Pedestrian-Oriented Development Needs More Auto Parking

"The aptly named Bicycle Apartments student housing development near downtown Chapel Hill is formally starting construction today," reported Amanda Hoyle for the Triangle Business Journal on May 8, 2013.

Trinitas Ventures LLC, a national developer of student housing communities, is the lead developer of the project that is slated to open in August of 2014.

"But almost immediately after the project was approved, Trinitas rebranded the Bicycle Apartments as LUX," reports David Hudnall for Indy Week, an alternative weekly paper published in Durham, formerly know as the Independent Weekly.  

During the permitting phase, the Chapel Hill Town Council had "approved a special-use permit for the Bicycle Apartments... and was granted a reduction in the number of parking units it was required to build—241 spots, down from 330," adds Hudnall.

"We believe excessive parking is not necessary at this location, as this project lends itself to a pedestrian-oriented development," Trinitas's representatives said at the time.

With the new name, apparently, comes increased parking demands, as these millennials have not forsaken the auto.

A call over to LUX's offices last week confirmed that, due to a shortage of available parking spaces, the apartment complex rents ninety additional spaces from its neighbors...Even those don't meet the demand; a lottery is held at the beginning of every school year to determine which of LUX's six hundred residents get the luxury of paying roughly $100 for a parking spot.

Hudnall calls the rebranding one of "the most flagrant example of this kind of bait-and-switch [that] is happening all over Chapel Hill." The Bicycle Apartments replaced a low density but affordable apartment complex, according to Nancy Oates of Chapel Hill Watch.

The real theme that Hudnall and Oates write about is not parking but gentrification. Chapel Hill, with a population nearing 60,000, is changing, going more upscale. Rents are rising, but so are building heights and densities. All too often, though, the problem is that they don't occur together.

Hat tip to Pat Carstensen.

Related articles:

• "Lotsa lux", Chapel Hill Watch, Sept. 9, 2013
• "Chapel Hill’s Bicycle Apartments to break ground," Triangle Business Journal, May 8, 2013