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Columbia Street widening gets final OK

Posted on February 26, 2009 by Staff

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

CHAPEL HILL — After decades of back and forth with the university and the state Department of Transportation, the Chapel Hill Town Council gave final approval to a $4.4 million project for South Columbia Street from Fordham Boulevard to Manning Drive.

The project would reshape the street to include two 12-foot-wide travel lanes; a four-foot bicycle lane on the east side and five-foot bicycle lane on the west side; curb and gutter with five-foot sidewalks on both sides; better drainage; and improvements to intersections, including turn lanes at several locations.
The project is being paid for mainly with state funds. The town’s share of the project is $25,300.

The configuration of the street has changed considerably since the 1980s, when the DOT offered Chapel Hill officials $4.1 million if they would allow a five-lane road that would run through town, a move the town turned down.

Years of negotiations resulted in Chancellor Michael Hooker finally agreeing with the town on a narrow design. After Hooker’s death, Chancellor James Moeser and hospital officials tried to revisit a wider road. Town officials repeatedly resisted those efforts, pushing for a limited widening with better infrastructure for pedestrian and bicycle use.

After several forums on the project in 2002, an agreement was struck on a new design. The project is scheduled to go out for bid on July 1, with construction due to start in September.

Former council member Joe Capowski, who lives near the road, said he and his neighbors are delighted to see the improvements finally on the way. Capowski, who first got involved in discussions on the project in the 1980s, said people who own property along the road have been reluctant to make investments in their properties because of the uncertainty.

“This provides some stability,” he said. “It lifts a 20-year-old black cloud that’s been hanging over the neighborhood.”

Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy said the long effort was a victory for the town, “especially when you look at the fact that DOT started at five lanes.”

Foy said the town was helped considerably by Doug Gaylon, who represents the area on the DOT board. He said Gaylon was able to convince DOT officials that Chapel Hill wanted a different approach.

Although the town’s share of the project is small, the project does come at a cost to Chapel Hill Transit. Changing the frequency of routes and rerouting buses during construction could cost the transit system’s partners between $600,000 and $1.1 million. Construction on Columbia Street will affect the D, J, NS, V, CCX, CPX and JFX routes, which make 512 trips per day on the road, according to transit officials.

Foy said efforts are in the works to try to lower the cost, including the possibility that during construction Columbia Street would be one-way heading north in the morning and one-way heading south during the evening commute. That would require less transit re-routing, he said.

In other action, the council gave the go-ahead Monday night to the Residences at Grove Park, a high-density project downtown on a 12.9-acre site between Hillsborough Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The project is adjacent to Northampton Terrace. The first phase of the plan calls for a mix of 40 townhomes and 148 apartments and for a second phase with 158 apartments.
Also at the meeting, the council:

• Authorized the purchase of two additional electric hybrid buses with roughly $1.1 million from the recently passed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (also known as the stimulus bill);

• Authorized a contract with Walter Holmes Electric Inc. for $501,675 for the design and installation of athletic lights and poles at Cedar Falls, Hargraves, Homestead and Ephesus parks;

• Rescheduled to March 9 a public hearing to consider ordinances that would allow residents to keep up to 10 female chickens.

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