UNC advances Carolina North plan, but Dean Dome's future is uncertain
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Some critical decisions remain to be made at the chancellor's office in South Building (pictured). Photo: Cornell Watson/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The leadership of UNC-Chapel Hill is moving forward with plans to develop the Carolina North campus, significantly expanding the university's footprint across the town of Chapel Hill.
- The goal is to break ground on the expansion in 2027 and hopefully line up its opening with the creation of a new bus rapid transit route along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts told the university's board of trustees on Wednesday.
Why it matters: Carolina North, located at the site of the former Horace Williams Airport, has been a top priority for Roberts, who co-founded a private-equity firm that operates real estate funds, since he took on the role in 2024.
- The university views the land as a solution to several concerns: as a site for housing for growing the student body to match the state's growing population, a place for affordable housing in an expensive town, the home of a future engineering school, and more space for research.
Driving the news: Roberts formally asked the Board of Trustees for $8 million toward initial planning work for Carolina North on Wednesday.
Flashback: UNC moved to initially close Horace Williams Airport in 2007, but plans for developing it were scuppered by the Great Recession. The last airplane took off there in 2018.
- The 230 acres of Carolina North are bordered by Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Estes Drive, about a two-mile walk north of the intersection of Franklin and Columbia streets.
- Roberts views the land as being a "full-blown campus with a live-work- play-study-learn environment."
Zoom in: The construction would be financed through a combination of university funds, state support, debt, donations and public-private partnerships with developers.
- Planning for the first phase would study adding student housing, research and academic space, apartments, a hotel and retail space.
- Roberts said he hopes to work with the town of Chapel Hill to make affordable housing for workers a key component of Carolina North and noted the university doesn't have much dedicated graduate student housing.
- In a statement, Chapel Hill Mayor Jess Anderson called it "an exciting opportunity for the town" that will help fill housing needs and improve traffic.
Between the lines: Multiple infrastructure upgrades already underway help leaders make the case for building Carolina North now.
- State transportation workers are expanding Interstate 40 in Orange County and redoing the exit ramps at exit 266, timing Roberts tells Axios "is fortuitous," since the bulk of North Carolina's population would take that exit to reach the satellite campus.
- And bus rapid transit — which moves people between places quicker by putting fast buses in dedicated lanes with few stops — is slated to begin running in Chapel Hill in 2029.
State of play: Roberts told Axios that owning so much land gives the school "tremendous flexibility."
- "Carolina North represents not just the ability, but the obligation to use an asset owned by the people of North Carolina to serve the people," Roberts told Axios. "I've been asked why now, and my answer is that, in some ways, I'm surprised it's taken so long, because most universities would give anything to have this kind of resource so close by."
Between the lines: Left unsaid in Roberts' plans to the Board of Trustees is what will happen to the Dean E. Smith Center, the Tar Heels' iconic basketball arena since 1986.
- The university is still talking with key stakeholders on the future of the "Dean Dome," though former coach Roy Williams and players like Tyler Hansbrough are now publicly pushing for the university to renovate the building rather than relocate men's basketball operations to Carolina North.
What they're saying: "There is no perfect solution to the question of where we should be playing basketball and what we should do about the arena," Roberts told Axios. "We think Carolina North could be a good solution. What's not an option is the status quo."
- Roberts noted the university needs to spend $80 million to $100 million replacing the arena's roof, upgrading bathrooms and fixing concessions, among other upgrades. But, as he told the Triangle Business Journal last year, those upgrades wouldn't address other challenges with the Dean Dome, including parking and the lack of premium seating.
- "Before you spend that amount of money, you need to step back and say, 'Should we take that approach, which is really a band-aid?" Roberts said.
Even if it's more expensive, former players have been lobbying against a move. Williams said he supports "remodeling, renovating, whatever we need to do."
- "I do not want to go off campus," Williams said in a taped message posted to the new social media account Smith Center South. In a similar video, Hansbrough said, "the energy and the atmosphere in the Smith Center are incredible."