Storyline
How Chapel Hill tried to turn its Rosemary Street parking lot into Rosemary Square between 1985 and 1989: the contract with the Fraser Company, the approvals and Jim Wallace’s opposition, the residents’ suit settled by the N.C. Supreme Court, five extensions, the unsold condominium-hotel units and the developers’ withdrawal in April 1989.
In briefIn January 1985 Chapel Hill contracted with the Fraser Company to replace its Rosemary Street parking lot with a hotel, shops and a shared parking deck. Former mayor Jim Wallace opposed it and won the mayor's race, residents sued, and the N.C. Supreme Court upheld the deal in 1987. After five extensions and slow sales of condominium-hotel units, the developers gave up in April 1989, and the town began planning its own garage. In August 1990 the council approved $5.2 million for a 315-space deck and plaza at Rosemary and Henderson streets, and work on the $7.3 million deck was under way by October 1991. The deck opened in September 1993, and in 1994 the town refinanced it through a new town corporation.
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In June 1984 the Chapel Hill Town Council opened talks with the Fraser Company of Research Triangle Park on developing the municipal parking lot between Henderson Street and NCNB Plaza. On January 30, 1985 it unanimously approved a contract for the $19 million Rosemary Square project: a 120-suite hotel, a public plaza, a renovated alley, a parking deck of 325 public and 175 private spaces and 22,400 square feet of shops and offices. The town agreed to issue up to $3.5 million in bonds, and a motion by Nancy Preston and David Pasquini to wait a month for another hearing failed 6 to 2. By April the town had paid $1.4 million for the Pearsall property, where Hunam Chinese Restaurant had leased its building, for parking while the project was built.
On October 1, 1985 the Planning Board voted 8 to 0 to recommend a zoning compliance permit for the hotel, shops and 500-space deck that the town and the Fraser-Morrow Company planned behind the post office at Rosemary and Henderson streets. The Historic District Commission approved the plans on condition that building begin July 6, and on October 14 the council gave the site plans final approval, with Pasquini voting no. On October 30 former mayor Jim Wallace, a candidate for mayor who owned an adjacent Franklin Street building, appealed to the Board of Adjustment, arguing that the hotel's suites could be rented as 238 rooms without the parking the zoning ordinance required. On November 5 Wallace beat council member Beverly Kawalec, who supported the project, in a race he said had become a quasi-referendum on Rosemary Square. A week later the council restricted traffic on the alleys connecting Franklin Street with the site.
On January 13, 1986 the council voted 5 to 4 against a new public hearing, with Mayor Wallace in the minority, and let Town Manager David Taylor negotiate the developer's proposed changes. Wallace questioned whether spaces the town provided in the shared parking would be an illegal subsidy. On April 14 the council approved the amendments 5 to 4, cutting the lodging units to 188, bringing the parking to 516 spaces and setting construction to run from December 31, 1986 to June 30, 1989.
On August 27, 1986 sixteen residents sued the developer, Fraser-Morrow Daniels Co., Mayor Wallace and the council, claiming that the town's part ownership of the parking amounted to public money subsidizing a private enterprise and that the 1984 act of the legislature that allowed the project was invalid spot zoning. In September the council moved the closing deadline to June 30, 1987, or six months after a final decision, after the company wrote that the suit made it hard to finance the project. Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Lee ruled for the town and the developer on November 21, and the residents appealed. At the town's and the developer's request the N.C. Supreme Court took the appeal directly, and on September 3, 1987 it found no unconstitutional joint venture in the town's agreement to pay for 125 of the 516 parking spaces.
Opponents then gathered about 900 signatures in five days asking that the council's October 1 work session with the developers be made a public hearing. At the hearing 17 of the 27 speakers favored the project, now put at $33 million, and on October 12 the council informally agreed to let Fraser-Morrow-Daniels Co. go ahead and close the deal in March 1988, with Julie Andresen and Pasquini still opposed.
In January 1988 the developers asked for more time, citing their financing and a lawsuit by opponents. On January 11 the council voted 5 to 4 to negotiate a date, and Wallace said the town had extended the project three times already. On January 26 it voted 6 to 3 to move the closing to November 30, the fourth extension, so that the company could sell 170 of its 188 units before seeking a $30 million construction loan. On September 12 it voted 5 to 4 for a fifth and final extension, to September 30, 1989, with a clause ending the town's obligations if that date was missed. At the same meeting it let the Algernon Blair Group of Montgomery, Alabama, and Aircoa Equity Interest of Denver join the project with 80 percent of the equity; Mayor Jonathan Howes said the original partners lacked the capital.
The 188 units of the Chapel Hill Inn, a condominium hotel planned for the site, went on sale in January 1989 at $144,000 to $259,000, but by late March the Rosemary Group had told the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had suspended sales because they were slow; council member Joe Herzenberg said the parking agreement now faced an economic test. On April 24 a representative of the Rosemary Group told the council that the complex could not be built as a hotel or as condominiums before the September 30 deadline. Merchants pressed for a downtown parking deck, and on October 3 a town subcommittee chose the firms Michael Hining AIA of Chapel Hill and Wilbur Smith Associates of Raleigh to help plan a garage with a public plaza on top at Rosemary and Henderson streets, with 325 to 350 spaces and a cost that could reach $3 million. On August 27, 1990 the council approved spending $5.2 million on a downtown parking deck and plaza, a two-and-a-half-story deck of 315 spaces planned near the southwest corner of Rosemary and Henderson streets. By October 1991 work was under way on the deck behind the Franklin Street businesses, a $7.3 million project paid for mainly with parking revenue bonds and expected to take 15 to 18 months, with two parking levels and a public recreation level on top with a small amphitheater. Prime South Inc. was the general contractor, and town engineer George Small called it the most significant downtown project in many years. The deck opened on September 24, 1993 with 315 spaces on two and a half levels and a landscaped rooftop plaza, and on May 23, 1994 the council voted unanimously to sell it to a new Chapel Hill Facilities Corporation and buy it back in low-interest installments over 30 years, a refinancing expected to save $2 million.
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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.
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.
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