At its meeting at Town Hall, the council reviewed a proposed inclusionary-zoning ordinance aimed at expanding the range of housing stock and making more of it available to low- and moderate-income families.

For more than a decade, the council has required developers seeking zoning changes or special-use permits to make 15 percent of a project’s housing units affordable. The current system relies mainly on the Community Home Trust to manage the affordable units created under the town’s current system.

Critics of the system in place say it doesn’t produce enough multi-bedroom units and does not offer enough flexibility in accepting payments in lieu to cover the rising maintenance costs the trust faces as the affordable-housing stock grows.

Affordable housing has been a long-running concern in Chapel Hill as rising housing costs have pushed lower- and moderate-income families — including teachers, police and service and trade workers — farther from town.

In an overview of the new ordinance and the need for it, former town planning director Roger Waldon, a consultant to the town on the rules, emphasized the need for a more comprehensive way to achieve affordable-housing goals.

“A large category of the workforce here in Chapel Hill can’t afford to live here,” Waldon said, “and it has been a community goal to maintain a diverse community and to have people who work here be able to live in the community.”

Waldon pointed to a study conducted last year by Spencer Cowan of UNC’s Center for Urban and Regional Studies that looked at the housing needs for trade and service workers and others generated by new residential construction.

“The conclusion of that report and many others is that the market is not providing housing for the full range of people who work in Chapel Hill and would like to live here,” Walden said.

The new rules, he said, would be more thoroughly spelled out for developers and give them more incentive to build to a greater density if more affordable units are included. That would allow them to recoup some of the costs of adding affordable units.

“Developers are able to get some significant density bonuses to help offset those costs,” Waldon said.

Although many states use similar rules, only two jurisdictions in North Carolina, Davidson and Manteo, have inclusionary zoning. In Chapel Hill, it is not a new concept. The council formed an Inclusionary Zoning Task Force, led by council member Sally Greene, in September 2005.

One significant change in the new rules would be to provide units that are affordable to people making 65 percent of the median income of Chapel Hill. The current system sets the affordability threshold at 80 percent of the median income, which this year is $57,050 for a family of four.

Greene and others have argued that in order to include the types of households the town wants to assist, the threshold has to be lowered.

At Monday’s meeting, Greene said one problem left to be solved is how to guarantee that the lower-priced units don’t end up as one-bedroom units, as they often do now.

Council member Jim Ward said he also wanted to see the types of units expanded, saying too many units are smaller, one-bedroom ones. The council, he said, needs greater flexibility.

“Maybe it should be 15 percent of bedrooms,” Ward said, “or 15 percent of bathrooms or 15 percent of value. Fifteen percent of units is not getting us where we need to go.”

Ward said he was in general support of the plan, but wanted to make sure the units would be kept affordable in the long run.

Greene said that the town likely would have to do more oversight of the units to make sure that deed restrictions on pricing would be adhered to with each sale.

The new rules also try to maintain affordability over time through design, such as providing for wider doorways and other features that would allow people to retain their homes longer.

Richard Duncan of NC State’s Center for Universal Design, who encouraged the task force to look at design issues, said lower-income earners can have trouble staying in the same home because of the cost of upfitting it as it grows older.

The council is expected to take up the ordinance again as early as next month and will continue to take public comment on the plan, which is on the town’s website at townofchapelhill.org/index.aspx?page=1298

In other action Monday night, the council reviewed a special-use permit for Murray Hill, a 15-unit development on a 1-acre lot on Meadowmont Lane near the Meadowmont Wellness Center. The development includes two affordable-housing units and a $21,250 payment in lieu.

The council also reviewed a concept plan by the university foundation for a 90,000-square-foot expansion of the Kenan-Flagler School of Business Rizzo Conference Center on Dubose Lane at Meadowmont. The expansion would add space for the school’s executive-development, continuing-education program, along with 80 additional guest rooms and 168 parking places.

In its meeting at Town Hall, the board heard from engineers working with Chapel Hill and Carrboro on the expanded greenway project. Construction is under way for expansion of the greenway from Merritt’s Pasture west, paralleling N.C. 54.

New phases under consideration aim to connect three schools — Frank Porter Graham Elementary, Culbreth Middle and Carrboro High — and more than a dozen neighborhoods. The trail would be paved and Americans with Disabilities Act compliant, with natural surface spurs.

In his presentation to the town, engineer Dan Jewell with Durham-based Coulter Jewell Thames said topography concerns would make a direct connection to Carrboro High difficult, and an alternate route is being explored. Steep slopes also will make work from the elementary school west more difficult.

Also on Tuesday night, the board opted to extend the town’s contract for banking services with Bank of America for six months in order to give the town staff and the board more time to review the impact of a proposed switch to a more local bank.

In other action, the board:

• received an update on transportation planning for Carolina North;

• adopted a resolution in support of the effort to stop coal use at the university’s Cameron Avenue co-generation plant;

• approved a modification for the Claremont subdivision to build three single-family homes on a site intended for six townhome units;

• approved a rezoning request on 500 N. Greensboro St. to allow for its use by Balance Studios;

• approved a sidewalk construction project in conjunction with the N.C. Department of Transportation on Elm Street;

• appointed Mayor Mark Chilton to the greenways commission and reduced the size of the board from 15 to 12 members. The slots eliminated include two of the four slots designated for representatives of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system and three alternate members, all of which are unfilled. The move changes the quorum on the committee from eight to six members.

Commission chair George Daniel objected on procedural grounds. “We’re not restructuring the process to suit the concerns of one member,” he said. Commission member Dave Otto pointed out that the concerns Benedict wanted to bring up already had been published in the newspaper.

But Alderman Randee Haven-O’Donnell, board liaison to the commission, emphasized that the parts of the greenways proposal that included creekside paving had been taken off the table by the board of alderman and that it was important that Benedict be allowed to share her concerns. Others supported that view, and Benedict was allowed to read her response.

Benedict’s concerns, which are also those of the advocacy group Save Bolin Creek, include the report’s lack of consideration for alternative path routing, especially given Carolina North’s commitment to building bike lanes to connect the Carolina North campus with central campus. She said the report underestimates the disturbance to wildlife, vegetation and water quality that would result from the heavy machinery required for pavement construction. And she questioned whether as a community Carrboro should ask for an exception from the Jordan Lake Rules, which prohibit disturbance within 30 feet of a stream bank, in order to build a paved bike path.

Commission member Robert Kirchner motioned to include Benedict’s written response in the minutes and table the Greenways discussion until the next meeting. — Staff Reports

Obesity may limit the body’s ability to develop immunity to influenza viruses, particularly secondary infections, by inhibiting the immune system’s ability to “remember” how it fought off previous similar bouts of illness, according to new research from UNC.

The results, published in the March 15 issue of The Journal of Immunology, support recent suggestions by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that obesity is as much a risk factor for H1N1 pandemic strains of flu as age (very young and very old) and compromised immunity.

Nutrition researchers in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health have shown that obese mice are not able to develop protective influenza-specific memory T cells. These cells are generated by the body during an initial influenza infection. They help protect against a second infection by targeting internal proteins common among most strains of influenza viruses. Leaner mice were able to develop the infection-fighting T cells and ward off a second bout of influenza.

“Our work suggests that obese people should be considered at high risk for infection,” said Erik Karlsson, doctoral candidate in nutrition and lead author of the study.

The researchers infected lean and obese mice with a mild influenza virus. The lean mice had been fed a low-fat diet and obese mice had been fed a high-fat diet. When the mice recovered from the first bout of flu, they were infected a second time, with a larger dose of a more lethal influenza strain.

“We lost none of the lean mice, but 25 percent of obese mice died,” Karlsson said.

This research builds on a study published in The Journal of Nutrition in 2007. Melinda Beck, UNC professor of nutrition, is the senior author of both studies.

“In the first study, we compared the response of obese and lean mice to a primary influenza infection,” Beck said. “We found that obese mice had a significantly higher mortality rate than lean mice. In fact, 42 percent of obese mice died, while only 5.5 percent of lean mice died.”

During flu seasons, health-care practitioners often see obese patients struggling more with influenza viruses than leaner patients. Some researchers and doctors have speculated that excess adipose tissue, or fat, constricts lung volume, or that obesity causes chronic inflammation, which influences the immune response.

However, Beck and her colleagues hypothesize that the illness’ increased severity may be due to lower memory T cell defenses in obese patients.

“In a healthy individual, memory T cells would be produced during the initial influenza infection,” she said. “Those cells help protect the individual from a second infection. The response is different from a vaccine, which produces antibodies against a specific strain. The memory T cells target internal proteins common to all strains of the virus. But if the body can’t produce these T cells during a primary infection, then the individual has decreased protection from a second infection if the antibody response is not targeted towards the infecting strain.”

The new study, by Karlsson, Beck and Patricia Sheridan, UNC research assistant professor of nutrition, shows strong evidence that obesity restricts memory T cell function.

“This kind of novel research could influence public health by changing our views of what the risks factors of obesity are,” Karlsson said. “The risks are potentially much more complicated than we’ve thought.”

The next step in Beck’s research on obesity effects on influenza is to examine vaccination. In collaboration with researchers in the UNC School of Medicine, Beck’s laboratory is running a large National Institutes of Health-sponsored human clinical trial to test the efficacy of influenza vaccination in obese adults

The county will continue to offer free vaccinations at the following times and locations:

Hillsborough – 300 W. Tryon St.
Tuesdays from 2 to 6 p.m. and Wednesdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Chapel Hill – 2501 Homestead Road
Thursdays from 2 to 6 p.m. and Fridays from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m.

The company is seeking local government partners to assist in the installation of a faster network infrastructure. The local partnership is one of several in North Carolina and dozens nationwide vying for the projects.

At a public forum at Chapel Hill Town Hall Monday, residents encouraged the towns and UNC to push for the project, saying it could attract new businesses and improve productivity and competitiveness.

Chip and Emma Hoppin in their backyard. Photo by Ava Barlow

A site along the south side of Rosemary Street now occupied by three small buildings is the third site the Wesley Foundation has proposed as home to a residence hall it has been trying to locate in downtown Chapel Hill for several years.

A previous proposal near the foundation’s center on Pittsboro Street was met with opposition by its neighbors and town council members and a proposal to swap the Pittsboro Street center for university-owned property on East Franklin Street was turned down by UNC officials.

An initial concept plan for Wesley House, reviewed by the town council in November, calls for a four-story, 79,770-square-foot building with about 5,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor. Initial parking plans were for 35 spaces under the building.

According to Nick Didow, Wesley Foundation board member and point person for the project, the new site has great potential for being an integral part of downtown.

“We see this as having tremendously positive influence on downtown,” Didow said Tuesday. In addition to adding more residents to the heart of downtown, he said, the foundation plans to include community engagement and service programs for the students in residence.

“I would like those that oppose this project to consider that this may be one of the best things to happen to downtown in a very long time,” said Didow, a professor with UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and a former school board chair.

Didow said that the foundation has received some criticism, but that nearby businesses are for the most part happy to see additional residents downtown.

But for Chip Hoppin and his immediate neighbors along Short Street, the prospect of 140 students added to the neighborhood and a four-story building going up just over the fence to his backyard means the beginning of the end of a dream. His wife, Kim Stein, has lived in the house since 1993. After they got married and had a daughter, they decided to stay put and enjoy life downtown.

“We weren’t planning on moving for another 25 years,” Hoppin said. While Hoppin said he empathizes with the Wesley Foundation’s desire to find a place for its students and programs, he said the project will so drastically alter the landscape that his family and others will be effectively forced out.

“It’s a square peg in a round hole,” he said. “It’s a really nice square peg, but it still doesn’t fit with this neighborhood.”

One major concern is the plan to have limited parking onsite and satellite parking elsewhere.

At a recent meeting with neighbors, Hoppin said that an updated plan was for 29 underground spaces and the rest at a satellite lot in Chatham County and a shuttle service in between. “That just doesn’t seem practical,” he said, especially considering the neighborhood’s historical parking woes.

The foundation has looked at sites in Chatham County for a retreat center, Didow said, adding that the number of spaces onsite and other parking concerns have not been settled and he expects the town to have very specific stipulations on parking for the project.
Estelle Mabry, a longtime resident on Pritchard Avenue, doesn’t think the parking plan is realistic.

“They’re pie-in-the-sky on parking,” she said.

Mabry said traffic patterns and lack of parking are likely to further congest the area. She also is worried that the project isn’t a good fit or a good move for the town.

“One concern I have is that it will take property off the tax rolls,” she said. “We can’t afford to have any more property come off the tax rolls.”