Storyline · 1976–1993
In 1976 Chapel Hill asked Orange County to enlarge the town's planning district, and in 1978 it sought to extend the district north of the airport. County residents and the county planning board opposed the move, and the commissioners offered a smaller area if the town allowed mobile homes there. The town asked for more in 1979, then for legislation, and the two boards deadlocked that March. From 1980 the towns, the county and OWASA worked toward joint planning: Chapel Hill adopted an agreement in 1981 and a joint planning area with the county in 1983, and the three governments signed the Joint Planning Agreement, with its Rural Buffer, in 1987. Carrboro joined the joint planning process in 1986, and both towns adopted the agreement in October 1987 after hearings at which many residents objected. From December 1987 the leaders of the towns and the county met together, and in 1988 Chapel Hill endorsed an Orange County Assembly of Local Governments. In 1992 Chapel Hill sent its plan for the southern area back for affordable housing rules, and the three governments agreed at a joint hearing to amend the joint land use plan for part of it. In July 1993 the council approved Southern Village, a 312-acre community for 1,388 homes off U.S. 15-501.
On January 26, 1976 the Chapel Hill aldermen asked the Orange County commissioners to add 8.7 square miles to the town's planning district. At a public hearing on August 28, 1978, on a proposal to extend the district about two miles north of the airport and put new development there under the town's stricter standards, county residents argued that it gave the town control without a vote for those affected and raised the treatment of mobile home parks; town planner Liz Rooks said Chapel Hill was outgrowing its planning area. On September 18 the county planning board voted 5 to 4 to advise denial. On October 17 the commissioners told the county attorney to draft a resolution for a smaller extension, west of N.C. 86 as far as Weaver Dairy Road, to take effect only after Chapel Hill allowed mobile homes there. On February 6, 1979 the aldermen asked the commissioners for about six square miles taking in the meeting of N.C. 86 and the proposed Interstate 40, against the roughly three they had offered, and the commissioners put off an answer. On March 8 the aldermen voted 5 to 3 to ask the General Assembly for a wider planning jurisdiction without the commissioners' consent, but Sen. Charles Vickery did not introduce the bill, saying it reached him on the filing deadline and Chatham and Durham officials had not been consulted. A joint meeting on March 27 ended with neither board yielding on the northern line.
On February 14, 1980 a committee of officials from Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Orange County and OWASA, chaired by Chapel Hill council member Jonathan Howes, agreed to send the three governing boards a report and resolution toward a single land use plan for the area. Under it the county would adopt the towns' development standards in the transition areas around them, each government would keep final authority in its own planning district, and growth would be steered to existing urban areas and away from the countryside. At a Town Council hearing on February 9, 1981 several residents objected to the proposed joint planning agreement among Chapel Hill, Carrboro, OWASA and Orange County, fearing it gave the county commissioners too much power because they would have the final say on proposals involving all four bodies; supporters urged the town to commit itself to overseeing the fast-growing areas on its edges, then solely under county jurisdiction. On February 23 the council adopted the agreement, 7 to 1, resting on mutual adoption of land use plans and development standards for areas expected to urbanize within 10 to 20 years; Council member Jim Wallace dissented, saying it would only document the council's failure to protect the rights of townspeople. On November 14, 1983 the council approved setting up a joint planning area with Orange County, with an advisory body to make recommendations on development next to the town. Howes likened it to a doughnut: the town alone would govern development inside its limits, the ring around it would be planned jointly with the county, and the county would govern beyond.
On November 13, 1985 nearly 150 residents heard town and county planners describe the 40,000 acres of county jurisdiction bordering Chapel Hill, from the I-40 corridor north of town to the University Lake watershed and the area toward the Chatham line, ahead of a hearing on a joint land use plan; Carrboro alderman Doug Anderson explained why Carrboro had not signed on. On January 28, 1986 the Carrboro aldermen voted to enter a joint planning process with Chapel Hill and Orange County, under which either town could extend its planning boundaries only if both towns and the county commissioners agreed. About 275 people came to a hearing at Carrboro Elementary School on April 17, most of them objecting to the twice-revised long-range plan of the town and county planning staffs; Calvander residents protested a commercial and industrial zone proposed near Carrboro. Orange County adopted the Orange County-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Joint Planning Area Land Use Plan and map on August 19, 1986, designating a low-density Rural Buffer. On October 13 the council and the commissioners agreed to keep studying a revision of their joint planning agreement that county manager Kenneth R. Thompson said would cut developers' review time, though Howes said the town would then no longer have a joint plan, and on November 18 the commissioners sent their planning board revisions giving the county final authority over zoning standards in the rural buffer and the transition areas north of Chapel Hill and Carrboro; Thompson said state law required the county to have the final say in its own jurisdiction.
At a joint hearing on October 14, 1987, residents of the Fox Meadow subdivision objected to the proposed agreement, which gave the two towns planning say over a 44,000-acre area outside their limits, kept a 38,000-acre rural buffer under the county and barred development in the University Lake watershed until OWASA finished a water quality study. On October 20 the Carrboro aldermen adopted it unanimously, the first of the three governments to do so, over a petition from Fox Meadow residents who wanted to stay in the rural buffer; it put the 51-acre subdivision in Carrboro's planning jurisdiction while putting off any annexation of it for at least 10 years. The Chapel Hill Town Council endorsed the agreement on October 26, and the three governments signed the Joint Planning Agreement on November 2, 1987; the county dates the buffer to 1988. By November 11 the Nello L. Teer Company had filed a $2.5 million suit charging that the county deliberately changed its rules to keep a quarry off its tract at Interstate 40 and New Hope Church Road; according to the complaint, the commissioners dropped mining from residential zones in April 1985 and in January placed the land in the rural buffer.
In December 1987 Carrboro Mayor Eleanor Kinnaird, Chapel Hill Mayor Jonathan Howes and county commissioners chairwoman Shirley Marshall met on impact fees for new development, the first such meeting by the Daily Tar Heel's account, and by March 1988 the three governments had informally agreed to a standing joint planning group. In early 1988 the Chapel Hill council asked Duke University to keep Duke Forest intact, against an Urban Land Institute study advising Duke to open 6,000 of its 8,300 acres to homes, shops and light industry; the town saw the forest as a natural buffer between Chapel Hill, Durham and Hillsborough. On March 1 the Carrboro aldermen voted 4 to 3 for the lowest-density choice for the land the town plans jointly with the county, 1.59 dwelling units an acre against 1.85; Frances Shetley broke the tie, citing 736 fewer houses and about 7,000 fewer car trips a day. On November 28 the Chapel Hill Town Council endorsed, for a two-year trial, the charter of an Orange County Assembly of Local Governments proposed by the mayors of Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough and the chairman of the county commissioners, who had been meeting informally each month. The assembly was to have no powers or staff, only bringing elected officials together to raise common issues and set up working groups.
At a January 21, 1992 hearing on a small area plan for southern Chapel Hill, two years in preparation, residents and council member Roosevelt Wilkerson warned that its low densities and a planned village near Grey Culbreth Junior High would shut out affordable housing. On February 10 the council accepted the general concepts of the Small Area Plan for the Southern Area, about 2,750 acres south of U.S. 15-501 and N.C. 54 and east of Smith Level Road laid out as a village for some 2,600 homes, but returned it to committee because nothing in it required affordable housing; planning director Roger Waldon warned that without such rules the area might hold nothing but $500,000 houses. At a joint public hearing at Grey Culbreth Middle School on October 14, the county commissioners, the Chapel Hill Town Council and the Carrboro Board of Aldermen agreed to amend the Joint Planning Area Land Use Plan for 205 acres of the Southern Small Area between U.S. 15-501 and Old Lystra Road, allowing densities as low as one house per five acres near Old Lystra Road and one per acre near 15-501. None of about ten residents objected, and each board was to vote on it in November and December. On July 6, 1993 the Chapel Hill Town Council approved the overall plan and first residential stage of Southern Village, a 312-acre community off U.S. 15-501 near Culbreth Middle School planned for 1,388 homes, a village center with 80,000 square feet of shops and 145,000 of offices, and parks, which its developer expected to build over 10 to 12 years.
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.
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.
Map of the Duke Forest's Durham Division issued in 2005 by the Office of the Duke Forest at Duke University, with the Korstian Division on the reverse. Both sides carry legends and rules for recreation and safety on the forest trails, which reach into Durham, Orange and Alamance counties.
Rachel Frankel's Duke University honors paper of 1984 on the Couch tract in the Durham Division of Duke Forest, a history of agricultural land use from 1750 to 1950. The Couch family, family farms and rural land use in Orange County are its subjects. A photocopied typescript, 97 leaves with maps and a bibliography.
A 2005 map of Duke Forest's Blackwood and Eno divisions in Orange County and toward Alamance County. The map concerns forestry and trails in the university teaching forest.
Robert Shapiro's 2004 measurements of radon-222 escaping from forest soil and of gas exchange between the canopy and the atmosphere, carried out in the Duke Forest. The work covers radon measurement and gas exchange in plants in Orange County. A short scientific study, with a bibliography on leaves 17 and 18, of the research forest that spreads across the county line.
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.
Papers of Ellie Kinnaird, born 1931, a North Carolina state senator, spanning 1987 to 2016 and running to roughly 6,400 items across 20.5 linear feet in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 5356. The papers focus on capital punishment in North Carolina and the campaigns against it, health insurance legislation, voting technology, and the work of women legislators in the General Assembly.
Eleanor Kinnaird beside an election campaign poster in an undated candid photograph. Kinnaird served as mayor of Carrboro and in the North Carolina Senate. From the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection (CHHS.002).
Thomas E. Ross's geographic study of American Indians in North Carolina. It examines Native peoples' history, cultural assimilation, and social and economic conditions across the state, with statistics. Published by Karo Hollow Press in 1999, eleven preliminary pages and 242 pages with illustrations and maps.
Deed transcripts for the town lots of Chapel Hill and adjoining land from 1790 to the 1930s, compiled by Stewart E. Dunaway. Each transcript keeps only the working facts: grantor and grantee, price, acreage and the metes and bounds of the parcel. Self-published in 2014 as Issue 1G, 702 pages with maps and facsimiles.
Stewart E. Dunaway worked through Hillsborough, N.C., lot by lot, giving each town lot a synopsis of its history, a plat showing where it sits and transcripts of the deeds he could locate for it. The second issue runs to 720 pages with illustrations, maps and facsimiles.
Stewart E. Dunaway's 2015 addendum to his history of Hillsborough's town lots, adding deed records arranged by lot number and further town history, with the expansion of the 1890s covered for the first time. Self-published in North Carolina as version 1.0, 446 pages with illustrations, facsimiles and maps. Topics include deeds, court records, land titles and real property in Hillsborough.
Stewart E. Dunaway's abstracts of civil suits over land heard in the Hillsborough District Superior Court between 1778 and 1806. The district covered Orange, Wake, Granville, Caswell, Person, Chatham and Randolph counties, and the papers concern boundaries, ownership and disputed tracts. Published through Lulu in 2011, 337 pages with illustrations, maps and facsimiles.
William M. Rohe's history of Research Triangle Park and the region around it, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2011. Topics include regional planning and the economic and social conditions of the Research Triangle Park region, one corner of which is Chapel Hill and the university. 298 pages with illustrations and maps.
Stewart E. Dunaway's two-volume edition of the Orange County land entry book, the register in which settlers first claimed vacant land from the state before a grant was surveyed and issued. Volume one covers the first thousand entries, all made in 1778; volume two runs from 1779 to 1795. Each entry is reproduced from the original in the State Archives with an abstract of its contents. Self-published through Lulu in a second version dated 2010, two volumes at 28 cm with facsimiles and maps.
Edward J. Kaiser's history of the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1945 to 2012, published by the department in 2013. The title nods to John A. Parker, 1909 to 2001, who figures in the book. One hundred eighty-six pages with illustrations and portraits at 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.
Stewart E. Dunaway's four-volume set of ejectment cases from Orange County, reproducing the original documents and maps from the North Carolina State Archives with partial transcriptions. The volumes cover 1778 to 1814, 1817 to 1832, 1833 to 1849 and 1850 to 1902. Ejectment suits contested title and possession of land, and the cases include surveys and plats. Self-published in 2010.
Stewart E. Dunaway's transcription of letters exchanged between Jesse Benton and Thomas Hart from 1780 to 1790, concerning Hart's affairs at Hartford, his place at Hillsborough. The letters concern the economic and social conditions of Hillsborough in the eighteenth century and the Revolution in North Carolina. Self-published through lulu.com in 2009, 68 pages with illustrations and facsimiles, and part of the library's Wall Local History Collection.
Albert N. Link's early history of Research Triangle Park, published in 1995 by the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina. Topics include research parks, research institutes and industrial research in the state, with the park's own history at the center. 149 pages with illustrations and maps.
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. “Chapel Hill's planning area, the joint planning agreement, the rural buffer and Southern Village, 1976–1993.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/northern-planning-area-storyline-1976/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
