The request for a Neighborhood Conservation District information meeting will go to the Town Council June 25. From there, it will go to the Planning Board, which could hold the meeting late this summer.

Sixty-one percent of property owners asked for the information session. Another majority would have to submit a second petition to actually start the NCD planning process.

Grubb Properties has proposed replacing the 440 apartment units and shopping center in the Glen Lennox community between N.C. 54 and U.S. 15-501 with a multi-story mix of housing and commercial space.

The developers will take their concept plan, an informal first step in the town's review process, to the town's Community Design Commission in August. Submitting a concept plan gives the town an early opportunity to provide feedback.

The plan includes 908 new homes: 35 single-family lots and a mix of apartments, condominiums and town houses. It also shows retail, restaurant and office space, as well as three parking decks. There could be a 55,000-square-foot grocery store, a drugstore and a 700-seat movie theater, as well as a seven- to nine-story, 190-room hotel.

The public can view the developer's concept plan in the planning department at Chapel Hill Town Hall, 405 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.


Separate processes

Even if neighbors get the NCD, it would not necessarily affect Grubb's plans, town staff say. The two processes -- NCD and development review -- run separately. Each can typically take up to two years.

If approved, the NCD would create what's called an overlay district, or additional zoning rules that neighbors and the town decide could preserve the community's unique character.

But Grubb is requesting a change in the zoning altogether to allow its more dense project.

If the NCD were approved first, Town Council members could take that into consideration when voting on the rezoning request, town staff say. But they would not be bound by it.

Previous requests for NCDs have sought protections against long-term trends -- duplexes, teardowns, tree clearing -- that residents said were threatening their neighborhoods' character. This is the first time residents are asking about an NCD at the same time a developer is proposing such a big change to such a big portion of a specific neighborhood.

"What we don't have is anything with any certainty," planner Rae Buckley said Tuesday.

"We haven't even had the public information meeting," she said. "We'll just have to see."

Residents have started a Web site selling T-shirts with the Glen Lennox logo pictured above. Read more about Glen Lennox on our OrangeChat blog: blogs.newsobserver.com/orangechat