Storyline · 1956–1992
Chapel Hill's downtown parking passed from a merchants' lot to town meters and town lots. In June 1956 an association of East Franklin Street businesses opened what the News called the town's first customer parking lot. In 1958, after heated debate, the aldermen passed an ordinance for about 375 meters on business-district streets, and they voted to put meter money in the general fund, though Alderman Roland Giduz wanted it kept to buy land for off-street parking. In 1962 the town agreed to buy the Hanson property on East Rosemary Street for a lot for about 30 cars, and after deeds recorded in 1963 it began building a 70-car lot there, which opened in 1964. In 1965 the University zoned parking on the campus and began towing, and the town banned parking on South Road and let the police tow illegally parked cars. Street meter income later fell. In 1977 the town banned weekday parking on 41 streets near the campus; a court barred its free permits for residents after a law student sued, and the aldermen adopted a narrower permit ordinance in 1978. Voters turned down a Rosemary Street parking deck in 1979, and after court rulings limited towing in 1982 the town required hearings and police supervision for tows and raised its fines. In 1984 the council opened talks with the Fraser Company on Rosemary Square, a deck with a hotel-condominium on the Rosemary Street lot. From 1985 Chapel Hill and Carrboro raised parking fines and changed their towing and street rules, and the University raised permit prices nearly every year while it planned a parking deck on the Craige lot; after protests over paying for it with permit fees, the trustees raised fees in 1989 to help repay a 1,600-space deck. The Craige deck opened in September 1991. In 1991 and 1992 Chapel Hill limited commuter parking on McCauley Street, let downtown developers offer transportation plans instead of parking, eased its towing rules and began ticketing cars parked on sidewalks, and Carrboro raised its parking fines to $25.
On June 2, 1956 an association of 28 East Franklin Street businesses and individuals opened a customer parking lot at Columbia and Rosemary streets at 25 cents an hour; the News called it Chapel Hill's first customer parking lot. In March 1958 the aldermen unanimously backed the planning board's long-studied plan for about 437 metered spaces downtown and voted five to one to put meter money in the general fund, while Alderman Roland Giduz wanted it kept to buy land for off-street parking. On July 14, after heated debate, they passed an ordinance for about 375 meters on Franklin, Columbia, Henderson and other business-district streets, with one-hour, two-hour and 12-minute limits; by August the plan covered 405 spaces and four firms had bid between $52 and $62 a meter. In July 1962 the aldermen agreed to buy the Hanson property on East Rosemary Street from the Chapel Hill Parking Association for $40,755 as a lot for about 30 cars, to be paid for with revenue bonds and meter profits, and the paper called it the town's first projected lot. Deeds recorded in late December 1963 moved three East Rosemary Street lots to the town, which began building a 70-car lot there in January. The metered lot opened on May 27, 1964 with room for about 66 cars, paid for by a $120,000 revenue bond issue to be repaid from meter receipts, and that August about 500 metered spaces in midtown were changed from angle to parallel parking. In May 1965 Dean of Men William G. Long announced zoned parking on the campus from September 1, with towing of cars parked out of zone, a doubled registration fee and no cars for undergraduates below a C average, saying 8,880 registered cars competed for 5,316 spaces. At the University's request the aldermen banned parking on South Road and part of Raleigh Street from the same date, and in September they let the police tow and impound improperly parked cars at the owner's expense. Street meter income later fell, from $21,358 in 1967-68 to $18,437 in 1971-72. On August 31, 1971 Hillsborough District Court found the manager of a Carrboro apartment complex and the owner of the wrecker service he called guilty, under the state 'joy riding' law, of taking a car without intent to steal, after they had a visitor's car towed from the complex's driveway; the two appealed in what was seen as a test of the common local practice of towing. On September 13, citing a critical parking shortage, the Chapel Hill aldermen voted in favor of adding a parking deck to the main municipal lot on Rosemary Street, which Town Manager Robert Peck said would probably be financed by revenue bonds.
On April 21, 1975 the aldermen created no-parking zones on 40 narrow streets, which police said would let buses and other traffic pass safely; warning tickets came first and towing began May 26. After residents petitioned the aldermen and the General Assembly passed enabling legislation for free resident permits, the board on July 11, 1977 barred parking from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays on all or part of 41 residential streets near the University. When the ban took effect on August 15, students and staff lost about 500 street spaces, and wreckers towed about 130 cars in the first week. On August 29 a UNC law student filed a class-action suit charging that the residents' permits made an unconstitutional special class, and that afternoon Superior Court Judge Henry A. McKinnon Jr. barred towing under the ordinance; police had towed 312 cars by then. On September 13 McKinnon forbade the town to grant the permits and lifted his order against towing, and from September 21 police treated cars on the restricted streets like cars at any other no-parking sign. On November 28, in a class-action suit by four Carrboro residents, three of them UNC students, Chief District Court Judge Stanley Peele barred Carrboro from enforcing its ordinance allowing cars to be towed from marked fire lanes on private property. On January 23, 1978 the Chapel Hill aldermen adopted a revised ordinance limiting permits to residents of streets closed to parking on both sides who had no off-street space and for whom building it would cost over $800 or harm a historic site.
An August 1979 rise in hourly charges at the town's lots, meant to discourage long-term parking downtown, later raised revenues at the two East Rosemary Street lots by a third. In late October the town opened a third lot, 66 spaces on West Franklin Street, built with a temporary loan before the parking bond vote; by January 1980 it was seldom more than half full. On November 6, 1979 voters defeated $2.6 million in bonds for downtown parking, chiefly a four-level deck on Rosemary Street, 2,969 to 2,439. The UNC trustees' 1980 traffic ordinance raised the fine for parking on campus without a permit from $10 to $20, and to $25 in handicapped spaces or fire lanes. In January 1981 the Town Council capped the evening fee in the Rosemary Street lots at $1 to encourage night use.
On March 3, 1982 ten students who had had cars towed at Foxcroft Apartments sued the complex's owner in Orange County Superior Court for a restraining order against further towing and more than $100,000 in damages. That month the council amended the town's towing ordinance so that an illegally parked car could be towed without notice and a chance for a hearing only in an emergency, with a prompt hearing before a police officer for any owner who was towed; deputy town attorney Grainger Barrett cited a federal appeals court ruling on due process raised by student government attorneys. On April 16 John Temple, vice chancellor for business and finance, told the Faculty Council that permits in lots near campus would rise from $6 to $8 a month, the first increase since 1974, and that the University could build no new lots because of debt on the hospital parking decks. On April 26 the council raised most downtown parking fines from $10 to $25, which town officials said would make up for court rulings that had limited towing. That summer, with the Foxcroft suit pending, the town barred towing from private property without police supervision and let owners appeal a tow.
On August 1, 1983 the town doubled the day rate in its lots to 50 cents an hour, hoping to discourage all-day parking, and prepared to seek private developers for a proposed four-level, 440-space deck on the Rosemary Street lot at Henderson Street. On October 24 the council unanimously approved a proposal for 250 spaces on Municipal Parking Lot 1, east of NCNB Plaza, after Council member Bev Kawalec amended it to give the town a say in the development's use. At a hearing on March 29, 1984 three developers proposed decks for the lot under at least 100 dwellings: Franklin Street Plaza Ltd. with Metro Consultants, Real Property Investments, and the Fraser Company, whose Rosemary Square, with a hotel-condominium, Mayor Joe Nassif praised. On April 20 the UNC trustees raised campus permit fees and N.C. Memorial Hospital deck rates, barred mopeds and other motor vehicles from campus sidewalks and reserved 700 spaces at the new Student Activities Center for the Rams Club on football Saturdays. On June 11 the council authorized negotiations with the Fraser Company. On June 22, reversing an earlier decision, the trustees let Rams Club members use about 175 spaces in the McCauley Street lot on football Saturdays, at associate athletic director Moyer Smith's request; Student Body President Paul Parker, a trustee, cast the only dissenting vote. On June 25 the council set aside $10,000 from the Parking Facilities Fund for legal and financial advice on the talks, money that went unspent, and by September 12 it had extended the negotiating period on Rosemary Square, a $16 million project with condominium hotel suites, public and private decks, shops and a plaza, and approved more money for consultants, which Town Manager David Taylor put at up to $40,000. On September 24 the company's president showed about 20 members of the Downtown Chapel Hill Association a plan with a 500-space deck and a fund to improve the alleys behind Franklin Street. On November 12 the council voted $1.4 million for land at West Franklin and Church streets for a 160-car lot, to replace the 114 spaces to be lost when the Rosemary Street lot closed for Rosemary Square, and set a vote on the Fraser contract, whose plan called for 325 public and 175 private spaces, for January 28.
On September 9, 1985, after disabled residents protested inadequate handicapped parking at a press conference at the Community Center, police Capt. Ralph Pendergraph announced $25 state citations and towing for cars parked in handicapped spaces. On October 28, at Mayor Joe Nassif's request, the council told Town Manager David Taylor to find ways to end on-site parking requirements for downtown businesses, and it raised what businesses paid into the parking fund from $2,500 to $7,200 a space. On January 21, 1986 the Carrboro aldermen let private landowners, in some cases, have cars towed that were parked on their property without permission. On April 14 the Chapel Hill council made parking violations civil rather than criminal offenses and raised the overtime meter fine from $1 to $5, with $5 more for each unpaid week in the first month and a $25 ceiling; council members said the change would discourage long-term parking downtown, much of it by students. That July campus meters went from 10 to 25 cents an hour and permits rose about $25, and on October 14 the Carrboro aldermen raised the fine for parking in a handicapped space from $5 to $50, on shopping-center lots as well as the street.
On December 12, 1986 the UNC trustees approved in principle a $12 million, 1,400-space parking deck on the Craige lot between Craige Residence Hall and Odum Village, to be paid off from the new spaces, special-event parking and higher permit prices for all. On February 9, 1987 a town limit of 48 hours on parking on any public street took effect; police said students who left cars all week on residential streets crowded out residents' visitors. On February 27 the trustees raised permit fees 10 to 25 percent, most for the gated and controlled-access lots on North Campus used mostly by faculty and employees. On April 15 Athletic Director John Swofford shelved a $450,000 plan to turn the eight Hinton James tennis courts into a 160-space lot for Rams Club members at Smith Center events, after student leaders protested that South Campus, home to half the dormitory residents, would lose its best courts; on October 21 a committee of students and administrators decided that the courts would not become parking for Smith Center donors.
On February 11, 1988, over the votes of its three student members present, UNC's Traffic and Parking Advisory Committee decided to turn two-thirds of the A lot near Cobb Residence Hall from resident student to employee and commuter parking. On February 19 Chancellor Christopher Fordham told the Faculty Council he would not send the trustees the deck, now a $12.2 million, 1,480-space plan, saying more work was needed and the state would not pay for it; the plan to pay for it with higher permit fees had angered faculty, staff and students. On February 24 employees and students protested permit prices and the shortage of spaces in front of South Building, after a petition asking for other ways to pay for a deck drew more than 3,000 University and hospital signatures. Two days later the trustees doubled the fines for permit and meter violations, raised permit prices about 10 percent and barred student permits for anyone living within two miles of campus instead of one and a half. On April 11 the Chapel Hill council extended the permit that let North Carolina Memorial Hospital employees park in the deck beside the hospital, on condition that the whole deck be reserved for patients and visitors by 1993, and it restricted weekday morning parking on part of McCauley Street, with permits for residents. On September 30 the advisory committee recommended that resident sophomores park in the P-3 lot on Airport Road with shuttle service instead of on campus in 1989-90, and Student Government, which had offered 13 counterproposals, started a petition drive. On March 23, 1989 the trustees raised permits $12 to $24 to cover about $228,000 a year of the $1.3 million needed annually to repay the $11.1 million, 1,600-space Craige deck. Chancellor Paul Hardin endorsed his ad hoc parking committee's revised report, and building the deck, the first of four in the land-use plan, could begin that summer.
Work on the Craige deck, put at $9.9 million and 1,640 spaces and financed by bonds to be repaid from parking fees and fines, was under way from October 1989 and set to finish in June 1991. By April 17, 1990 the Educational Foundation had abandoned a tentative plan for a 200-space deck on the Hinton James Residence Hall tennis courts, with new courts on its roof, for donors' parking near the Smith Center, after student leaders reported overwhelming opposition. The Craige deck opened beside Craige Residence Hall on September 3, 1991, about two months late because a large mass of rock had to be dug out of the site first; it added 1,643 spaces, about 600 of them for students, for South Campus residents and employees of the growing health sciences complex.
On February 19, 1991 the Carrboro aldermen voted unanimously to have their staff and the Downtown Development Commission recommend how to carry out a downtown parking study that cited students parking in town and private lots and a shortage of short-term spaces; Mayor Eleanor Kinnaird called it about the eighth parking study and urged the board to act. In March Chapel Hill posted no-parking signs on the dirt section of McCauley Street, removing about 30 spaces used by UNC commuters, after a resident complained and a review found an ordinance requiring one side kept clear. On September 10 the Town Council limited parking on the 300 block of McCauley Street, on the western edge of campus, to residents with permits from 8 a.m. to noon on weekdays, after residents complained that commuting students blocked their driveways; Council member Joe Herzenberg said the historic streets near campus lacked room for both residents and commuters and urged commuters to ride the bus.
On January 21, 1992 the council voted unanimously to send the town manager and attorney a proposed downtown transportation management plan that would end the requirement that downtown businesses provide private parking. On January 27 it approved an amnesty forgiving half the late penalties on parking tickets paid between February 15 and March 15, to recover part of about $500,000 in unpaid fines; enforcement had moved from the police to the transportation department. On March 23 the council amended its downtown parking ordinance so developers could submit a transportation management plan, with incentives such as free bus passes, bike racks, showers and carpool help, instead of providing parking or paying the town $7,200 for each space not provided; the developer of the proposed Pavilion on West Franklin Street said the change might let it go ahead. On May 11 the council voted unanimously to let police ticket cars parked on town sidewalks, a long habit of football fans and Sunday churchgoers, with tickets to begin on Sunday mornings in mid-August and at football games with the October 3 game against Navy; interim police chief Ralph Pendergraph said about 500 cars had parked on sidewalks at home games the year before. On August 24 the council unanimously amended its parking ordinance to drop the pre-towing hearing, allow towing of cars abandoned on town property and of cars with four or more unpaid tickets, raise the fine for parking in handicapped spaces to $50 under a new state law and cut some meter fines to $5. On September 15 the Carrboro aldermen raised parking fines, which had run from $1 to $5, to $25, effective immediately; Alderman Randy Marshall said collection agencies would not take unpaid fines under $25 and the higher fine brought Carrboro in line with Chapel Hill. At the Virginia game on October 17 Chapel Hill police gave about 70 football fans $25 tickets for parking on sidewalks, most of them on Rosemary Street, and the town pointed fans to Chapel Hill Transit's park-and-ride buses.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows them all.
Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange, Orange County GIS, OpenStreetMap and a few other published sources named on each site’s page; town and community pins show approximate locations.
People with a page of their own whom the dated events above name, those named most often first.
No indexed work is about this storyline itself yet. These are about the sites and people its dated events name, those named most often first, so they may discuss the storyline only in part. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
Albert Coates's personal narrative of his stay in North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill after a stroke, published by the University of North Carolina in 1968. Topics include cerebrovascular disease patients and their rehabilitation, hospital care in Chapel Hill and Coates himself, the founder of the university's Institute of Government. 30 pages; also titled What the NC Memorial Hospital Meant to Me.
Illustrated look back at fifty years of North Carolina Memorial Hospital and the UNC School of Medicine, with stories by Dick Broom edited by Lynn Wooten. Published by the Medical Foundation of N.C. in 2002, 93 pages with color illustrations and portraits.
A 19-page audit report issued in Raleigh in January 1998 by a North Carolina state office, reviewing the electronic data processing controls of the payroll and patient accounting systems at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill. Subjects include evaluation of the hospitals and of electronic data processing departments in Chapel Hill. A slim government document for those tracking the hospital's administration in the 1990s.
Anecdotes from the University of North Carolina Hospitals in Chapel Hill, gathered in an unpaged illustrated volume whose colophon is dated September 1993. The pieces are short recollections of care given and received. Issued by the hospitals, 22 cm.
Jonathan Howes, a former mayor of Chapel Hill who served in Governor Hunt's cabinet and later worked in the UNC chancellor's office on urban planning, gave this illustrated talk on the past and future of the Chapel Hill campus. Cassette, 1998.
Stewart E. Dunaway's compilation of Orange County road and bridge papers concerning county bridges between 1787 and 1865. It reproduces documents in facsimile, with maps and partial transcriptions, and provides names useful for genealogical research. First compiled in two volumes in 2008, then combined and updated, this 2013 edition has 253 pages, 28 cm.
Mark Chilton's short history of transportation planning in the North Carolina Piedmont, drawing lessons from earlier projects. Subjects include the Cape Fear Navigation Company and river navigation, and the railroads of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, including the State University Railroad Company whose spur brought trains to the two towns. Chilton was mayor of Carrboro when the book appeared. Published by Hand Made Books, Carrboro, 2012, 92 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.
Three volumes of historic Orange County road records compiled by Stewart E. Dunaway and self-published through Lulu.com in 2008, with maps. The documents, reproduced as facsimiles and sometimes transcribed, include petitions for new roads, requests for road upkeep, bridge records and papers explaining why roads were rerouted. Road petitions name the householders along a route. The third volume also gathers records connected with Cyrus Guy's lynching in Orange County in 1869.
Three volumes of Orange County road records assembled by Stewart E. Dunaway from the original petitions, orders and maps at the North Carolina State Archives, reproduced in facsimile with partial transcriptions. Volume 1 covers 1786 to 1820, volume 2 1820 to 1849 and volume 3 1850 to 1883. The papers document the laying out and upkeep of county roads and name the residents involved. June 2009 update, distributed through Lulu, 28 cm.
Stewart E. Dunaway's 2013 compilation of Orange County deed records outside the regular deed books, covering 1752 to 1769 and 1793. The loose papers include road petitions and cartway orders, providing material for county history, genealogy and the history of roads.
Stewart E. Dunaway's first volume of Orange County road records, reproducing documents and maps from the North Carolina State Archives for the years 1786 to 1820, with partial transcriptions, an index and a list of overseers. Road papers name the landowners along each route. Self-published in 2010, 348 pages.
Raymond Arsenault's history of the 1961 Freedom Rides and the campaign against segregated interstate travel in the South. Published by Oxford University Press in 2006. Its North Carolina material reaches Chapel Hill, Durham, Greensboro and Charlotte, which is where the Orange County connection lies, and the wider subject is African American civil rights work, segregation in transportation and race relations through the twentieth century.
Community cookbook from Cross Roads Baptist Church in Hillsborough, printed by Morris Press Cookbooks in 2005 in a three-ring binder. Recipes are credited to their contributors. The book includes Southern cooking, church history and material on the Family House of Chapel Hill. 124 pages of recipes plus front and back matter, with color illustrations.
Joe Liles's interviews with longtime residents of Fish Dam Road, an old rural road in Durham County, recorded in 2004, with subjects tied to both Durham and Orange counties. The interviewees are Charles Scott Harkey, Mary Scarlett Jones, Boyce Link and John Scarlett, all born between 1912 and 1920, and the topics include country life, the road's history and the Duke Power Company.
Franklin Street through two centuries, gathered in a 24 page illustrated supplement the Chapel Hill News published on April 10, 1994 for the town's bicentennial. Topics include the street itself, town history and social life and customs. It belongs with the other bicentennial publications of 1993 and 1994 that treat the commercial center of Chapel Hill.
Bernard Lee Bryant's compilation of who occupied each structure on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill at five-year intervals from 1793 to 1998, issued by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 1999 as a photocopy of his original computer printout on cotton paper. 191 leaves.
Glenn Holder's 1931 profile of Captain Fred Smith, who spent forty-two years as skipper of the train known as the 'Carrboro Limited' between Carrboro and Chapel Hill. Detached from the March 1931 issue of the university's Alumni Review, the piece recounts Chapel Hill railroad history. Smith lived from 1858 to 1939.
Each dated event above names its source, the place to start. For finding more on an event across newspapers, records and histories, see the research guide Follow an event across several accounts. Ask at the North Carolina Room of the Orange County Public Library for help with local sources.
Friends of the Orange County Public Library. “Parking in Chapel Hill and on campus, 1956–1992.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/chapel-hill-parking-storyline-1956/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
