Floor-to-ceiling windows in the fifth-floor Sky Lounge of the Greenbridge development gave Rosemary Imagined meeting attendees a bird’s eye view of their beloved downtown — and from the windows, community members could point a finger right where they hope to see change.

On Monday, the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership and the town of Chapel Hill hosted a community review meeting to look over a revised draft plan for the downtown Rosemary Street corridor –– a stretch of Rosemary Street that goes from South Merritt Mill Road to Henderson Street.

The last meeting, another community review session, was held on April 10.

Megan Wooley, a housing and neighborhood services planner for the town, and Meg McGurk, the executive director of the Downtown Partnership, presented the revised Rosemary Street Vision and Implementation Plan to a room of roughly 40 members of the community.

The plan has been revised since the last meeting in April, after McGurk and Wooley held stakeholder meetings around the community and interacted with downtown residents.

The concept map included in the implementation plan identifies potential redevelopment sites downtown, locations of parks and green spaces and pedestrian and bicycle connections. 

One of the questions McGurk said she and Wooley have tried to consider is, “Is (the plan for Rosemary Street) reflecting what the community wants?”

Wooley pointed out a few areas that specifically changed since the community last gathered. 

The alley parallel to Lindsay Street in Northside raised questions from the community, she said.

“There are concerns about having an alley back there,” said Wooley. “There are concerns about loitering, trash, noise. We are instead proposing a green landscaped buffer. This would provide a buffer between the neighborhood and the commercial uses.”

Buffers of greenery and landscaping would be used in many other places in the redevelopment of Rosemary Street, Wooley said, especially in areas where neighborhoods and potential development sites are right next to each other.

Wooley also said there was interest in increasing the number of connections between Rosemary Street and Franklin Street. 

“People walk and they bike and they find the little ways to go, and we want to make those little ways to go safe, well-lit, well-signed so that people know they’re there,” she said.

According to the implementation plan, three proposed areas where connections could be made possible if they realigned North Roberson Street, Kenan Street and Mallette Street. These areas would begin as pedestrian walkways and in the long run could become car passageways.

“There’s the possibility of becoming car connection if the public wants it,” Wooley said.

Notable:

The implementation plan broke the re-development of Rosemary Street up into 21 “visions” for the downtown corridor, organized based on themes that came out of the Chapel Hill 2020 comprehensive plan. 

The themes include: A Place for Everyone, Community Prosperity and Engagement, Getting Around, Good Places New Spaces, Nurturing Our Community and Town and Gown Collaboration

The plan lays out all 21 visions for downtown Rosemary Street, breaking them down by who will lead the vision’s implementation, who will partner with the leader, what the next steps will be and what some ideas are for seeing the vision to fruition.

Quotable:

Wooley said there is no rhyme nor reason to the numbers assigned to the Rosemary Imagined implementation plan’s “visions”. The numbers won’t affect what gets done when or what is most important to the team, she said.

“There’s no prioritization,” Wooley said. “The way it’s organized is based on the themes of the (Chapel Hill) 2020 plan. The numbers are kind of random within the themes.”