CHAPEL HILL - Campaigning for mayor in 2001, Kevin Foy held a press conference in front of a billboard advertising the controversial Meadowmont development, denouncing the half-million-dollar condos for sale there.

As Foy steps down as mayor eight years later, Meadowmont developer Roger Perry considers him a friend, not an enemy. A former chairman of the UNC Board of Trustees and longtime CEO of East-West Partners, Perry spent the last few years negotiating with Foy over the 250-acre Carolina North satellite campus and his own East 54 mixed-use complex.

With Foy's 12-year run in town government ending Monday, Perry and other political observers say Foy leaves a legacy of collaboration, despite his strong record of environmentalism and affordable housing.

"I've never felt the need to ask him, 'Why'd you trash Meadowmont so much back then?'" said Perry. "He hasn't done that in a long time. ... The reality of the times, and the reality of the economic needs of the town have altered his thinking."

Managing growth has been the town's biggest challenge for two decades, more so under Foy's watch, as developers like Perry filled in the gaps inside the "rural buffer." Local governments set the boundary to keep public water and sewer - and major development - out of the countryside north, west and south of Chapel Hill. Meadowmont, Southern Village and Larkspur filled up available green space, leaving developers to consider intensifying the uses of properties already developed.

"Until it happened, it was all theoretical," Foy said last week. "If you accept that population is going to grow, you've got this basic decision to make: Do you sprawl or do you grow denser? It forces you to make decisions you otherwise wouldn't make."

Former council members who worked with Foy - or ran against him - say he learned to balance the interests of private developers with council priorities like stormwater management and neighborhood protection.

"Times have changed," said Joe Capowski, a computer engineer whose two terms on the council overlapped with Foy's between 1997 and 1999. And even with the recent growth, Capowski said, "we haven't had many neighborhoods that have been destroyed."

Former mayor Rosemary Waldorf, a real-estate professional who defeated Foy in his first campaign for mayor in 1995, said her successor stayed true to his values by trying to improve development projects but not impede them.

"He was instrumental in getting more affordable housing in Meadowmont," she said. "He's managed to keep a civil and productive process in place with a group of very strong-minded council members. ... Kevin's a nice guy. You can always get so much more done if people sense you're a person of good will and an open mind."

Compromise

Under Foy, the council struck a compromise between caving in to heavy growth pressure and zoning out growth altogether. It pushed dense development toward downtown and N.C. 54, a choice that didn't please everyone. Some residents complain about the condos under construction at Greenbridge and East 54. But Capowski says those projects are the result of collaborative governance headed by Foy.

"The public participation in Chapel Hill's development process is legendary," he said. "There is no other place where people are so free to speak and there are so many meetings."

Former Town-Council member Julie McClintock, an EPA scientist, has worked for decades to protect Chapel Hill's landscape and neighborhoods from intense development. She credits Foy for building consensus ahead of big decisions.

"Over time, the council meetings got less contentious, and ironically, over time people began to think that there was some kind of cabal on the council," McClintock said.

In 2007, Foy fed that perception by running in a bloc with Jim Ward, Sally Greene, the ousted Cam Hill and the vanished Bill Strom, who dragged Foy and Mayor-elect Mark Kleinschmidt into controversy by resigning this summer with little explanation, two weeks too late to put his remaining two years on the election ballot.

Both Foy and Kleinschmidt have said they didn't know Strom was going to resign until he announced it, but that didn't stop critics from accusing them of conspiring to appoint another insider to Strom's seat.

In response, Kleinschmidt joined the chorus calling for the newly elected council to make the appointment, and the public has rallied around either election runner-up Matt Pohlman or former Planning Board member Donna Bell, who would ensure African American representation on the council. In the end, Foy stood alone in pushing for the current council to make the appointment before he stepped down.

"He opened himself up to the maximum amount of criticism," McClintock said. But "Kevin can't be blamed for Bill Strom's character or his actions."

'Perfect timing'

Strom distinguished himself in standing up to UNC as a town-gown Leadership Advisory Committee debated Carolina North in 2006 and 2007, but McClintock credits Foy for convening the Horace Williams Citizens Committee years earlier to gather citizen input well ahead of the university's master plan.

"It was perfect timing," McClintock said.

Since then, UNC leaders have collaborated with the town not only on Carolina North but also the siting of a new men's homeless shelter and plans to redevelop University Square and Granville Towers.

"UNC has bent over backwards to be good to the town, and that is mainly because of Kevin Foy's relationships with the chancellors," said Capowski.

Former Chancellor James Moeser, who stepped down last year, said he and Foy met at least once a month over the previous three or four years.

"We had an understanding that we would be totally honest with each other and we would never surprise each other," Moeser said. Foy helped the university figure out how to share plans with the public, he said.

Such top-down leadership has agitated Foy's critics over the past year, as not not having to seek re-election appeared to embolden him.

The proposed siting of the homeless shelter on university land near Homestead Park - which Foy, Moeser and Chris Moran of the Inter-Faith Council, announced at a press conference last May - has been perceived as a done deal, even though a public permitting process lies ahead.

Foy's public battle with developer Carol Ann Zinn and his initial support of health-benefits for retired council members helped spur a change movement that almost got first-term council member Matt Czajkowski elected mayor.

And Foy's lonely campaign to possibly put a county trash transfer station at the Town Operations Center on Millhouse Road galvanized nearby residents and led some county commissioners to accuse him of breaking a promise to relieve nearby neighbors of the town's garbage burden.

But Foy says he has tried to make decisions he thinks will be best for the whole community into the future. The unanimous approval of the Carolina North agreement may be the biggest.

"That was a stunning achievement," said Moeser. "That was beyond what I thought was possible."

Perry said the collaborative approach Foy learned over the years brought town-gown relations to an "all-time high."

"My guess is that Carolina North will prove to be a major part of [Foy's] legacy," Perry said.