Public skips meeting as Chapel Hill nears vote on tallest building on Franklin Street

Chapel Hill could be on the verge of adding a second building for entrepreneurs and researchers after the Town Council’s positive reception to a downtown proposal Wednesday night.

It was a markedly different meeting than earlier this year when people against the Chapel Hill Life Sciences Building at 306 W. Franklin St. because it would displace a local restaurant packed Town Hall.

The Purple Bowl has since secured a new West Franklin Street location, owners Taylor and Paula Gilland told the council in an email Monday.

Only two people spoke at Wednesday’s public hearing, including an adjacent landowner concerned about access to his building and Aaron Nelson, president of the Chamber for a Greater Chapel Hill-Carrboro, who urged the council to approve the wet lab building.

Boston-based developer Longfellow Real Estate Partners had revised the plan to be slightly taller and over 60,000 square feet bigger than its previous incarnation. At 165 feet tall, it would be the tallest building downtown, but because it sits at the lowest point on Franklin Street, the town’s urban designer said it would be visually equivalent to the 140 West Franklin building near the top of the hill.

The plan now calls for 381,424 square feet of office, laboratory and retail space, plus about 100 underground parking spaces. At least 20 feet at the top of the building would contain the mechanical penthouse that serves the wet labs.

It would rely primarily on off-site parking, including leased space in the town’s parking decks.

Financial benefits, skyline changes

A consultant for the developer estimated the construction could have a $180 million impact on the town’s economy, adding about 1,500 jobs. The building, once occupied, could bring 1,180 jobs and roughly $379 million a year to the town, plus $52 million in additional economic impact to Orange County, the consultant reported.

Annual property tax revenues for the county, town and local schools could top $1.7 million, compared with about $152,000 in tax revenues now, the report said. Roughly 80% of the building would provide office, research and development space, with about 5% for amenities and retail, or about three to four businesses, officials said.

They will continue working with the town’s urban designer and the Community Design Commission on the design for the building, its public plazas and a walkway linking West Franklin and West Rosemary streets.

The council could vote on the project Nov. 29.

Council member Amy Ryan asked for sketches at the next meeting to show the building’s size relative to the streetscape and surrounding buildings.

It’s “going to be great for downtown,” she said, expressing interest in how to make the street more lively, the possibility of co-working spaces, and the effect of a driveway circling the Franklin Street plaza.

“As council, we have an oversight role, and we have a duty to fulfill to the community to make sure that we’re getting the projects that fit and the benefits that the community needs,” Ryan said.

Council member Michael Parker echoed another of Ryan’s concern about providing affordable business space and meeting other community desires, recommending the staff add specific stipulations to the zoning permit. He also suggested creating space for local artists, both as a way to promote their work and to bring the public into the space.

“I’m looking forward to seeing what comes back at the end of November, but I think that this is something we talked a lot about, supporting our local businesses … and this will transform that, so this is really exciting,” he said.

Downtown wet lab need questioned

Council member Adam Searing was more skeptical about the building’s height — nearly twice what the current zoning allows — and the need for a second wet lab building downtown when commercial buildings in the Triangle and elsewhere are looking for tenants.

“This building’s really going to transform the look and feel of our downtown, and to approve it without having a really good idea what it looks like … boy, this is a huge leap of faith,” Searing said.

Longfellow managing partner Greg Capps acknowledged that commercial real estate is struggling but said that doesn’t apply to laboratory work, he said.

Longfellow’s portfolio includes over 2 million square feet of existing lab space in the Triangle market and is over 90% leased, he said, adding that the rise of artificial intelligence and other technologies is “going to continue to push the bounds of life science.”

Chapel Hill’s downtown is “a great place for a lab building with this proximity to the university,” Capps said.

“Our customers regularly talk to us about what their employees are looking for, and it’s the same as a lot of office tenants nowadays,” he said. “They want their employees to be able to walk out of the building in the morning and go get a cup of coffee or walk to lunch or walk home, or bike home.”

The town has a gap now in its population of young professionals and entrepreneurs, because they end up living where they work, Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger said.

“We spent a long time trying to figure out what our niche is and came up with life sciences,” Hemminger said. “We have a compact downtown; we’re never going to attract big companies, like Apple, but we do have amazing innovation and entrepreneurship going on — on campus, off campus, throughout town — yet … it leaks (out) because we can’t find these kinds of places to do the work.”

Helping tenants in changing downtown

If approved, the building would replace a single-story bank and a 1 1/2-story brick building constructed in 1948, displacing the Purple Bowl and three other tenants: Blue Dogwood Public Market food hall, Bella Nail Bar, and Chimney Indian Kitchen & Bar.

The town launched a grant program this year to help downtown businesses relocate and is working with the Chamber and the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership to help the remaining tenants.

Chapel Hill’s downtown is “transforming,” Council member Paris Miller-Foushee said. She noted the project could lower barriers for smaller businesses who struggle to move downtown, renovate aging buildings, and navigate the town’s permitting process.

Miller-Foushee also urged the developer to think about ways to represent the town’s diversity and the history of its historically Black community. Longfellow is working with Empowerment Inc. and the Jackson Center, among others.

“Transformation is difficult. We are accustomed to a particular look in our downtown, and so what I think you are hearing … is that we are really expecting something nice and spectacular that is going to really bring us into the future,” Miller-Foushee said.