Storyline
How UNC’s plan for a South Loop road through part of Odum Village, its married-student housing, met resistance from 1990 to 1992: the search for replacement housing, the residents’ and housing advocates’ campaigns, the Chapel Hill Town Council’s refusals to put the road on the thoroughfare plan and Hardin’s renewed push.
In briefUNC's planned South Loop road would have taken part of Odum Village, its married-student housing. A 1990 committee looked to buy Glen Lennox to replace it, but town officials objected and Vice Chancellor Donald Boulton said UNC would not buy existing apartments. Residents and a housing coalition opposed the road, and in 1991 the Chapel Hill Town Council twice declined to put it on the thoroughfare plan. Hardin pressed for the plan again in January 1992.
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Odum Village, brick apartments for married students on Manning Drive, took the place of the postwar Victory Village units about 1977, and in January 1987 its residents organized against a Rams Club consultant's proposal for Smith Center event exit driveways through the village. In February 1990 Chancellor Paul Hardin named a committee to find a replacement for Odum Village, which lay in the path of the planned South Loop road. In a confidential report on July 3 the committee chose buying Glen Lennox Apartments as its first choice; the owners said the complex was not for sale.
At a Chapel Hill Town Council public hearing on November 19 Odum Village residents attacked UNC's plan to realign Manning Drive as a South Loop that would tear down six Odum Village buildings, and the council put off its decision on adding the road to the thoroughfare plan until January 11 to hold a work session. After weeks of complaints from town officials that buying Glen Lennox or another complex would shrink the town's tax base and affordable housing, Vice Chancellor Donald Boulton said on November 28 that the University would not buy existing apartments to replace Odum Village if the road displaced it, though Vice Chancellor Ben Tuchi would not rule a purchase out. A University study later put rent in a new $23 million family housing complex at nearly double Odum Village's.
By June 1991 the Orange County Housing Coalition had begun a petition drive and letter-writing campaign asking the council and the town manager to oppose the road, warning that losing Odum Village would push student families into a supply of low-income housing that had dwindled over 20 years. On July 8, at its last meeting of the summer, the council voted 4 to 3 to add South Loop Road, from Manning Drive to South Columbia Street, to the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Thoroughfare Plan, short of the five votes its rules required. Mayor Jonathan Howes, Roosevelt Wilkerson, Alan Rimer and Art Werner voted for it and Julie Andresen, Joyce Brown and Joe Herzenberg against. Without the listing the road could not get state transportation money, and Tuchi said UNC would plan another way to pay for it. On August 26, with two members absent, the council put off the required second vote and, at Howes's suggestion, took the item off its agenda indefinitely. The resolution would have required the University to replace the Odum Village apartments before building the road, and not by buying existing housing in town; an Odum Village resident who led the opposition asked that the vote wait until after the November election. On September 10 the council voted 5 to 3 against putting the road on the plan. Wilkerson, who had voted for it in July, cast the deciding vote and faulted communication between the town and the University.
On September 26 Tuchi wrote three Odum Village residents that the Facilities Planning Committee still preferred the South Loop, running from the U.S. 15-501 Bypass to South Columbia Street, over the residents' May proposal to route the road around the Health Affairs parking deck to Mason Farm Road at Hibbard Drive, and that the University meant to settle on replacement housing for Odum Village before building it. On January 17, 1992 Hardin asked the Faculty Council to support the plan, which would widen South Columbia Street, reroute Manning Drive and take part of Odum Village; Odum Village residents and the Chapel Hill Alliance of Neighborhoods objected. By February 5 the Student Environmental Action Coalition had sent Hardin 150 letters opposing the road and planned letters to the Board of Governors and to students' hometown newspapers, urging more transit instead.
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 12 dated events in the chronology →
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.
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.
Victory Village, the postwar student housing at UNC, in five photographs from 1948 to 1950. They show houses among trees, the backs of the houses in winter and a house with a car parked outside. From the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection (CHHS.002).
Victory Village, the University of North Carolina's housing for student veterans and their families after the Second World War, in newspaper clippings and photocopied articles. Undated folder, Chapel Hill Historical Society vertical files.
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.
Brian Burns's collection of lesser-known episodes from Chapel Hill's past, published by The History Press of Charleston, South Carolina, in 2023. Topics include the town's history, its buildings and structures, and the history of civil rights in Chapel Hill. 158 pages with illustrations and portraits.
A history of the buildings on the University of North Carolina campus by John V. Allcott and JJ Bauer, published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 2019. It follows campus construction from the 1790s forward: the plans behind each building campaign, the architects, and the university figures who pushed projects through. 132 pages with photographs, maps and plans.
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.
David R. Godschalk and Jonathan B. Howes describe the ten-year building program that reshaped the UNC campus in Chapel Hill, when some six million square feet in new buildings went up and a million more of historic buildings were restored. Chapters treat the campus master plan, siting and design decisions, the historic north campus, the southeast and health-sciences precincts and the planned Carolina North research campus, with contributions by chancellors James Moeser and Holden Thorp. Published by UNC Press in 2012, 175 pages.
Margaret Ruth Little-Stokes's survey of Chapel Hill's town and campus buildings from 1795 to 1975, published by the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill in 2006. Chapters run from the first campus buildings through David Swain's romantic campus to midcentury modernism, followed by area surveys of the campus, east and west Chapel Hill, downtown, Northside and the suburbs.
A pocket-sized guide to the historic buildings and landmarks of Chapel Hill, prepared by the Chapel Hill Historical Society and printed by Creative Printers in 1973. Forty pages with illustrations and maps, 14 by 22 cm. Topics include architecture, historic buildings and historic districts in Chapel Hill, and the guide is useful for a walking tour of the older parts of town.
Planning study by the Research Triangle Regional Planning Commission, November 1969, setting out alternative patterns of land use for parts of the Chapel Hill Planning District and the town's surroundings. Topics include city planning and urban renewal. The 78 pages come with 70 pages of plates, mostly maps, and the work had federal urban planning assistance.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Land use inventory of 1962 and general plan to 1980 for Chapel Hill, Carrboro and their surroundings, prepared by the Research Triangle Regional Planning Commission for the Chapel Hill planning board and published in 1963. Funded through a federal urban planning grant under Section 701 of the Housing Act of 1954, it runs 149 pages with nine leaves of plates and folded maps, some in color.
John V. Allcott's history of the architecture of the University of North Carolina campus across two centuries, from the first buildings of the 1790s to the 1980s, published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 1986. A 108-page illustrated survey with a bibliography. Allcott taught art history at the university.
A 2008 study of the tree landscape at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, published by the university and dated November 2008 on page four. Topics include the history of campus planning at Chapel Hill, landscape architecture and its environmental aspects, landscape protection and plant conservation. One hundred fifty five pages with color illustrations, maps and plans.
Kemp P. Battle's University Day address of 1883, delivered as president of the University of North Carolina on the day marking the laying of the Old East cornerstone. Battle goes building by building through the Chapel Hill campus, telling how each was named and why it stands where it does. Fifteen pages. Electronic edition issued 2005 by the UNC University Library for Documenting the American South.
A 2005 collector street plan for southwest Durham County and southeast Chapel Hill. It addresses street networks, land use, transit and sustainable development.
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