title
Open a Public Hearing and Consider Authorizing an Economic Development Agreement for the East Rosemary Downtown Deck & Redevelopment Project.
body
Staff:
Department:
Maurice Jones, Town Manager
Town Manager
Dwight Bassett, Economic Development Officer
Town Manager
Amy Oland, Director
Business Management
Bob Jessup, Attorney
Sanford Holshouser
Overview: The Town of Chapel Hill is committed to strengthening its fiscal and economic sustainability by enhancing downtown. The Town encourages developing new office space, which was stagnant for over a decade, to help strengthen the economy of downtown.
Several new projects will assist with improving the office market for Chapel Hill in general.
- Well Dot Inc. announced its plans to invest $3 million to establish a new operations and corporate center along Franklin Street in Chapel Hill that will create about 400 high-paying jobs over a five year period of time.
- Grubb Properties is building a new 100,000SF office building at Glen Lennox and other office buildings are in consideration.
- Downtown needs office space to begin to move the economy toward a vibrant and business supported district.
This current vision for East Rosemary project came about from Grubb Properties acquisition of the 137 E. Franklin/136 E. Rosemary building and parking deck. There have been many conversations about the possibility of this becoming an innovation hub for downtown with participation by UNC and other organizations. As a part of that idea and vision, Clay Grubb has his team to explore a larger vision that included the redevelopment of East Rosemary in general and landed on a vision to begin with a new office building with wet lab and 1100 space parking deck. He was asked to focus on a singular project that could begin to change the east end of downtown.
Downtown and more specifically the east end of downtown has needed reinvestment to help in building a strong economic climate for all of downtown. Both the existing Gr...
Click here for full text