CHAPEL HILL - With a 20-year plan for Carolina North approved, the university today takes ownership of another major piece of Chapel Hill real estate, the University Square and Granville Towers property near the center of downtown.

Technically, the new owner is the UNC Foundation, a separate entity that manages the endowment and funnels private donations into the university's coffers. The foundation is buying the 12-acre site for $46 million from the estate of Frank Kenan, the late entrepreneur and UNC benefactor.

The university has no concrete plans for the property, except that any redevelopment will include a parking deck. The UNC Foundation is partnering with Atlanta-based Cousins Properties to conduct a market study to determine the best way to redevelop the site.

Cousins has developed real estate all over the United States, but the company's work on Emory Point in its own hometown is what piqued UNC's interest. Cousins' role is to develop 93,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space and 172 condos near Emory University, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Veterans Administration hospital in Atlanta.

"They'd had some experience on a mixed-use project on the edge of a campus," said Dick Mann, UNC's vice chancellor for finance and administration, explaining how UNC chose Cousins after interviewing several private developers. "We won't see the results of that report probably for a few months. It'll probably be a year or two before anything is finalized."

Like the Carolina North plan, Emory Point is stalled because another partner company has struggled to secure financing for 275 apartments there.

Mann and other UNC officials continue to communicate with developers such as Alexandria Real Estate Equities about opportunities at Carolina North. Before last year's economic collapse, Alexandria, based in California, had been planning to develop an 80,000-square-foot Innovation Center as the first building at Carolina North.

"We're hoping to get together some time this summer," said Mann. "I don't know exactly what their situation is. We're still very hopeful that this project can go forward. The question is whether the developer is in a postion to succeed or not."

Mann and others will also meet with representatives from Wexford Equities, another developer that, like Alexandria, specializes in science laboratories and related facilities. Wexford is among several companies that have contacted UNC with interest in developing parts of Carolina North.

"We are simply at an introductory stage to see if there are any projects of mutual interest we might pursue together," Mann said. "The capital markets are a big impediment now for any new development. We're in a situation too where state funding is not available for us either.

"If a private developer's involved, do they have access to capital?" he said. "If they don't, there's really not much, in my opinion, they can do with us."

jesse.deconto@nando.com or 932-8760