Go Glen Lennox

Kudos to the Little Creek Neighborhood Association who are mobilizing to save the nearby Glen Lennox neighborhood from redevelopment by Grubb Properties. They have enough petition signatures to start the Neighborhood Conservation District process with the Town of Chapel Hill. I'm still not sure whether the NCD is the right tool for the job, but it should help to slow the momentum of the developers who want to raze the neighborhood for a new high-rise mixed use development.

If you read OP much, you know I am generally in favor of dense housing and mixed use development, so there's a little pang of conflict about this project. But the fact is that Glen Lennox is just the kind of affordable neighborhood that we don't have enough of in Chapel Hill. In addition, it is already more dense than many other parts of town. While I could probably handle some changes to the area, I just can't agree with complete redevelopment, especially because the small art-deco-ish strip of stores that front 54 is one of the few architectural saving graces of the entire corridor.

An overview of the proposal:

Grubb Properties has proposed replacing the 440 apartment units and shopping center in the Glen Lennox community between N.C. 54 and U.S. 15-501 with a multi-story mix of housing and commercial space. [...]

The plan includes 908 new homes: 35 single-family lots and a mix of apartments, condominiums and town houses. It also shows retail, restaurant and office space, as well as three parking decks. There could be a 55,000-square-foot grocery store, a drugstore and a 700-seat movie theater, as well as a seven- to nine-story, 190-room hotel.

- chapelhillnews.com: Glen Lennox wants meeting, 6/10/08

Next steps: The Town Council will review the NCD petition at it's June 25th meeting, and then it will be referred to the Planning Board, who is primarily responsible for developing Neighborhood Conservation Districts. The Grubb Properties concept plan will be reviewed by the Community Design Commission in August.