Swearing-in, NCCU expansion top City Council agenda

The election season formally comes to an end tonight with the swearing in of the four re-elected incumbents to the mayoral and City Council seats -- or, as it's formally called, their "installation."

BCR projects the installation should proceed without any interruption in government service, since all four Councilfolk have previously been installed in their positions, meaning re-installation should proceed without a hitch. (Yes, I find the term "installation" to be a bit technical, don't you?)

At any rate, the most interesting thing on tonight's Council agenda -- besides the rounds of applause and well-wishes from members of the community who come by to attend the installation, and the recycling contract mentioned earlier in the Fishwrap -- is the set of site plan and minor special use permit (MSUP) requests coming in from North Carolina Central.

Among the requests is a site plan and MSUP for a new parking deck on the site of an existing parking lot north of Lawson St., a loose demarcation line between parts of NCCU and its surrounding neighborhood.

The new Latham Parking Deck would provide space for almost 750 cars, along with 108 spaces left behind on what's already today a surface parking lot for NCCU. 

That provides enough parking to meet the needs of other projects on the docket for tonight -- including a new school of nursing facility and a 520-bed dormitory, Chidley Hall -- along with an additional 409 spaces of "excess parking to serve the campus," according to the staff report.

Although the structured parking will come on the site of an existing lot, don't be surprised to see community opposition to the moves at the meeting. As we've discussed here before, the dramatic expansion envisioned in NCCU's campus master plan has created strong tensions in a neighborhood heavily populated with NCCU alums and even the descendants of some of the school's founder.

On the one hand, additional parking provides a salve to residents, who've complained about the spillover effects of parking on neighborhood streets. (One entrepreneurial NCCU student this spring offered to the City that he'd tow illegally-parked vehicles for free, making it up on the impound and retrieval fees, a concept the Council said thanks-but-no-thanks to.)

On the other, the presence of more parking spaces may someday support further expansion, with the site plan request for the parking deck noting that among other factors, "future parking determinations that propose to use the Latham Deck will be based on utilization studies" of capacity in the deck.

The larger deck also brings the spectre of more than tripling the amount of parking at the existing lot (and thus traffic), from 240 cars today to over 850 once the deck is completed.

We wouldn't expect the outcome tonight to be in any doubt, but don't be surprised to see a spirited debate over the item.

MSUPs and site plans for the aforementioned School of Nursing facility -- part of the plan for the program to become a full-fledged NCCU professional school and to double enrollment to help meet the state's nursing shortage -- and a new dormitory will also be on Council's agenda.

UDO text amendments on sedimentation and erosion control, previously reviewed and approved by the BOCC, will also appear on Council's docket; the consent agenda contains more intriguing details on the pothole audit we saw in the headlines recently, and one that will deserve its own BCR treatment later this week.

Comments

[ACW]

I think the parking deck is much-needed and a marvelous idea. I think the 'increased traffic' could be kept to a minimum if it were restricted to use for students who live on campus, freeing up some of the current residential lots -- which are mostly located right beside commuter lots and within the boundaries of campus -- for use by commuters. Just my $.02 :)

[bc]

I believe that the new NCCU deck will have a new book store on the street level facing the campus.

[Bull City Rising]

Quite right on the bookstore being in the structure, which I should have mentioned in the post.

@ACW: What Id love to see vis a vis parking would be incentives to get NCCU students parking in vacant or underutilized lots in and around downtown or on its east side, and to get Central students parking and commuting via the proposed Duke-downtown-NCCU shuttle.

That way, you get more feet-on-the-street patronizing local businesses and less cars shuttling down Fayetteville St. Of course, itd be the weirdest park-and-ride reverse-commute system you ever saw.

[ACW]

When I was working on that side of town, I researched taking the bus from work to NCCU and back rather than parking on campus, as well as taking the bus there and back from home. It just wasn't feasible given the bus/shuttle schedules. Now, for this plan to work, the transit system would have to coordinate with the university to get students on campus early enough to make it to class on time (without arriving hours early, either). As it was, I would've had to have left work (or home) twenty minutes early to get to the stop in time and would have been -- at best -- twenty minutes late for class. It's often underestimated how many NCCU students are nontraditional.
There's also the issue that (when I looked into it last year) students past high school don't get any kind of fare discount. Other places I've lived will give *some* kind of incentive for anyone with a valid student ID... but not here. When it costs college students less in gas and time to drive their own vehicles, where is the motivation to take mass transit?
There are all kinds of things that could be done to improve the situation. At the beginning of each semester, the campus BBS is flooded with requests for info about what's within walking distance. Sadly, there are few responses.