Winston Hotels in the past, I know that the interior of the site will be beautifully landscaped and of course the landscaping in the parking lots will meet or exceed the Chapel Hill requirements. Thank you.”

Tom Hogan [RHOR Architects, Atlanta]: “We have a pretty steep history in the Triangle area in the development of hotels and the design and development of hotels. We’ve got hotel projects in Raleigh, in Cary, and we’re currently working on the conference center at the centennial campus. We were very proud to be selected by Winston to come to the Chapel Hill area and bring this design for the Hilton Garden Inn to this location. Winston Hotels has done a great job of having us come here, spend quite a bit of time in the Chapel Hill area, specifically, getting acclimated with some of the wonderful things that are in this town as well as, of course, the beautiful campus in Chapel Hill. And, as you can see from the rendering, we’ve taken a lot of design cues from the elements at Chapel Hill university in developing the design elements of the hotel -- not to mention the DeBose mansion and some other area facilities that are quite classical in nature.

“A hotel, by the nature of the facility, is a residential building. So we strove very hard to lend a very solid residential character to the building. High-pitched roofs, decorative elements on the roof, nice gable forms that are transitioned in a very classical way from a pediment down to a colonnaded, pilastered element to a very formal type of base at the bottom of the building. Let me back up for a second. Some of the things that Bruce talked about in terms of the orientation of the site had lent itself a lot of challenges in developing the architecture of the building.

“There is no back side to this building. There is the front face, which has the north NC 54 elevation, which is this rendering here [indicates drawing]. And this is the view from NC 54 that is designed to sort of capture the imagination of the driver as they go by at 45 or 50 miles an hour down the road. Across the beautiful meadow, but trying to take the facade and manipulate the facade such that we have not a very flat facade but it’s a masonry building with some pre-cast elements that lend depth and shadow to the elevation, which we think give it striking appeal to the passerby.

“And not only that. We have these articulated elements at the ends of the building, which sort of frame the building in a very classical and symmetrical way, not to mention the center portico which has the pre-cast and the central gabled element. All of these things, we think, provide a lot of movement in the facade, as opposed to creating a stagnant look. And we’re quite excited about the way that this has taken shape.

“When you turn down Friday Center Lane and approach the building from the other front, which is actually the front door from the pedestrian point of view, you have a look which has this sort of arrangement [indicates another drawing]. In the front, you’ll see this low-rise element, which we call the pavilion building. The pavilion of the hotel houses many of the public functions. We pull them out in a low-rise, one-story structure with roof shapes and forms that mimic the higher roofs of the main portion of the guest room tower.

“And we think that this an effective way to take the scale of the building down from the NC 54 side down to a one-story element that sort of breaks the scale down as it goes back down towards the residential areas behind the hotel. We have orchestrated the entry drive from Friday Center Lane such that the pavilion building becomes very much the focal point and actually provides a very nicely inviting way for the guests to arrive at the hotel.

“The balance of the plan consists, as we mentioned, of 180 guest rooms on five floors. Winston Hotels has given us the impetus to go ahead and use very nice materials. We’re talking about brick and pre-cast materials which, when you use those kinds of materials, gives you a lot of flexibility with coarse work. It puts a lot of texture in the building. It adds a lot of character and appeal to the facade. And, by the careful manipulation and sparing use of some of these materials, I think we’ve come up with a very exciting and sort of playful theme for the hotel. We hope that you feel that this is an inviting and acceptable approach to the hotel, as we certainly are excited about implementing a project such as this in Chapel Hill. Thank you.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Does that conclude the applicant’s presentation? All right. Let’s hear from the Planning Board, please. And we also have representatives of the Transportation Board and the Community Design Commission here tonight.”

John Hawkins: “The Planning Board considered the application at its September 1st meeting, and voted 7-1 to recommend approval of the application before you, with several additional stipulations which appear as Resolution B in your packet. The issues we discussed and raised and the recommendations that we made are noted in the summaries you have, and I won’t take up your time to list them here. I would point out that the majority of the Board was satisfied with the material presented by the applicant concerning the compliance of this project with the master land use plan, the impact of it on traffic conditions on Highway 54, and the site lines and image issues (the restoration of the meadows etc...). We saw nothing dramatically new which hasn’t been presented conceptually before. Thank you very much.”

Ken Robinson: “The Transportation Board met and reviewed the project on September 8th and voted for approval with a few modifications that we recommended, one of which I would like to clarify because I think it got misinterpreted a little bit as it’s gone through three or four writings before it’s gotten to you here. And that is on the width of the walk and the bike path. We have no problem at all with the 10-foot width. In fact, we like the 10-foot width. But, in both of these projects, there were notes that said the width could be varied by the Town Manager for certain reasons, which we understand, but our recommendation was intended that in no case would the width be less than seven feet if it had to be narrowed. And the other stipulation we had for the path was that it should be a hard, all-weather surface. We didn’t see anything that described what that would be in the literature we had, and we felt that that was important.

“The other major issue that we looked at was the retention of the sidewalk on Friday Lane, which stops part way down the property line. And we recommended that it be extended all the way to the southwest corner of the property. And, of course, we were recommending that the traffic management plan be submitted annually, updated. The T-Board voted and supported this resolution, with these impediments, unanimously.

Dianne Bachman: “The Community Design Commission reviewed the Meadowmont application for SUP for the hotel at its September 6th meeting. The Commission voted 10-0 to approve the SUP application. There was discussion on three basic issues, two of which Ken just mentioned. One was that the proposed sidewalk along Friday Center Drive be extended down to the entrance driveway to the hotel. The second was that the bike path sidewalk along 54 be extended the full length of the property’s NC Highway 54 frontage, again with the suggested width of 10 feet.

“The third issue that was discussed was the scale of the center pediment forming the gable on the hotel. The discussion was that this seemed to be undersized, and there was also discussion of the material of the pediment. But the Commission did feel that these issues could be resolved in final approval of elevations should you approve the SUP this evening. Thank you.”

Diane O’Shea: “Thank you. I spoke with the Clerk earlier and she has given me an okay to also speak for the president of the Board of Finley Forest, who is recovering from surgery and she’s not allowed to be here. So can I have my three minutes, and hers?”

Mayor Waldorf: “That’s fine. Sure. No problem. I’m just going to run this thing [indicates timer] twice.”

Diane O’Shea: “I am a home owner and vice president of the Board of Directors of Finley Forest. Until this spring I had no knowledge of the possibility of a Hilton Hotel coming. I and my neighbors still do not get mailings and we are all contiguous to that property. On agenda number two, the Manager states that the master plan would maintain or enhance the value of contiguous property. On page four, the statement of justification states that the Hilton has been designed to minimize adverse impacts of surrounding properties. To my way of thinking, these statements are contradictory. How will the building of a hotel right next door to our homes maintain or improve our property values?

“Page 56 states that there are no single family dwellings contiguous to the hotel site. All of our homes are privately owned town homes, deeded and mortgaged. These are not apartment dwellings. We pay high taxes and take pride in our homes and our common grounds. We pay many thousands of dollars yearly to maintain our homes and our property, whether they be free-standing or clustered in units of four or eight. The plans describe the proposed hotel as being well buffered from the condominiums. By their description, the entrance drive is far removed from 54, plus a 75-foot buffer to the west. Restoration of 175 feet of meadows to the north of the hotel. Finely Forest homeowners will get a twenty foot buffer to the south. How will that enhance our property?

“Quoting again, ‘the building and parking lot have been set up so that most of the parking is screened by the building from 54.’ I don’t know how the value of that small area of 54 is, but I do know the value of my home. Again, on page four it is stated, ‘the project will not detract from the value of Finley Forest.’ How do they come to that judgment? How many private homes in Chapel Hill have improved their value by having a hotel built next door? Thank you. Can I read hers?”

Mayor Waldorf: “Just continue.”

Diane O’Shea: “Her concerns are traffic. She says [reading a statement written by Catherine Williams, president of the Finley Forest Board of Directors]: Several articles in the Chapel Hill Herald in past months addressed tremendous concerns about safety on 54 near Glen Lennox. If you add to that 1300 homes of Meadowmont, the office centers therein, the Hilton, the 75,000 square-foot office complex UNC proposes behind the Friday Center, Alta Springs Apartments (which are approximately 400 units), the traffic that will be going down 54 to access Route 40 to the proposed Fayetteville Road malls will just be enormous.

On page 11 of the traffic impact study, paragraph two, quotes, ‘assumed widening of NC 54 to six travel lanes with additional turn lanes installed at Meadowmont Lane.’ Route 40 is only four lanes in most places and it takes people on 54 eight to fifteen minutes right now to access 40 anytime after 7:15 in the morning. Does the possibility of six lanes mean that we will be living within a few hundred feet from a super-highway like US 95. How positively can that impact our neighborhood? Please consider all of these things when you vote. Thank you.”

Mr. Horton: “Madam Mayor, if I may just offer one correction. Some of statements that were quoted were made by the applicant and come from the applicant’s Statement of Justification and were not made by the Manager.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Okay. Thank you.”

Kathy Bryan: “I’ve served on the Board of Directors of the Finley Forest Condominium Association for four years. Speaking for homeowners, I think I can safely say that what we most desire is to not have a hotel built next to our homes. We can’t think of any single way that our quality of life will be enhanced or our property values increased by having a hotel in our back yard. The second comment that I have is that Finley Forest is one of the very few areas of affordable housing in Chapel Hill. It seems that it would be in the interest of the citizens of Chapel Hill for the Town Council to protect this area.

“One of the discussions that we’ve had tonight…they’re talking about cleaning up the pond that’s existing. And it does need cleaning up desperately. However, it’s also in a fairly heavily wooded area. If they’re going to have to get a lot of equipment in there to clean it up, they’re going to have to take down a number of trees just to get the equipment in there. I’m not sure what’s involved, but I think that’s something that will have to be looked at.

“Winston Hotels tonight asked to be relieved of the necessity to save the trees around the pond that they plan to build. If the choice that Finley Forest faces is to have the drive either close to where we are so that the lights shine in our houses at night and we hear the traffic more…. So if the choice is to have the driveway closer to Finley Forest then of course we prefer to have the driveway further away. But the trees that are there will certainly help to serve as a buffer, and we’d like that as many of those trees be saved as is possible, especially the large ones.

“We’re very concerned about protecting the community from the hotel and all the noise and lights that are necessary elements of operating a hotel. We’ve talked a lot about the buffers that protect from 54 and the word ‘evergreens’ has been used to describe the buffer between Finley Forest and the hotel. We’d like to see fir trees planted there, not evergreens, certainly no deciduous trees. But we would like to see that they be fir trees, not the pine trees that grow a little tall where all the protection is at the top of the tree. We also have a nasty infestation of pine beetles throughout Finley Forest, which is affecting Highway 54 also. The whole area has this problem. That needs to be looked at when they’re planting trees, too. Whatever they plant will go away quickly.

“We haven’t even talked about lighting. But when the parking lot is lit at night it’s important to us that the lighting be perimeter lighting and that it is pointed into the parking areas, with the boxes around it, and that the poles be just as low as they can possibly be to protect us from the extra lighting. Finally, we’re concerned about the HVAC system. We would like for the quietest system possible to be installed, and fences planted round the system. Somebody talked about noise pollution. We’re real concerned about the noise that the HVAC system will cause. We thank you for your time and for your willingness to serve the citizens of Chapel Hill.”

Henry Lister, Sherwood Forest resident: “I want to say thanks to Julie McClintock for keeping our neighborhood informed on issues and keeping in contact with our neighborhood association and for encouraging me to appear here tonight. I’ve just been through a development process in Carrboro for Covenant Place and Shepherd House elderly housing project and I’ve got to say that these people have done a tremendous amount of work, and it’s beautiful, and it looks great. But that’s not why I’m here. As a matter of fact, I’m not even sure why I’m here tonight because appearing before you almost seems like a waste of time and energy. All of your advisory boards have recommended that you approve the application. The master use plan says that these projects are included in it, and it’s been approved by the Council. So it appears that the decision has already been made.

“So how do our concerns make a difference to you? If I describe to you that it’s already dangerous to enter 54, does it make a difference? If I say that significant traffic increases for this project decrease from the quality of life for The Oaks, and Rogerson, and Oakwood, Finley Forest, the residents of Barbee Chapel and Sherwood Forest, does it make a difference? Do speeding cars affect us? Yes. Y’know, when they put traffic lights at The Oaks and at Friday Center and at Barbee Chapel, what happened? Traffic speeds increased. As a matter of fact, if you drive at just five miles over the speed limit now, you’re an impediment to every car out there. It’s bad. It’s gotten worse. Will six lanes send a signal to drivers to drive the speed limit?

“This plan meets the requirements for traffic, and it’s been approved, but is it what’s best for Chapel Hill? Another thought about this development disturbs me. When I put an addition on my house I was restricted to 24% impervious surface. I had to send my plans in and achieve approval. I was in a quarter mile of the Jordan Lake watershed. The reports that you’ve been given tonight demonstrate that both these applications—one has 38% impervious surface, and the other has 39.7% impervious surface—neither of them meets the impervious surface requirements.

“Now maybe if you added the corner where retail development is scheduled at 54 and Barbee Chapel—maybe they would reach impervious surface. But now they don’t. I know something’s going to be built on this land, and I accept that, but I think the discretion you all have is to decide whether or not the proposed development—these two applications that you’re thinking about tonight—is best for Chapel Hill.

“Traffic concerns can be addressed with different types of development, things that don’t contribute to peak flow—like movie theaters, community centers, performing arts centers—things that occur off peak traffic flow hours. These projects may not make the developer a whole lot more money than what they’re proposing, but your decision shouldn’t be based on what’s best for the developer. It should be based on what’s best for the community. The application does not meet impervious surface regulations required for watershed protection.

“But, aside from that, if just meeting statutory ordinance requirements was all that was required of this project, your professional staff could make the decision. It wouldn’t have to come to you. So why does it come to you? I believe that it’s the Council’s role not to blindly follow ordinance statutes. Meeting ordinance statutes is a minimum requirement of a project. My point is that it’s up to the Council to decide. The real question is whether or not the application is best for Chapel Hill, not for the developer. I believe that you have the discretion, as legislators, to decide whether or not this is the best that can be done for Chapel Hill.”

Dennis Schley, Finley Forest resident: “Why do we human beings, when everything else is done, get 20 feet of buffer? Why shouldn’t they have to consider human beings first, and people living in an area, and say, ‘hey, we’ve got to give a minimum of at least 50 feet.’ And then, if there’s not enough room, if you still insist on 170 feet for the meadow, then maybe they can’t build on this property. But why do the people, the human beings, the taxpayers, come in last in figuring how we get buffer zones? I don’t understand it. Everything else get…. The people driving by in cars—you want to have a nice scene for them. The people who work at the center there—they have to have 75 feet. The piece of property that isn’t even built on yet—they have a 75-foot buffer zone. I just think that something is wrong when people get short-shrifted every time with some of these plans. Thank you very much.”

Philip Goodman, Chapel Hill resident: “I have been concerned about the size of Meadowmont since it was initially proposed. And I’m still concerned about the overall size of this project, and the fact that I don’t believe it conforms to the Comprehensive Plan of Chapel Hill and thus doesn’t meet the four findings of fact that are required for passage under the special use permit provisions of the development ordinance. Specifically, some of the things that it doesn’t meet: Limit the office and retail components to accommodate primarily the neighborhood needs.

“We spent a lot of time talking about what is ‘contiguous,’ and I suppose we could talk about what is ‘neighborhood.’ But, if you think that contiguous is what touches something, then neighborhood might be the same thing. If you want to consider that neighborhood is all of Durham, southwest Durham, and Chatham County and Orange County, then maybe we should consider contiguous as being those same areas as well. Certainly the size of this project does not conform to ‘primarily neighborhood needs,’ as I see it.

“In the entranceway guidelines that were adopted some of the statements that were made—and these were part of the comprehensive plan—include ‘preserve, restore, and enhance natural pastoral landscapes and vistas generally as depicted in the 1988 entrance plan, taking into account actual terrain.’ What I’ve got on the projector here is the entranceway and corridor study that is part of threat 1988 Comprehensive Plan, and it shows this particular area that is being developed. This is the area that is being considered for development.... And it describes what is supposed to happen with these meadows and vistas. I’ll read it for you. It says, ‘vista limits extend north and south to woods line. Keep vista and border of woods backdrop in tact.’

“That’s what it says in the Comprehensive Plan, and as far as I know that’s not been changed in the east entryway adoption that occurred in, I think it was 1995. But I couldn’t find my copy about that because I didn’t realize that this meeting was going on until I read it in the paper today in the Chapel Hill News. So I would like to ask if this particular meeting and discussion of this special use permit was noticed properly. According to the ordinance, it says it needs to be noticed at least twice no greater that 30 days, I believe, prior to this and not less than ten days prior to this in at least some sort of public area—that there was going to be some discussion of this particular special use permit. And I would also like to know why I didn’t receive any mailings about this, since I had requested in the past that I be included in all mailings in regards to Meadowmont development. And I did not receive any mailings at all about this.

“There were some comments about lack of concern about this perhaps. Maybe it’s a lack of notice to the public. And I would like to thank each and every one of the Council members here for encouraging me to come and speak tonight because I think every one of the Council members here -- Pat Evans, Edith Wiggins, Lee Pavão, Rosemary Waldorf, Joe Capowski, etc—each one of you should encourage the citizens to come before this Council and speak about their concerns.

“One final thing. I think there definitely are some specific things written in the Development Ordinance and the Comprehensive Plan that this particular project does not follow, and thus should not be approved. And, in fact, I don’t understand how it could be approved in Planning Board and Transportation Board and other places because it doesn’t conform to the Comprehensive Plan. This vista is supposed to be something that has afforded to the public a view of what this is all going to look like from 54. That nice hotel view that’s seen there—if that is what’s supposed to be seen—that certainly is not a meadow with a backdrop of woods to it, which is what the Comprehensive Plan says is what’s supposed to happen.

“And finally, there was some mention that there was going to be some new information provided to the Council today in regards to water quality, by Pat Davis. When would that be made available to the public so that we could consider those things and speak before the Council in regards to our concerns about what might be coming before the Council? Before you consider voting, consider that the public hasn’t had a chance to see that. And, as I said before, I have been concerned abut the Meadowmont project, yet I did not know that this meeting was occurring until I saw in the Chapel Hill News this morning in the headline. So, thank you.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Thank you, Mr. Goodman. We’ll get your questions answered in a letter to you from the staff about your questions about notice. I believe that Mr. Davis’ water quality data is right here, but we’ll be glad to mail it to you.... We always continue these public hearings. So the public hearing will still be open next time we meet on this subject, which will be several weeks from now. I’m not exactly sure when. Yes, you will have that chance.”

John Kent, of New Hope Audubon: “We just completed our eighth year of continuous water quality monitoring on New Hope Creek and I wanted to say a few things about water quality, specifically as it regards to stormwater run-off. [Presented slides.] I’d like to point out that Piedmont Crescent is at the top. As you can see, this is the Cape Fear Basin in the State and this is the top portion of it. We have a lot of urban development going on, and we are at the top of our watershed. So, there’s an old say, ‘the solution to pollution is dilution.’ Whether you believe that or not, we don’t have any dilution because we are feeding our wastewater into a very small watershed.

“And the particular one that we’re going into is Jordan Lake.… And this is called segment four of Jordan Lake. It’s a very shallow area and has inversion problems. They get a lot of algae. Because it’s shallow, it tends to be warmer than it would be if it were deeper. And this particular development before you tonight is draining into Morgan Creek, which is here. This segment four has a privatized sewage treatment plant here that typically fails. We do dissolved oxygen tests and we heard there was a sewage spill over there. It’s the only time I’ve gone and done a test, and it was absolutely zero. There’s nothing for the aquatic species to breathe, in terms of dissolved oxygen, under those conditions. Indeed there were dead fish.

“Then we have New Hope Creek here, and we have the Durham sewage treatment plant (which you can smell, with all due respect, when you get off of 40 coming from Raleigh and turn off at 54). Now, that one -- and again we’re at the top of the watershed and in low flow condition when the aquatic species are under stress (this would be in August, typically) -- the treated effluent from the plant is as much as 99% of the flow in the creek.

“The next one here is little creek, which goes on the north side of Meadowmont. Bolin and Booker come together and form Little Creek. And then Morgan is here, and of course that has the OWASA plant on it. And then this is Cane Creek, and that has Cole Park Plaza now, with package plants which typically are not well maintained at all. And we also have Governor’s with a package plant on it too. So I hope you will consider the water quality when you think about voting on this.

“This is New Hope Creek. We do six sites. This is above Calvander. Old 86. This is Turkey Farm. This is Erwin Road. These are the two best, better than Calvander because this is way up there and has low flow. But then you get in this area and you get urban run-off from Durham and water quality really goes down. You don’t get freshwater mussels. They are very sensitive to things like parking lot run-off. And then it just goes downhill from there. So, thank you very much.”

Mayor Waldorf: “That’s all the folks I have signed up to speak on this. Was there anyone else who wanted to speak on the hotel proposal? [Speaking to someone in the audience] If you want your comments to be part of the record you need to come make them at the microphone. Otherwise, I can say for you that I can recognize that there are about a dozen people here from Finley Forest who have concerns. If you want to raise your hands that’s fine. Okay. If anyone wants to speak, we’re glad to hear from you, but…. All right, are there questions from Council members?”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “I have a lot of questions. But so as not to dominate I’ll just ask the most important, general one first, and then give up the floor. I want to start by thanking you [indicates Tom Hogan] for your poetry when you said (and I hope I quote you right), ‘they go by at 45 to 50 miles an hour to see the beautiful meadow. We used to have a Council member, Al Rimer, who was an engineer. One of his favorite expressions was, ‘hey, it’s time for a reality check.’ Post-Meadowmont Raleigh Road is scheduled to have 57,000 cars per day on it, by Michael Horn’s own figures. Now that is 30% higher than the Chapel Hill-Durham Boulevard has today. So, while I appreciate your poetry and your creativity, I really don’t think they’re going to be too many people going by these beautiful meadows at 45 to 50 miles per hour.

“Now, turning to my questions, which are for Roger Waldon. Roger, could you put up two transparencies for me? The hotel site plan, and the master land use plan—or the portion of the master land use plan for the hotel. Now, you are recommending Resolution A, which is to approve the hotel. Is that correct?”

Mr. Waldon: “A limited recommendation.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “Yes. And that means that you are recommending that we make the finding that the special use permit conforms to the master land use plan.”

Mr. Waldon: “It’s consistent with it. Yes.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “Now, I would like to discuss that specific issue, and in three specific ways. I’m comparing this version [unfolds map in his hands] of the master use plan, which is the one the Council approved about 2-1/2 years ago, and I think it’s pretty much the same as the version on the lower right.”

Mr. Waldon: “I took that, put it on the Xerox machine, and then added some color to it.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “Great. So what you are saying is the site plan on the left is consistent with the master land use plan which you show on the lower right. Is that correct? [Mr. Waldon nods affirmative.] Okay, so let’s look specifically at the pond in the lower left of each drawing. We can certainly see that the pond has shrunk substantially.”

Mr. Waldon: “In surface area, yes.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “Secondly, let’s think about parking. My version of the master land use plan shows 146 parking spaces in its parking lot. The architect who did this drawing delineated the parking spaces, and I counted them, and there’s 146. What the applicant is now proposing is how many? 195?”

Mayor Waldorf: “195. 180 for guests and 15 for employees, I think.”

Mr. Waldon: “195. Yes.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “So, the master land use plan approved by the majority of the Council a couple of years ago approved 146 spaces and now the site plan is asking for 195?”

Mr. Waldon: “I’m not sure that I would agree with the characterization of what the Council did in 1996 was to approve a plan with 146 parking spaces.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Is it correct to say that the master land use plan approved maximum square footages and numbers of parking spaces were not addressed in detail?”

Mr. Waldon: “I don’t recall the number of parking spaces being specifically addressed at the master planning stage.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “You are correct, Roger. However, we also approved this map, and this map shows 146 parking spaces. My third issue has to do with the eastern-most parking lot. If you look on both the master land use plan and the site plan you’ll see the eastern-most parking lot. And we are to ignore the parking to the extreme right of the lower right-hand plan because that’s not part of this special use permit application. Right? [Mr. Waldon agreed.] Now you can see that in both of those cases those parking lots extend north toward highway 54 substantially further than the building line of the hotel. Is that correct? [Mr. Waldon agreed.] Yet, the land use plan that the Council approved in paragraph 14.I circle page 59 in the hotel packet says, ‘parking areas for buildings along the highway corridor shall be at or behind the building line.’”

Mr. Waldon: “Can you tell me again where you’re reading from?”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “On circle page 59 of the hotel application, which is the Meadowmont master land use plan text. It’s paragraph 14.I...Okay, with those three changes: the increase in parking, the reduction in pond size, the inconsistency with the location of parking, that is, parking closer to Highway 54 than, at least paragraph 14.I to my reading, make…. Would you please explain how you made the recommendation that this conforms to the master land use plan?”

Mr. Waldon: “Sure. I’ll give it a try. I don’t want to say ‘conform.’ I think ‘consistent with’ is the standard that we need to follow here. And let me speak first to the points that you raise. And this is what the Town Council is here for, is to make the determination. The question is before you about whether you think it is consistent or not. And if you, as a Council, think it isn’t, then you think it isn’t. Our recommendation to you is that we think you can find that it is consistent, and you’ve asked me why we’ve made that recommendation to you.

“And I start with looking at this sheet of paper. And as I look at this it appears to me that these two drawings are clearly consistent with each other, starting off with the extent of the Highway 54 buffer. Although the language doesn’t call for the special use permit to be identical with the master plan, there are some parts to it that are close to identical. The buffer along 54 being one. The location of the building. The size of the building, although what’s being proposed is just a little bit smaller than the master plan.

“The configuration of the ponds. The existing pond maintaining…. The fact that there is a pond here and there’s a pond here, I think, is part of what we looked at as we were making our recommendation about consistency. The location of the drive on 54 in the same place. The general configuration of the drive isle and the parking. As we looked at all of those elements they seemed the same to us, and were substantially the same, leading us to the conclusion that this is consistent with the master plan. Again, in making the recommendation, we were looking at the full body…. I see what you’re reading—and that condition on page 59—and I think that what we would look at as part of the information that informs us about the consistency question, is the language of the stipulations and the site plan that the Council approved. Looking at the full body together, our recommendation was that we believe that you could make a finding that this was consistent. Certainly, a reasonable person might come to a different conclusion.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “So this is one of those ‘on balance’ issues.”

Mr. Waldon: “Yes, sir. It is within the Council’s purview to determine the consistency.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “Rosemary, I have a lot more questions, but I think it’s someone else’s turn.”

Mayor Waldorf: “I want to suggest that since someone has asked Pat Davis to come here, and he’s given us a report on water quality, if…since he’s here now and he might like to at some point go home, it might be good to…. I don’t know if the Council wants to have a report from him or whether we just want to ask him any questions. I think I’d like him to. Would you mind, Pat, coming forward and just kind of summarizing the information that you brought up? I don’t know when this request was made, or who made it, but it’s probably real useful to us. So if you could come and comment on it that would be helpful.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “May I comment that I made the request of Pat Davis on the night of the OWASA water summit? That was about three weeks ago, and we received it tonight.”

Patrick Davis, Water Resources Director for Triangle J Council of Governments: “Council Member Capowski did request information regarding Jordan Lake water quality at the joint meeting held regarding Jordan Lake. As many of you who were there may recall, there was significant discussion about Jordan Lake water quality issues, the current water quality conditions in the lake, and prospects for future water quality conditions in the lake. I apologize for the delay in getting the information to you in response to Council Member Capowski’s request and then a subsequent inquiry from Council Member McClintock. However, I would like to report to you that the data that’s in this package today was just as of this afternoon provided by the Division of Water Quality. I’d just like to quickly review a couple of the attachments that are in here and then leave time for any questions that you may have.

“The first attachment is a map showing the Jordan Lake drainage basin. Jordan Lake is a watershed area of 1,690 square miles. There are 10 counties and about 20 municipalities that have planning and zoning control within that watershed. The 12 largest wastewater treatment facilities have permanent capacities totaling over 105-million gallons per day. Clearly, the challenges of protecting Jordan Lake water quality and managing the watershed are very complex, and challenging indeed.

“Unfortunately, under the current situation, we do not have any comprehensive watershed management plan or study that’s been developed for this watershed. As you know, we have watershed management plans for Cane Creek Reservoir, that is in a draft form, one that was just completed for University Lake, and there are watershed management plans for other major and significant water supply sources within our region. But we don’t have it for Jordan Lake, and of course we’re experiencing some rapid growth and development within the watershed.

“Attachment two is the three most recent years of water quality monitoring data that has been provided by the Division of Water Quality for Jordan Lake itself. The Division of Water Quality has 11 water quality monitoring stations in the lake. They’ve been monitoring fairly intensively during the summer months for each of the last three years for a host of parameters. Those parameters include nutrients, chlorophyll A, metals, solids, fecal coliform—a number of parameters and, as I said, that data is provided in the summary tables.

“Two quick observations that I would like to point out from this data. The first thing is that there have been exceedances of the chlorophyll A standard in segment 4 and segment one of Jordan Lake. Segment four, as Mr. Kent pointed out, is above the Mt. Carmel Church Road bridge that goes over the lake in the headwaters closest to Durham and Chapel Hill. Segment one is the Haw River arm of Jordan Lake. But the monitoring data does show some occasional exceedances of the state chlorophyll A standard, which is 40 micrograms per liter.

“It’s also interesting to note, however, that for the monitoring data that has been collected by the Division of Water Quality for the current calendar year that there have been no exceedences of that chlorophyll A standard. In this current calendar year. And that just points out that water quality conditions in the lake are highly variable. They’re influenced by the hydrologic events that occur, and also by a host of management practices that are in place at various times throughout the lake’s watershed. For instance, we’ve seen significant improvements in point source phosphorous removal measures, and to a certain extent some other nutrient control measures in place at the point source dischargers. And that has had some positive impact on water quality in Jordan Lake. At the same time, non-point source loads continue to be variable, and as additional growth and development occurs throughout the watershed there may be increased non point source loads that require a different set of management measures to be considered in future years.

“But the water quality monitoring data that’s been developed to date essentially indicates that water quality in Jordan Lake is generally good. There are some problems with nutrient enrichment and algoblooms, and no one will dispute that. The Cape Fear Basin-wide water quality management plan that the state had developed and issued back in 1995-96 points out that in the Cape Fear River Basin a number of man-made reservoirs in that basin are similar with respect to nutrient enrichment as Jordan Lake is. Out of 36 man made reservoirs that were analyzed in that basin-wide management plan, 16 of those reservoirs had the same support threatened condition rating as Jordan Lake did. And a number of those had that support threatened rating because of nutrient enrichment and algoblooms and excessive plant growth within the lakes themselves.

“So it’s incredibly complex, both hydordynamically and from a water quality standpoint, and a recent action that Triangle J Council of Governments Board of Delegates took was to endorse an initiative to form a partnership to undertake a watershed management plan and study of Jordan Lake. And the Board of Delegates, in taking that action, hopes that development of such a management plan could provide some guiding development principles for the watershed and would provide us with some assessment tools for looking at future water quality impacts associated with alternate development under approved land use plans and zoning ordinances that are in place throughout the watershed. I’ll stop there and would be happy to answer any questions that you have. Again, I apologize for the delay in getting the information to you. I hope it’s useful and will be willing to help out in whatever way I can.”

Council Member McClintock: “Thanks very much for bringing it, Pat. When do you expect that the study will be complete that the Department of Water Quality is performing?”

Mr. Davis: “They’ve been real unclear about the time table. The staff member who’s primarily responsible for putting together the preliminary draft had indicated that that had been completed some time ago and it’s been undergoing their internal technical review, peer review, for quite some time. The folks in the environmental assessment support branch in the Division of Water Quality indicated as recently as today that they did not have a specific time frame for finishing up that particular water quality study that’s been underway. It’s my understanding that that study takes a look at the most recent monitoring data—the three years—plus historical data, and looks at changes in management practices from a point source standpoint, and looks at changes in water quality conditions in the lake, and tries to correlate those….”

Council Member McClintock: “I’d appreciate it if you’d let us know when a draft is out so that we can see it. Thanks.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “Pat, I would just like to ask you to attend the follow-up public hearing on this matter so we, and any of the public who wish to study this document, could then ask you intelligent questions.”

Mr. Davis: “Okay. Just for those out there in the audience. My telephone number is 558-9392, in the event that they would like to go ahead and give me a call.”

Council Member Foy: “Pat, in attachment number three, it says ‘Jordan Lake is support threatened overall and the lake has been classified as eutrophic.’ What does that mean?”

Mr. Davis: “I, in preparing this in very short order this afternoon, did not get into any technical explanation on some of those more technical terms. Jordan Lake is essentially approved for a number of different uses. It’s classified as being useable as a drinking water supply source, which currently is used by Cary, Apex, Chatham County. It’s also classified as suitable for aquatic habitat protection and propagation. And it’s also classified as being suitable for primary recreation, a water-body contact type activity—swimming, boating, those things.

“So there’s a number of uses that it’s intended to support. The fact that it is support threatened means that, based on existing water quality conditions, it’s supporting its intended uses fully. But water quality data that is available indicates that there are some potential threats to the lake’s continued ability to support those intended uses. And the State’s basin-wide water quality management plan, and the assessment support document, has indicated that those threats are primarily from nutrient enrichment and algoblooms that eventually can impair aquatic habitat type uses, and recreation uses, and the aesthetic uses associated with that.

“From a drinking water quality standpoint, I can point out that the data that we received from the Division of Water Quality today, and all of the data that we’ve received previously, has indicated that things such as synthetic organic compounds, volatile organics, pesticides and heavy metals—that those concentrations are well below the established drinking water standards. At this point in time, those parameters do not appear to be significant cause for concern. Again, I always state when I make that comment, that those are existing conditions and that what the long term outlook for Jordan Lake is somewhat questionable, as we see additional urbanization, as we see increased point source discharges, changes in agricultural activities. Again, that’s the purpose for the watershed management study that’s been proposed.”

Council Member Foy: “But what does the word ‘eutrophic’ mean?”

Mr. Davis: “The word ‘eutrophic’ has to do with the level of nutrient enrichment, or biological productivity, of the water body. If a water body is eutrophic, or even worse hypereutrophic, it means that there is substantial nutrient enrichment that contributes to things like algoblooms and excessive plant growth with things like hybrid or other noxious plants that can impair recreational habitat type uses in the water. And when you have excessive plant growth, when that plant matter dies off and the microorganisms that decompose that plant material can then use up dissolved oxygen in the water column, that then just compounds the problem. And…. Real complex interrelationships there.”

Mayor Waldorf: “It also says on the previous page that University Lake is eutrophic.”

Mr. Davis: “University Lake is eutrophic. It is also rated as support threatened just like Jordan Lake is, based on current water quality information. I don’t…. In terms of how this relates to Meadowmont or any other site development proposal, the tools aren’t available currently to look at individual development proposals and the potential for incremental change in water quality in Jordan Lake itself. In fact, the tools aren’t really available to look at things on a grander scale, such as the cumulative impacts of Chapel Hill’s comprehensive land use plan and zoning ordinances and build-out under certain levels, and the long term implications for Jordan Lake water quality. Those tools are not there. And again, that’s one reason why we would like to have the regional partnership for Jordan Lake watershed management plan and study.

“So that those tools do become available and we can look at cumulative impacts. I would say that any particular individual project—whether it be Estoria, that was approved down in Chatham County, or Westbank or Meadowmont or Southern Village—all of which are in the Jordan Lake drainage basin—the individual impacts of those projects would be extremely negligible because if you look at the total loading that might occur from those versus the total loading that occurs from within the watershed the question is long term, cumulative impact based on a whole series of major decisions. And so there are some significant needs there from a modeling standpoint.”

Council Member Brown: “Pat, a number of pages—certainly a considerable amount of this report—is made up of just numbers, figures, charts, which have no meaning to me. Maybe they would have considerable meaning to professionals in this particular profession. But we are all lay people, I believe, as far as this is concerned. I have two questions. First of all, can you give us some information that is written in lay terms that we can understand so that we don’t have to ask questions like we’ve just had? And then I have another question too about a specific page. Is there anything anywhere that’s clearly stated, so that we can all understand it, and that has data that we can all understand?”

Mr. Davis: “The one thing that stood out in looking at this three years of water quality monitoring data was that the statements that were included in the basin-wide management plan (of which there are excerpts taken directly right out of that as attachment three), that that data essentially reconfirmed the previous conclusions about Jordan Lake being subjected to nutrient enrichment and algoblooms. And I can provide some hopefully easier to understand information about those implications, the meaning of those things. The statements about concentrations of metals, synthetic organics, volatile organics, pesticides—things that are of concern from a health risk from drinking water—all the monitoring that’s been done to date essentially shows concentrations of those substances at such low levels that currently it is not of a major concern. And how to state that clearer? We’ll look at that.”

Council Member Brown: “Some of the data. Not just that, but some of the data…. In terms that we can understand. The other question I had is related to page 29, which is a chart showing a lot of —I guess all of —the TSI scores, whatever they are, but it looks ominous because a lot of these long black lines, which say threatened on them…. And I would like to have some more explanation of what that means. Certainly, Jordan Lake has a very long black line and ‘threatened’ is there.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Is that something that you can explain quickly now, or do you need to…? The TSI scores?”

Mr. Davis: “Yes. The NC TSI scores are the North Carolina trophics index scores. And what they do is they look at all the nutrient concentrations—total nitrogen, total phosphorous, things like the clarity of the water, how deep can you look into it, and then also chlorophyll A levels, a measure of biological productivity in a lake. They combine all of those factors into an index— it’s a complex mathematical formula—and come up with the NC TSI value. The higher the value the more eutrophic the water body is. And then there’s different categories. If you’re within a certain numerical range then that means you fall within a certain level of eutrophication —ligatrophic, mesatrophic, eutrophic, hypereutrophic.”

“I can provide you with information about that. It does get pretty technical. There aren’t a whole lot of ways to simplify that. Once you’re into euthrophic conditions, though, that’s when you begin to experience problems with dissolved oxygen declines, algoblooms. And then the decay of those can result in the release of toxins that are toxic to fish and other things. So I’ll work with the staff to the best that we can and try to provide supplemental information on that.”

Council Member McClintock: “Just so that we can go back and maybe end on the big picture note here. What this report says from Cape Fear—and I don’t think that you’ve disagreed with this—is that one large area of concern is non point source pollution. And I would hope that the study that you have started would come out with some real concrete recommendations to all the governments that are affected that can have a positive effect, through their land use policies, on Jordan Lake. Because the bottom line is it’s the amount of pavement we’re putting down that’s causing this kind of pollution. And we’re going to be drinking Jordan Lake. That’s why we’re all concerned. So, thank you for doing that.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Yes. We appreciate it. Thank you for coming.... Let’s get back to Council questions.”

Council Member Foy: “I wanted to ask about that driveway that comes in and is proposed to go through Barbee Chapel Road. Right? And so, does that have sidewalks on it?”

Mr. Waldon: “As proposed, it does not have sidewalks on it. It’s an internal drive. It does not have sidewalks.”

Council Member Foy: “That’s the point, though. It does go through from Friday Lane to Barbee Chapel Road. “

Mr. Waldon: [Indicating master plan map.] “You’re correct. This internal drive connects at Friday Center Lane and also connects at Barbee Chapel Road. Then, coming up to the site plan for a moment, the sidewalk that’s proposed, the pedestrian way, is along 54, with a paved walk down to the site from there. But the plan as it is drawn does not include a sidewalk along the internal drive. You’re correct.”

Council Member Foy: “I think it should. In reading the master land use plan, it said ‘sidewalks will be installed on at least one side of each street which is open to the general public, regardless of whether the street is publicly maintained.’ That does seem to me to be a street, you know, eventually, as this area builds out.”

Mayor Waldorf: “So you’re saying that if the proposed commercial segment is actually developed, then there’s a real possible chance of pedestrian traffic through….”

Council Member Foy: “And it also seems that something’s going on UNC’s property and there’s an office complex over there.”

Mayor Waldorf: “I think that’s a reasonable suggestion.”

Council Member Foy: “I wanted to know also what are the options on this encumbering more land? I don’t quite understand. On page 18, stipulation 2B, it says that land area doesn’t provide sufficient land. You know, more land is going to have to be encumbered, but it’s not going to be contiguous. What is that all about?”

Mr. Waldon: “Let me go back to the master plan for a moment. The master plan approval approved a maximum level of development and looked at the big picture, total land area, total amount of area of the various types—commercial and office, residential, and so on. And then the individual pieces of it…. The expectation was from the outset that it wouldn’t be all developed at once, it would be developed in pieces. So that each piece then needs to show compliance with regulations. This is very similar to….

“Actually, it’s an identical situation to what we had with the apartments. In that case, in order to have sufficient land area to support the floor area that…the apartments’ land that was not part of the apartment site needed to be encumbered permanently so as to set the land area—also within the Meadowmont development—land area that is encumbered by that special use permit is sufficient to meet the floor/area ratio for that special use permit. So what will happen on the apartments is that some of the other land, possibly across Meadowmont Lane (don’t know exactly at which piece) will be encumbered as land that is there in supporting the apartment special use permit. And same case here. Some land in Meadowmont would need to be encumbered, need to be surveyed and specifically identified and then encumbered as part of this special use permit.”

Council Member Foy: “Will it be land that is buildable land? Or is it land that is, within the context of the master land use plan, land that is supposed to be left open—like, for instance, the meadows or the parks or something.”

Mr. Waldon: “Oh, I would expect it to be land that is left open, because the land—. For example, the land that is under a building here [indicating on map] needs to be as part of that building there. But again, looking at the development as a whole, the numbers for the whole development work out and then each individual piece also needs to be sure that land area enough is encumbered so that it can stand alone. One of the themes underlying this approach is the assumption that something might happen in the future—either a change in development plans, change in something that a subsequent piece of the Meadowmont development might not get built. So that any one piece needs to…. This kind of language insures that there is land sufficient so that the floor area matches the amount of land area that is encumbered.”

Council Member Foy: “But it could be across the street in one of the parks?”

Mr. Waldon: “Yes. It could be. For example, I would expect that what might happen here—and I don’t know for sure yet—would be that it would be on the north side of 54, somewhere in that open space, that a piece of that land would be permanently attached to the hotel special use permit.”

Council Member Foy: “Okay. I see. And then, on the bicycle path in this portion of…south of 54. Where is that? What is the bicycle plan there?”

Mr. Waldon: “Well, the master plan intention was to have a bicycle route along NC 54 for part of the…for this stretch of 54 on the north side of the road. And then there is to be a tunnel underneath 54, and then the formal bike path is to continue on the south side. There needs to be good, adequate walkways on both sides of 54. So let me go back to the master plan discussion for just a moment. Again, the main bike path, which was to be a 10-foot paved bike path to be on this side of the road, and then tunnel under 54, and then continue on the south side. For this portion [indicating on map] west of the tunnel to be a paved walkway (although it wouldn’t be 10 feet wide), but there’s to be a paved walkway along here. As you get to this part of the site and begin running into that steep bank that’s alongside of the road there, we want to try and keep the sidewalk as narrow as we can—as close to the road as we can there—so as to minimize the extent to which that bank has to be cut back.

“So there will be this formal, paved bikeway along here, but it’s clearly desirable to have as much continuation along the south side as possible. One of the things that we have been encouraging the applicant to do here, for example, is to speak with the officials at the University of North Carolina about the possibility of getting additional right-of-way, or easement, along this portion that the applicant doesn’t own to possibly continue that bike path along here. And then we want to—as you’ve heard from advisory boards tonight also—would like to see a paved combination pedestrian way/bikeway along the north side of that hotel site as well.”

Council Member Foy: “Hmm. Well, I don’t know, my impression was that the bike system was supposed to be more integrated, not just a bike path from here to there. And, in reading the master land use plan it says that ‘bike and pedestrian access shall be provided throughout the site, including the portion of the site south of NC 54. An overall conceptual pedestrian bike access and circulation plan for the entire site shall be submitted, and then detailed plans will be submitted with each special use permit.’ And, in looking at this special use permit, I just think it’s kind of sketchy, what’s planned with bicycles ….”

Mr. Waldon: “Well, there is an overall pedestrian and bicycle plan that we can provide. And then again with respect to this site, we’ve been talking this evening about a sidewalk along the full extent of Friday Center Drive, a sidewalk along NC 54. I mentioned earlier there is this walkway from the 54 sidewalk into this facility. So that there would be possibilities for a pedestrian getting to this site, either along here or along here.”

Council Member Foy: “All right. Let’s say, for example, you either have your bicycle or you take the bus on Friday Lane. How do you get to the hotel?”

Mr. Waldon: “Well, there would be a walkway that would get you to the hotel from Friday Center Lane.”

Council Member Foy: “That’s a walkway right there? Okay. And that’s where the bus stop would logically be? [Mr. Waldon nodded.] And then, how do you get to the office complexes? Go back to 54?”

Mr. Waldon: “Let me put the master plan back on. This piece here is owned by the University so that’s not a part of any of these Meadowmont applications. There are a couple of opportunities for somebody to walk from this location to get to the offices. Most likely, and really the most directly, would be to walk along 54. When we get to the offices (the next public hearing tonight), you will see walkways from NC 54 to these office buildings, the other possible access.

“Again, when we get to the offices, you’ll hear me talking about a vehicular connection from these parking areas to Friday Center Drive. There’re two ways to do that. One is to come across here [indicated University property]. Another way would be to come down the Friday Center Drive service road and then come across. So that might be another opportunity there for passage either by automobile or by foot. But in terms of what Meadowmont applications call for and can provide between the hotel and the offices, it would be along 54.”

Council Member Brown: “I’d like to go back to the encumbering land when the special use permits were approved for the project, and I believe that’s almost the total project on the north side of 54.”

Mr. Waldon: “Well, let’s see. We had special use permits for the apartments, the Village Center, the swim/tennis club, the park/school site, and infrastructure which covered a bulk of this area here.”

Council Member Brown: “In the total area there, there were a number of open spaces that were designated—the meadows were designated, the 10-acre park was designated, there were other open space areas that were designated. Are they called ‘already encumbered’ lands?”

Mr. Waldon: “They’re part of those special use permits.”

Council Member Brown: “What I want to know is when land is being chosen to encumber to allow this to comply with a special use permit—which I believe a citizen actually addressed in his comments—then could any of those already designated lands which I just mentioned (the 70 acre park, the open space areas, the meadowlands, any of those already designated lands)—could they be used to satisfy the special use permit?”

Mr. Waldon: “I think I understand the question, and I think the way I’d like to answer is in a thoughtful, reflective way. And so I would appreciate an opportunity to put together some thoughts on how that is done, and bring that back to you when this comes back to you.”

Council Member Brown: “I will look forward to hearing about that because I think it’s real important because that area is already designated as a particular area, and so I should think that that would have an answer now. But if it doesn’t, then I am willing to wait. But I’m disappointed that there’s not an answer now.”

Council Member Evans: “Ken, I’m glad you stayed this long because—could you get up and tell me why you have asked for a bus stop on 54? Because I often watch the maneuvering of the bus by 54 and Glen Lennox to try and cut across all the lanes in order to make a left hand turn. So, if what is being proposed is a bus route that has a bus stop there by the hotel then it’s going to have to take a left on Barbee Chapel Road Extension. In other words, I think we need to use some logic in where we ask for bus stops and where we think people are going to walk.

“And it seems to me that the closest place for a person from the hotel to get the bus—not only the closest but the safest—is on Friday Lane. And then, if the bus wants to go out and take a right, it can. But to have a bus stop over there that then they’ll have to stop at…. And then, they’re going to have to take a left because they’re almost at the County line, where I don’t think we’re going to run too far into Durham County (we might if they want it and pay us). But it seems to me that what’s logical is it will take a left on Barbee Chapel Road Extension. And do we want to encourage hotel residents to catch the bus there?”

Mr. Robinson: “As I recall, the bus stop is down along Friday Lane, and we have the park/ride lot there. So the bus now goes up and down Friday Lane so it can stop here and pick up hotel passengers. The stop on 54 is farther down here at the office area. That’s where we recommended the other pull-off.”

Council Member Evans: “Because I…. Roger, am I wrong that that little pedestrian walk that you had leading straight up from the hotel was to the bus stop? Well, anyway, I went to this conference on walkable communities and one of the things is you want to put in walks where people will walk. And people tend to walk the shortest distance between x and y. So you need to think about where people are going to walk, and then kind of direct them to a safe way—not the longest way. So, I was a little distressed when I heard Roger say, ‘well, people are going to walk out to 54 to walk down to the office buildings.’ I don’t think they are. I think they’re going to cross right across Friday Drive. And they’re going to take the shortest distance. And they’re going to walk from the back, not from…. Now, maybe if they’re trying to get to the underground pedestrian connection, they might walk out to 54 and walk down.”

Mr. Waldon: “I’ve got two things to suggest here. First is, what the recommendation of approval called for is a bus stop of 54 east of Friday Center Lane.”

Council Member Evans: “That was my question. Why? And what’s the bus route going to be? And will that mean that the bus then will have to move across three lanes of traffic to make a left hand turn onto Barbee Chapel Road Extension?”

Mr. Waldon: “Don’t know yet what the bus route would be. It’s very likely that there will be bus service up and down 54. Either our buses, Triangle Transit Authority, whatever. So we expect there to be transit up and down 54, and as Mr. Robinson points out, currently there’re several routes that turn down Friday Center Lane but there might be some that continue on. We don’t know yet what the routing would be, but we believe that with the activity that there would be here that there’d be a need for a bus stop there and a bus stop here along 54. And then going the other way as well. Going the other way the bus stop would be over there on the north side of 54.”

Council Member Evans: “Well, then, could you tell me…. Since the bus stop is going to be shortly after that intersection with Meadowmont and Friday Lane, why the pedestrian connection comes up into the middle of that space. Where are the pedestrians going to be going, and why would we want to direct them out there to walk along the highway?”

Mr. Waldon: “So, if I understand your question, you’re suggesting that this pedestrian walkway from NC 54 to the site might be better a little further to the west.”

Council Member Evans: “Yes, or maybe run parallel, and take them to whatever commercial facility is going to be located next door, where sometimes hotel residents like to walk to see what…. To pick up their…. If it’s going to be a convenience store, or whatever it’s going to be. But why take people…? I don’t understand what’s going to attract pedestrians out there. I also think that the hotel could maybe put in more pedestrian walkways, certainly between the back (although there is no back side) on the 54 side of the hotel. So that if people want to walk around the hotel, they’ll be able to walk around the hotel rather than only being on the side. And so, those are my pedestrian questions. I have some water ones, but….”

Mr. Waldon: “Before I finish answering tonight, may I show something that I found in my file? Council Member Foy was asking about the pedestrian and bikeway plan that was required as part of the master plan. What the master plan called for is that this pedestrian/bikeway plan be submitted as part of the first special use permit application. So there was one that was prepared and that was submitted as part of the first wave of special use permit applications that came in. And I found it in the file there, so I just thought I’d show it. What this calls for, as I mentioned, is the…. These dots are the bike lane that would come there, come across, and then over. The white would continue as sidewalk, pedestrian, only there and then across there. And the thinking was at that point that then again there needed to be some connection between the office development and this site somehow, some kind of bike access from the offices to the site.”

Council Member Foy: “Yeah. And I don’t think that’s in the plan. Where is that? In the road?”

Mr. Waldon: “Well, in the hotel plan it is the drive, the internal drive. There is no separate, dedicated bike lane from Friday Center Lane into the site. There is the pedestrian way, and there is the internal service drive.”

Council Member Foy: “I think we need to examine that.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “There’s no proposed bike lane paralleling Highway 54 on the south side of 54 in front of the hotel?”

Mr. Waldon: “That was in this concept plan. But as we are looking at special use permits we are calling for construction of that. So this was the concept plan. But with the special use permit we are getting and the applicant is getting more aggressive about bikeway.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “I would like to express an opinion as an avid bicyclist. If I were to ride my bicycle to Durham, as I do every now and then, the last road in the world I’d want to ride it on is the Chapel Hill/Durham Boulevard. I wouldn’t even want to ride it six feet away from the Chapel Hill/Durham Boulevard because not only would I have to tolerate the traffic, I’d have to tolerate the auto emissions. And if I didn’t get killed, I might get sick. Now, this road is going to be 30% heavier in traffic than the Chapel Hill/Durham Boulevard is now. Consequently, it is my belief, as some relatively healthy person, that the last thing I want to do is ride on Highway 54, or right near Highway 54.

“And I, at least, would like to ask the staff, Ralph or Roger, to prepare the necessary amendment to this special use permit—and to any other special use permit that we still can control—to put some serious distance between the Highway 54 bike paths and the Highway 54 road. And I mean 50 feet, not six feet. And there is one other justification for that. We recently received a study of bicycle accidents within Chapel Hill. And the accidents occur within intersections. The accidents occur where there are off-road bike paths. It is where those off road bike paths cross roads that accidents occur. So the last thing we would want to do, I would think, would be to build a near-to-Highway 54-intersection across Friday Center Lane or across Barbee Chapel Road or Barbee Chapel Road Extension or the Hilltop collector or any of those 54 crossroads near 54. It would seem to me that we’d want to get these bike paths as far from 54 as physically possible.”

Council Member Evans: “But that’s not what the bikers recommended.”

Mr. Waldon: “Well, it’s clear to me as this discussion is going forward that when this comes back we as staff need to do a better job of fully describing how the pedestrian and bike paths fit together, not just for this site but along the 54 corridor. And we’ll do that.”

Council Member Wiggins: “My concerns have to do with the buffer between the hotel property and Finley Forest. Heating and air conditioning noise, and lighting of parking lots. I wanted to ask Bruce Ballentine: In your presentation, you mentioned that there had been some sessions, or work, with the Finley Forest neighbors about this plan. And you talked about adjustments that were made on the plan based on those meetings. And tonight we have heard neighbors talk about a desire for a wider buffer.

“And I was wondering how open you were to meeting with the neighbors some more, and trying to get some more buffer between the hotel property and Finley Forest. The way they stated it, it did seem a little imbalanced. That they got 20 feet and the road got over 100 feet. So I was just
wondering. But my concern, when Joe asked for 50 feet to construct the…. Well, you could put the bicycle path in there without…. Okay, so is there a way to give the neighborhood that’s already in existence some more buffer?”

Mr. Ballantine: “What I was referring to is that the master plan calls for a minimum of a 20-foot buffer, which is what the ordinance requires. And that’s shown right here. That’s this space. And you can see that this entry drive, this access drive, which begins at this intersection with Friday Center Drive, parallels the property line just off the buffer. But it can’t continue. It then has to swing around the RCD. That’s the way our plan looked originally, and, with the revised plan, we still avoid the RCD. We have to begin our intersection at this point, but we did gain some additional separation here. You can see, there’s the buffer—that’s the 20 feet—and that’s how much it’s been moved over.”

Council Member Wiggins: “So, how much is that total?”

Mr. Ballantine: “Oh, at that location, if that’s 20, then that’s probably another 30 or something. So that probably is 50 feet right there. A couple of thoughts in response to your concern. One is: If you look where the parking line is (it’s this location), certainly in this area there’s quite a bit of set-back because of that RCD and because of the pond. There’s quite a bit of buffer here. It’s quite generous. Here, it’s not to the road, but it is to the parking lot and to the building. All of this area around the pond is not permanent water.

“It would be landscaped and would be green space. And so, we’ve got trees on the Finley Forest side. We’ve got some trees on our side. We’ve got street trees that you can see on Linda’s plan that are proposed on both sides. And then there’s landscaping around the pond. There could be some sort of a hedgerow type buffer to screen the parking lot, which we’d see through the trees. So actually, if you look at where the parking lot is, it’s quite far away from where the residences are. And if you looked at something…. Could you do more? I really think….”

Council Member Wiggins: “Well, you’ve answered my question because if you look at where the building is then there is considerable distance between Finley Forest and the building. Also, on the new site plan, the pond looks larger. One pond…. They look like they kind of changed sizes. Why is it larger?”

Mr. Ballantine: “The master plan process is wonderful.. When it works right, and we all understand what’s involved in that, it’s a good starting place to jump off into the SUP process, instead of starting from scratch. But the drawback to the master plan process is that these become construction drawings in some of our minds. This becomes what we physically want to see—exactly what we want to see—when it’s built in several years. In fact, in any design process, the master plan phase is this much [indicates a minute amount with fingers] of the total the process. It’s a little bit in the beginning to see if you want to go to the schematic phase to see if you want to go to design development to construction drawings to permits to construction.

“If you think about what land design did—they did a wonderful job on this master plan. But when you think about how many man hours went into that site [indicating hotel site], compared to this 435 acres, I daresay it was a few man-days. Maybe only one man-day, with a planner and some graphic tools preparing this plan. They had a general guide to go by of so many square feet of building. They did take topography into account. They did a wonderful job, and we’ve shown how similar they are. But they were not producing construction drawings. They were not producing SUP plans.

“This is an illustrative plan. It’s a master plan. It’s schematic. It’s very sketchy. And what I couldn’t help but think about as I was listening to the comments tonight is…. One, does the parking appear a little smaller (only 146 spaces, if you physically got down and could somehow count all those little marks there). But, in fact, what the planner did is he put a building form down and…. We don’t even know the height of that building, but the note says 140,000 square feet and it says 200 rooms. And that’s a ballpark. And what he’s done is he’s shown about where he wants the pond, about where the existing RCD pond is, about where the drive should be, about where the roads are, about where the meadow is. That is what a designer would take away from this process that you went through in 1996.”

Council Member Wiggins: “Okay, so just simply stated, what we have now is more approximate to what the actual size…. I mean, I’m just really concerned about an answer to that.”

Mr. Ballantine: “This was not engineered.”

Council Member Wiggins: “I guess, Bruce, all I’m trying to find out is: Is that pond larger to accommodate for the other pond being smaller? But, what I think I hear you saying is: Now that it’s time to get down to actual drawing, the new drawing is more illustrative of the size of the pond. I just want a quick, simple answer.”

Mr. Ballantine: “It’s not a drawing. This was a picture. There’s already been engineering analysis on this pond. This was a 10-year design storm basin. This was fictitious. It was just location. That’s where the pond is to go. We don’t know if it’s too big. We don’t know if it’s too small. This is a 10-year basin. The other thing is, we’ve drawn ours as the permanent pool. I don’t know what that draftsman was thinking. He might have been thinking when a flood came through it grows to that size. This one will also grow bigger as it fills up with water. That’s the intent of it. We have engineered this; this is not engineered.”

Council Member Wiggins: “Could you speak to the concern that the neighbors also have about the lighting in the parking lot and the noise from the heating and air conditioning?”

Mr. Ballantine: “We took notes on that. Those were good comments. The lighting is a zoning permit compliance phase issue, and we have total sympathy for the direction of those lights, the intensity of those lights, where they shine. I agree completely. We ought to internalize that lighting and not externalize it. We will do that in the next phase of this project. As far as the noise, I would just say that we would take the same degree of care.”

Council Member Wiggins: “Will you have some kind of definitive comments on that the next time we meet?”

Mr. Ballentine: “Yes.”

Council Member McClintock: “Okay, I have a few questions in a couple of different areas. I think maybe what might be useful on the pedestrian/biking question that’s already come up…. We’ve seen a concept plan for this. What would be useful then would be to see a specific plan on how all this specifically is going to link together. And I think it’s really important that it make sense. I thought Pat’s comments were good about people walking along 54. Who’s going to want to walk along 54? I mean, there’s this beautiful green area. Why not walk through that.

“I would like to ask the staff and the Town Council to consider asking the developer to move the road. I think that having the entrance of this road right smack down by the property line very close to an existing family neighborhood is too much. It means that every car that turns into this road at night—they’re going to see their car lights. Fifty feet is just a hop, skip and a jump across the room. It’s not much. Why not move the road north of the pond? Why not have the road go in right back of the hotel? Why not? I mean, the hotel looks over a nice vista already. Why not? You go in the Friday Center, the road comes in right by the Friday Center. Perhaps there’s some engineering here that I don’t appreciate, but I think that some extra steps ought to be taken to protect this neighborhood from having to have a road right smack next to them. And I think it will be a road. Because it won’t just be the entranceway to the hotel. It will be an entranceway to other things. And the noise and light pollution definitely need to be addressed. And I’d like to have the staff come up with some ideas on how that can be addressed.

“On the transportation, I just did some rough calculations today, using that Trip Generation Manual, and figuring out—taking the number of hotel rooms and making some assumptions about those—and figuring out what an average weekly, daily, number of trips from that hotel would be. And, basically, my figures came out to be double what the applicant has. Basically, my figures came out to be more towards the range of 1,890 including employees, maybe 1,566 for guests. For the office…. And I’ll just go ahead and extend my comments to that public hearing.

“Again, my figures were quite a bit higher than the applicant’s. Now, I’m not a trained transportation person. But these were just assumptions from the trip generation book, so therefore, what I would like to propose is that we ask a State official of the DOT to review the figures that have been supplied by the applicant and to just look at them and say ‘are these reasonable?’ And I would like to ask our Town staff to also look at these figures, using the trip generation book, and tell us what the assumptions are that you all are making in your conclusions.

“And I think it also would be helpful, while we’re asking the DOT for help here, to also ask them to give us the latest on what they think is going to happen to the intersection of 54 and 15/501. We had a letter about that just after we voted on Meadowmont last time, you all recall, and there were some good statements about what was going to happen at the intersections. But everything changes, and the amount of traffic here we’re going to be dealing with is only going up.

“Now I’d just like to turn for a moment to the stormwater drainage and the water quality issues. I thought that was a really interesting schematic drawing that Roger had up at the beginning, and remember that the drainage comes down kind of in a V, kind of to the center left of the property, and then goes straight down. And the lowest area appears to be down around where the drainage ponds are, which makes sense. I’m wondering if that’s drainage from across the street. I mean, I’m imagining that this area is lower than across the street, but I want to have a more complete idea about that, and I’ll come in and spend some time with the engineers and ask them some questions about that.

“I spent a little bit of time on the phone today, and I talked with a couple of individuals in the Water Quality section. Jay Soliber, with Water Quality, Greg Thorpe, who’s head of planning for Water Quality, and Brantley Bennet, who’s a stormwater management person. And I’ve got some really useful information that I want to pass on to the Council and the staff which I think could really be very profitably applied to this application. First of all, Greg Thorpe said that the two determinants that make the most difference to water quality are the amount of pavement and the amount of buffers. So the amount of buffers that we provide here is really important. And it’s the amount of—not to 54—but it’s the amount of buffers from the stormwater run-off to whatever stream it’s going to go into. And it’s the amount of pavement. The more pavement you have, the worse water quality. It’s in direct proportion.

“The kind of help I got (I actually got quite excited about it) is that there are a number of tools out there now that the State Water Quality section has available to the public. And they’ve produced a book. And they’re going to send it to me, and I’ll send it to you, Mr. Manager. They’ve actually produced two. What these books deal with are tools on how to deal with high density development in watershed areas. And we’re not talking just ponds here. I mean, things have gone way beyond ponds. Some of the things they talked about were bioretention areas. That is, you take your lowest point—on this property, for example, I can see it being very well-utilized here—and you excavate an area, and you build a filtering system underground. And then, over that you do massive plantings. And then your water is filtered down into that area. So you have a beautiful aesthetic area, but, basically, the water’s getting filtered. And then from there it flows out into a grassy swell and it’s basically…. The pollutants have been removed.

“Another device that they recommend are sand filters adjacent to parking lots. That is, on the down side of a parking lot as all the rain comes down and washes the metals and the bad things off parking lots (which do pollute drinking water), there’s a sand filter…. There’s a grate. The water goes into this. It’s hardly noticeable. It goes into a sand filter, comes out, and lands on a grassy swell and goes away to finally join Jordan Lake, I assume.

“Also, there are different ways to build BMPs other than just the statement on the standards. One of the ways is to build an actual shelf out into a pond so that you can have a lot of certain kinds of vegetation growing there. And, what that does is it removes nutrients from the water, which is exactly the problem that Pat Davis was talking about earlier, the eutrification problem that we’re having in all our waterways in North Carolina, which are really giving us some serious problems which I won’t get into now. So those are just a couple of the ideas that I got talking to these individuals, and they are sending me this documentation. And I said, ‘well, where are these being used?’ And they said, ‘well, we’ve built a couple in Cary.’ And Garner’s looking into it, and Winston-Salem has some.

“So, I think the decision has already been made to put high density development in this area. This is not a decision I agreed with because it is a watershed area. But the watershed—the high density option—does allow 50% impervious surface, which is a lot. And if we’re going to do it, then we really ought to do it right. And we ought to make sure that any water that comes off that paved surface is treated properly and goes into our future drinking water supply. So I just want to pass that information on to you and as soon as I get it in the mail I’ll do that.”

Council Member Bateman: “Roger. As you’re coming to the podium, I will say thank you for talking to me on the phone about this business of encumbering property or land area that’s not next to the land where we’re going to build the building. I find that a little strange myself. But tell me, what would be the size of the hotel that could be built if the additional land were encumbered?”

Mr. Waldon: “I don’t know it off the top of my head. It’s a knowable number, but I don’t know it off the top of my head. I’ll calculate it for you.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Has everybody had a chance to ask at least more than one question? Has anybody asked about parking? Julie asked…. I’m not sure I followed what you were asking for, so it may be the same thing. But it occurred to me looking at 180 parking spaces for 180 rooms, that from the standpoint of a person who wants to provide parking, that’s very optimal. I mean, I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels and motels, and they’re usually not all full all of the time. So I wonder if there’s another way of calculating the need there that looks at vacancy rates…. I know what the ordinance says, but I wonder if there’s another way of calculating the need there that looks at occupancy rates and the probability that rooms will be occupied by two people who arrive in one car, or maybe even three people who arrive in one car. So I’d like the number of parking spaces to be reanalyzed.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “May I ask a process question? It’s 10:35-ish. We’re obviously not going to get to the second public hearing.”

Council Member Evans: “Well, we should because they’re all here.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “Well, I’m sorry, Pat, but I still have a number of questions to ask, and I’m sure others do. I, for one, think we should set another date and continue these two public hearings. We’ve been at it since seven o’clock non-stop. And I will move to adjourn as soon as I hear any comment about a future date.”

Mayor Waldorf: “I’ll tell you what. Let’s not move to adjourn. I’d like to hear from the rest of the Council on this. I think it would be lovely if we quit our meetings by 10:30, but we haven’t been doing that in a long time. So I’d like to hear what the rest of the Council thinks about this and would just offer my opinion that we ought to at least be able to conclude this one item. I wouldn’t feel the need to continue both of them. Surely, we’re near the end of the hotel item. What do y’all want to do. Do you want to try and do the other one tonight, or set another date for the other one?

Council Member Brown: “How many questions do you have, Joe?”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: [displayed several sheets of paper] “That many.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Remaining just for the hotel?”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “Yeah.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Okay.”

Council Member Foy: “Maybe we should set a time, and just end at eleven or something.”

Council Member Evans: “I think that’s a good suggestion for…”

Mayor Waldorf: “What does everybody else want to do?”

Council Member Foy: “I move that we set a time for eleven and we adjorn at eleven to another time.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Alright, Let’s…let’s recess at eleven.”

Council Member Foy: “I’m sorry, we recess.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Recess at eleven. But let’s try to finish the first public hearing item by then unless someone has a need to…I mean, it’s going to be continued anyway, Joe.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “I understand.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Right? Alright. Other questions on the first item. Pat, then Joe, then Joyce.”

Council Member Evans: “This is for Bruce, I guess. The stipulation that went with the master plan was the issue of looking into thought of using reclaimed water. Hotels are high users of water, and we’ve now got reclaimed water that’s going to be piped for irrigation of the new golf course at Finley, which is really quite close to the hotel. Was there any discussion of the idea of when the hotel is being constructed …? I have been told that it’s not that expensive to put in a dual water line for the ‘flush and gush’ part to use reclaimed water. Was there any discussion of this? And, if there wasn’t, would you discuss it?”

Mr. Ballentine: “There hasn’t been yet. But we will.”

Council Member Evans: “Thank you. See how quick that was?”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “Several things. Roger, any time I see a tall building going up near a major highway now I think about antennae. Okay? It’ll be five minutes after this is built before the telecom companies are going to say, ‘can I put an antenna on your roof?’ How are we…. You don’t have to answer this now, but please prepare something for us the next time that deals with what will the regulatory mechanism be and how can we prevent the hotel being extended vertically by too many feet as a consequence of electronic communications.

“Roger, it is true that the height of the hotel will be lower than the height of the tree canopy?”

Mr. Waldon: “Yes. That’s the plan.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “Will you prepare an amendment to that if it already isn’t? I would also like to ask you to prepare an SUP amendment that pertains to floodlighting of the building, basically disallowing it, and dealing with signage in terms of advertising of the building from Highway 54. What I don’t want to create is a hotel…. I think it’s the Sheraton down at Page Road off of I-40. Okay?

“I’m going to turn to the Finley Forest Condominium issue. One of the findings that we have to make is that the adjacent property values have to be maintained or enhanced. In order for me to visualize right now with the data we’ve received what it would be like to stand at the back of one of those Finley Forest Condominiums, look through this buffer—I don’t know how thick it is, I don’t know how tall it is—and look at this hotel, and listen to the hotel—listen to its cars, listen to its HVAC system. Is there some way that you can provide us the homeowner’s view of this hotel? Now, I’m asking you instead of an architect because architectural drawings are notorious for not showing the realistic environment—such as heating, ventilating, air conditioning, utility lines, and automobiles, and realistic amounts of asphalt. So I would like to ask you to provide us information of what the Finley Forest people would see.”

Mr. Horton: “Council Member, we have limited capacity to do that. My advice would be that you also ask the applicant to provide it and meet the test of realism that you propose.”

Council Member McClintock: “I have another suggestion, Joe. Maybe Roger could come up with just, y’know, the heating/air-conditioning unit will be approximately as big as X over at the School of Social Work and it will be as far from the residences as where Joyce lives, or whatever. I mean, it isn’t that hard to come up with a comparison.”

Mr. Horton: “Well, without information that only the applicant has, it would be impossible for us to make a comparison. We would need to work with them to do anything, and I would recommend that you ask the applicant to provide the same information and meet the test for realism that the Council Member has proposed. We’ll do the best that we can, but you’d also be well served to get it from them, I think.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “And I would add to that list of problem children things that pertain to trash and garbage collection. The dumpster issue. Things like that. Roger, we’re going through a major widening of Highway 86 on the north side of town and there have been some serious problems with it. What additional safeguards will we have in this project, so that the widening of Highway 54 (also a State road) won’t have the same problems that the widening of 86 has. All of the various types of problems that…. Abandonment for six months of the project, siltation of the downstream lakes, etc….

“Without the construction of the small commercial center on the east side of the hotel there’s only one entrance to the hotel grounds for a vehicle. Is that correct? Isn’t that dangerous, from a public safety standpoint.”

Mr. Horton: “I don’t believe so because the terrain would not prohibit us from having other access.”

Council Member Foy: “Joe, what question did you ask about solid waste management?”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “My specific question was: How will the solid waste facilities that the hotel must provide…to what degree will they impact Finley Forest? Give us a picture of that. I haven’t the foggiest idea.”

Mayor Waldorf: “In other words, if the Town’s going to insist on picking it up at one in the morning it will make a lot of racket.”

Council Member Foy: “Right. And where will it be, and….”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “Roger, it’s not clear to me in your planning staff report, which starts on page nine, when you say that water then flows southward to the open space play area for the Finley Forest Condominiums. Can you provide us [with] a better map, and some estimate as to whether there will be an impact on that play area and to what degree?

“I’d like to put my two cents into this encumbrance issue, the offsite encumbrances. On circle page 61 of our master land use plan, in paragraph number 16 (which is page nine of the naked plan), it says ‘each application shall demonstrate compliance with the Development Ordinance, including the intensity regulations of Article 13, and relevant special use permit requirements.’ Given that, I would like you to provide us a written justification—Ralph or you, either one—why this is permissible, which at least to my naive reading seems to contradict this paragraph of the master land use plan. Furthermore, I would like to ask you—because I’m starting to get
confused about all these encumbrances because their location is vague—would you provide us the entire list of Meadowmont project encumbrances as it exists today? I am concerned that there’s going to be some double or triple counting of the same properties.”

Council Member Foy: “Would it be possible to designate the encumbrance prior to issuing the special use permit?”

Mr. Waldon: “It could. I think that you could ask for that. When we did it previously there was the condition that it had to be done on the Meadowmont site as part of the zoning and plans permit. But if the Council would like that specification before it approves a special use permit you could certainly do that.”

Council Member Foy: “Well, I wonder then if you could make a recommendation as to what might be encumbered.”

Mr. Horton: “We would ask the applicant to put forward a candidate for it. And then we could comment on it.”

Council Member Brown: “I’d like to know what discretion the Council has on this because if some of the land that we’ve already designated—such as the meadows, the 70-acre park, the open space—what sort of discretion the Council has in actually designating or accepting, or not accepting, whatever is requested. I think that’s important.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “ I want to turn to parking. First, from the standpoint of visibility from Highway 54. On page 11 of the packet, you state as part of the staff report that, in the third line under parking, ‘64 of the spaces will be located behind the building, not visible from the highway, and 131 would be located in two parking lots to the east of the building.’ An omission follows. No comment on the visibility from Highway 54. Would you comment on that please, especially in light of paragraph 14.H on circle page 59 of the master land use plan, which requires that all parking be screened from visibility from Highway 54.

“Let’s keep on going with parking for a minute. On quantity of parking: We’re asking for a transportation management plan, which is supposed to minimize the use of the single occupancy automobile at this hotel, and rather use transit, ride-sharing, bicycling, etc.... Well, I’ve been to the Hotel Europa a bunch of times, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody use a bicycle to get there. This is a hotel. This is not a home. Now, I think, personally, that the only serious transportation management plan that will do any good at all at reducing single-occupancy vehicles is, quite frankly, reduce the automobile parking. The rest is nonsense, quite frankly. I didn’t say cut it to zero. I would like you to describe to us what our powers would be in reducing parking in order to achieve less single occupancy vehicle use at this hotel.”

Mayor Waldorf: “May I suggest a factor that ought to be taken into consideration there, other than what I suggested earlier, Roger, about average occupancies and all that? It would seem to me that in terms of staff parking and what I believe hotels tend to pay their staffs, probably most of the people who are going to work at this hotel, if it’s ever built, probably won’t be able to afford to live in Chapel Hill. So I think we need to be real serious about how many of those folks actually might live on the bus line, which might need to drive in from areas that are farther away.”

Council Member Foy: “I have a parking related question. I know that these are two different proposals, the office building and the hotel. There’s a lot of deck parking in the office facility, and there’s no decked parking here. So I’m wondering why not. I’d just like to know why. Because it seems to me that that would be a possible way to gain more parking.”

Mayor Waldorf: “So that’s a question we need to get the applicant to answer, or consider.”

Council Member Foy: “Or consider. And I’d like to know, are there any meeting rooms or banquet facilities, or that kind of usage proposed? I didn’t see anything like that.” [Several Council members responded, “four meeting rooms,” with Mayor Waldorf adding, “four meeting rooms and a restaurant.”] Oh, okay.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “Roger, would you clarify for us when it comes back why the traffic impact letter satisfies the requirement of the master land use plan which says on circle page 54, ‘with the submittal of each special use permit application for development proposing buildings the developer shall provide an updated and detailed traffic impact analysis for the entire 435-acre site.’ By my reading of that we should be getting a book at every SUP, not just a letter.”

Mr. Horton: “The Council directed us not to include all of the attachments. We’ll be glad to send them out if you desire.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “I don’t necessarily need the attachments. But we want to know the impact on the entire 435-acre site, not just on Friday Center Drive and its intersection with Highway 54 of this hotel. That’s what the master land use plan calls for.”

Mr. Horton: “I understand.”

Mayor Waldorf: “We’ve got five more minutes. And after that any questions can be submitted in writing, after the hearing is recessed, and would become part of the record.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “I’d like to ask the applicant to list the nearest three hotels they have built so we can go look at them. Not now, but communicate that.... Pertaining to the burial of utility lines, is there a specific reason why we didn’t simplify this thing to simply say…. Actually, let me suggest that you write that paragraph 26 of the special use permit to simply say, ‘new utility lines and all existing power distribution lines along the NC 54 frontage be located underground.’ That’s on page 25 of the packet, it’s number 26.”

Council Member Foy: “Is that what’s going to be accomplished, is that everything is ultimately going to be buried, even in front of UNC’s property?”

Mr. Horton: “I believe that the power company would end up installing a full underground segment in front of the office buildings, the UNC property, and the hotel property. If the Council approves both of the special use permits that have been requested and includes that provision in it. And the developers accept the provisions and proceed with the projects.”

Mayor Waldorf: “That’s a very clear answer. Joyce had a question she wanted to ask the applicant.”

Council Member Brown: “Yes, and particularly the developer of the hotel. And it has to do with noise and HVAC systems. I think that we haven’t gotten any information from you to know exactly what kind of HVAC system you are building. I know that one project we had of rather a large church facility came to us and we asked the question about noise, and we were told that there would be no noise whatsoever because the HVAC system was going to be underground.

“Have you all considered anything of that sort. Would you consider anything of that sort so that there wouldn’t be any noise so that we wouldn’t have to even worry about your having to comply with our Noise Ordinance. If there are other systems that would be completely silent that you all are considering, or would consider…. I just heard a presentation this week about geothermal energy that’s being used…”

Mr. Hogan: “The most important thing to know to answer that question. HVAC. There is no large, central air-conditioning plant. There are no chillers. There’s no outdoor cooling tower. There’s no major facility like that that would generate a large amount of noise. What we have is a number of individual, residential size units, that may be in the quantity of about twelve, that are packaged. They’re separate condensing units that sit on the ground, that condition the public areas. So the concerns of a large massive HVAC plant is nonexistent.”

Council Member Brown: “Those systems can be very noisy. Because I know from neighborhood concerns and being on the Noise Committee where we are looking at that very issue right now, that they can be noisy. I don’t know if you are aware that we have a noise ordinance and we are working on actually changing that Noise Ordinance. And this is a question for the staff. If we do bring something to the Council, and the Noise Ordinance is changed, then would new developments that are not actually built but are in the process—would they be required to develop their systems to comply with the new decibel. If we have…. And I don’t know what we’ll recommend. But if we do recommend a change then would that requirement apply to a development like this?”

Mr. Horton: “The normal process would be to apply the ordinances that exist at the time that we are getting ready to issue a zoning compliance permit. The attorney may offer a different view on this particular issue. I don’t know.”

Council Member Brown: “So that will be some time to come, if this passes.”

Mr. Horton: “Yes ma’am.”

Mr. Karpinos: “I can’t possibly answer that question until I see the Noise Ordinance proposals.”

Council Member Brown: “The general rule then is at the time of the zoning compliance permit.”

Mr. Karpinos: “I think I’ve said what my opinion is.”

Council Member Brown: “I was just asking for verification if that’s what the Manager said.”

Mr. Horton: “Yes ma’am.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “To the applicant. About the heating, ventilating, and air conditioning issue. Regardless of whether you use one big unit, or a bunch of little ones, you’re still heating and cooling 100,000 square feet of interior space in North Carolina. Now, would you please describe to us in writing for when we reconvene this meeting how you plan to make that quiet, especially quiet toward the south.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Well, it’s 11:00. Is there a motion to recess? We need to recess this hearing on the hotel proposal to a date certain. The staff had put on here November 9th. In view of the number of questions that have been asked is that still feasible, or does it need to be pushed out a little farther into the future?”

Mr. Horton: “Let me understand. Is the Council finished at least with this stage of listing questions for the staff to answer, or is the purpose of the next session to continue what you’ve been doing tonight? If the purpose of the next session is to continue what you’ve been doing tonight, I would recommend that you pick a meeting time later in October or early in November. If the purpose would be to receive a staff report on the questions that have been raised, then I would recommend you recess the hearing to January.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Does the Council need to have another session to ask questions on the hotel proposal, or can we follow our usual procedures.”

Council Member McClintock: “Well, I’ve got a couple, but….”

Mayor Waldorf: “It’s fine to put questions in writing and give them to the staff to bring back. They come back as part of the record.”

Council Member Foy: “My question is: We told the citizens tonight that they could comment later. And so are we talking about closing the public hearing?”

Mayor Waldorf: “No. This…. For some reason a very unusual situation has been created here which is—have we finished our first round of questions on the hotel, and can we recess that hearing and refer it to the staff for a follow-up report to continue the public hearing later? Or is there a need for us to come back again and have yet more questions on the hotel before we refer all our questions for a follow-up report?”

Council Member McClintock: “I’m happy to put mine in writing. But I do want them addressed at some point. So the question is: Can I do that if we recess the hearing?”

Mayor Waldorf: “Sure.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “It would seem to me, Rosemary, we have one issue that we really have never addressed before and it’s only in its embryonic stage. And that has to do with water quality run-off. Having just received the Pat Davis document, I can’t begin to fathom its effects. Depending on how that plays out, we might want to have another public hearing, question…. Remember, no citizens have had any time to see that document either.”

Mayor Waldorf: “We’re going to have another meeting regardless. I think the question before us tonight is: Do we want a staff report to come back the next time we are together to discuss…to hear about the hotel application? That’s the way we usually do it. Or not? I don’t understand why we…”

Council Member McClintock: “That would be okay with me. Oftentimes, that brings up other things we haven’t thought about. Or it would provide another time to go into the water quality question more thoroughly, Joe. So I don’t have any objection to that.”

Mayor pro tem Capowski: “Well, the water quality question for the office complex is going to be very much like that for the hotel.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Yeah.… It’d be the same thing. Well, back to the original question. Is the Council then comfortable to recess this hearing to some date certain, as we usually do?”

Council Member Foy: “Yes.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Okay, alright.”

Mr. Horton: “I would recommend January 11^th.”

Council Member Brown: “I would like to have this recessed with the full understanding that it could be recessed to another hearing, or another time, depending on what kind of responses we get to these, and what kind of new evidence is presented by the citizens in January, if we do it then. What I’m trying to do is at least anticipate that this is not going to go through just one more recess and then we’ll close the public hearing because if there’s considerable new information…with, as far as the report that we received tonight on Jordan Lake and so that we might need to have it even longer. That’s what I want to have a clear understanding.

Mayor Waldorf: “That’s always an option open to the Council.”

Council Member Brown: “I understand that, Rosemary, but our usual process is not quite that. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t.”

Council Member McClintock: “Could I clarify something then? So we’re going to take up the office buildings when….”

Mayor Waldorf: “We don’t know yet. We haven’t gotten that far.”

Council Member McClintock: “Okay. One thing that would be useful…. I don’t know whether recessing it closes that door or not. But it would be nice…. As far as the citizens are concerned, the folks that have certain concerns may have them about both projects. So if we recess one is that going to be limiting then for folks that want to come in and say something?”

Mr. Horton: “My recommendation, Council Member, I think would serve that same end. It’s a very reasonable point that you’re making. I would recommend that you pick a date, either late October or early November, to continue the next hearing, because I think many of the issues would come up again and it would be wise for the Council to have, as much as possible, an opportunity for both of them to come back at about the same time so that you can move them ahead with the information being available to you at about the same time.”

Mayor Waldorf: “So, I think that’s good advice. It’s fairly obvious. Keeping that in mind, could we go ahead and have a motion to recess this hearing on the hotel proposal until January the 11th.”

Council Member McClintock: “But wait a minute. That doesn’t meet the point that we just brought up.”

Mr. Horton: “I think for the next one you have to have a separate motion. I believe the attorney will recommend that you open the hearing for this one solely for the purpose of picking a time to recess the hearing. Just so that adequate notice has been provided.”

Mayor Waldorf: “I believe we have an understanding at the table that on January 11th we will endeavor to come back and continue the hearing on the hotel proposal and the office building proposal. In the meantime, we’re going to need to set a date to have the hearing much sooner than January 11th on the office building proposal, which we did not get to tonight.”

Council Member McClintock: “And if citizens want to comment on the other one then they could.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Well sure…. It’s recessing public hearings. It’s not anything else.”

Council Member Foy: “I’ll make that motion.”

Mr. Karpinos: “The hotel would go to the eleventh of January.”

Council Member McClintock: “That’s exactly my point. I don’t think it’s being addressed. It’s that citizens are going to come out for the office…. You know, when folks come they don’t have all these special uses necessarily broken apart. And I just want to make sure that if there’s additional testimony to be given they can do it on both projects at once if they desire. That’s my only concern. Do you see what I’m saying?”

Mayor Waldorf: “So you want to recess the hotel hearing to…. Let’s say we pick November 1st as the date to have the office hearing. You want to recess the hotel hearing to that day?

Council Member McClintock: “ Fine. I think that would do.”

Mayor Waldorf: “Well, what that does, though, is it requires the applicants to come.”

Council Member Foy: “Why? [Several Council members said ‘so they can respond.’] But they don’t have to respond. They can respond on January 11th. I mean they just don’t have to come. They don’t have to come.”

Mayor Waldorf: “There’s a motion on the floor to recess it to January 11th, which I don’t know if it got seconded.”

COUNCIL MEMBER FOY MOVED, SECONDED BY COUNCIL MEMBER PAVÃO, TO RECESS THE MEETING ON THE SPECIAL USE PERMIT FOR THE MEADOWMONT HILTON GARDEN INN AND TO RECONVENE THE MEETING ON JANUARY 11, 1999. THE MOTION WAS ADOPTED 8-1, WITH COUNCIL MEMBER McCLINTOCK VOTING AGAINST.

Mayor Waldorf: “Okay, so that public hearing is recessed to January 11th. Now, Mr. Attorney, would you like us to briefly open the public hearing on the office park to recess it to a future date?”

Mr. Karpinos: “To a date certain. Yes ma’am.”

Mayor Waldorf: “All right. This public hearing is open, and does the Manager have any suggestions about a date?”

Mr. Horton: “The dates that have been mentioned in your calendar earlier (and I recognize that individual Council Members may have a problem with any one of these dates) would be Monday, November 2nd. That date is currently listed as available for a work session—or, was at one time listed as available for a work session. [Council Member McClintock remarked that it had been taken off as a work session.] I’ve corrected myself. It was taken off, yes ma’am. But it is still an open date. The third of November is a general election day. That’s a Tuesday evening, but I suppose that would be available. The fourth would be a Wednesday evening in that same week. Moving to the next week, Tuesday the 10th or Wednesday the 11^th would be available…. The most consistent time, considering your policies, would be on November the 4th, I believe, which is a Wednesday evening, or November the 11th, which is also a Wednesday evening.”

Mayor Waldorf: “We tend to met on…if we need an extra meeting, we tend to do it on Wednesday.”

Mr. Horton: “It would not be on the first Monday, which you decide you didn’t want to meet on.”

COUNCIL MEMBER PAVÃO MOVED, SECONDED BY COUNCIL MEMBER EVANS, TO RECESS THE HEARING ON THE SPECIAL USE PERMIT FOR THE MEADOWMONT OFFICE PARK AND TO RECONVENE ON WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1998. THE MOTION WAS ADOPTED 9-0.

The meeting was adjourned at 11:05 PM.

The minutes of October 21, 1998 were adopted on the 11^th day of January, 1999.

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Joyce A. Smith, CMC

Town Clerk