Chronology

Chapel Hill adopts a thoroughfare plan for the town and its environs

The plan laid out the town's future road system, including a road along Bolin Creek, an outer loop around the town, a northern bypass, the extension of McCauley Street to Merritt Mill Road and one-way pairs for Franklin and Rosemary streets. It guided every set of alternatives in the 1969 report.

The Mayor's Ad Hoc Committee on Open Space reports on creek-side open space for Chapel Hill

A committee named by the mayor proposed keeping strips of open land along the town's creeks, including Bolin Creek and the western reaches of Morgan Creek and its branches, as linked open space and paths. Its proposals reappear throughout the 1969 alternatives.

A new road is being built to link Hillcrest Avenue in Carrboro with Estes Drive at Airport Road

In 1967 a Thoroughfare Plan road was under construction across the open land north of Bolin Creek to connect Hillcrest Avenue in Carrboro with Estes Drive at Airport Road, near the new Chapel Hill High School.

Chapel Hill High School enrollment approaches 900

Enrollment at the town's one high school was close to 900 in the fall of 1967, already near the low end of the 923 to 1,260 range a 1963 school study had projected for 1970.

Subject: Chapel Hill High School

Chapel Hill annexes the Merritt Mill Road area

The town took in the mostly residential area between South Greensboro Street, Morgan Creek, Pritchard Branch and the Carrboro line, around Knolls and Johnson streets and the Lincoln and Frank Porter Graham schools. Its streets other than Merritt Mill Road were unpaved and many were dead ends.

Part of Historic Black neighborhoods of Chapel Hill and Carrboro · 78 events

Chapel Hill holds land at Airport Road and Stephens Street for a new town hall

By 1967 the town owned the triangle between Airport Road, North Columbia Street and Stephens Street, beside the fire station, and it was marked as the site of a new town hall and community center. Plans for a new town hall were moving ahead in 1969.

Subject: Chapel Hill Town Hall (1938)

The Army Corps of Engineers is buying land for the New Hope Reservoir southeast of Chapel Hill

Planners presenting options for the area south of Morgan Creek in October 1967 noted that the Corps was acquiring land for the New Hope Reservoir. The reservoir lands were to take in the Morgan Creek valley farther east, and the flood pool would reach University land around Finley Golf Course, so the planners treated the reservoir as the outer limit for any loop road south of town.

Chapel Hill Planning Board hears twelve sets of development alternatives for parts of the town

At twelve regular meetings, the Planning Board was shown three development schemes for each sub-area of the Chapel Hill Planning District, from Upper Bolin Creek and Northside to the campus and Eastgate. The presentations, also given to other groups, became Part I of the 1969 report.

Northside discussions turn Chapel Hill redevelopment toward rehabilitation and away from more public housing there

Planners showed three sets of options for Northside on November 7, 1967. A note added before their report appeared in November 1969 says meetings in the neighborhood since then had led to decisions to favor repairing and conserving existing housing in redeveloping Northside, and not to add more public housing in the area.

Part of Historic Black neighborhoods of Chapel Hill and Carrboro · 78 events

Chapel Hill changes its rules to allow cluster subdivisions

The town modified its subdivision rules so developers could group houses on smaller lots and keep the rest of a tract as shared open space while holding to the overall zoning density.

A third Granville Towers dormitory goes up near Cameron Avenue

A third Granville dormitory and a parking area were being built in 1969, replacing a patch of rural-looking land a few blocks from downtown.

Apartment building in Chapel Hill outpaces new houses two to one

Single-family homes still outnumbered apartments more than three to one in the Chapel Hill Planning Area in 1969, but in the four years since 1965 more than twice as many apartment units had been built as single-family houses.

Chapel Hill and Carrboro area has about 35,000 people, 15,000 of them students

The planners put the population of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro area at about 35,000, of whom about 15,000 were University students. Students and other residents had once been about equal in number, but the non-student population had lately grown faster.

Grey Culbreth Junior High School is built south of Morgan Creek

Chapel Hill's second junior high school went up in 1969 on a site south of Morgan Creek chosen after October 1967, along with a new access road.

Most unpaved streets in the Merritt Mill Road area are paved after an owners' petition

Most of the area's unpaved streets were being paved in 1969 after a majority of the owners along them signed a paving petition. The town expected to pave the rest and add other improvements under a redevelopment program stressing conservation and rehabilitation.

Part of Historic Black neighborhoods of Chapel Hill and Carrboro · 78 events

Part of the DuBose land east of Glen Lennox is developed as a golf course subdivision

Of the large undeveloped holdings of Col. D. St. Pierre DuBose near N.C. 54 and the Durham County line, 500 acres were being developed in 1969 as a private residential subdivision built around a golf course.

The Research Triangle Regional Planning Commission issues Development Alternatives for Chapel Hill

The regional commission, working for the Town of Chapel Hill through the state Division of Community Planning, published three alternative land-use schemes for each of twelve parts of the Chapel Hill Planning District and for the whole town and its surroundings. The report was paid for in part by a federal urban planning grant under Section 701 of the Housing Act of 1954 and was meant to start discussion toward a comprehensive plan, not to recommend any one scheme.