He’d made a tactical mistake with his board a few day earlier.

And now his pepperoni pizza has arrived without the pepperoni.

Dollar is the younger-than-you’d-expect director of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill. He’s bringing sexy back to saving old homes. Not my words. His. He gets passionate for all things musty.

But he’s frustrated this afternoon.

You see, most of the time, Dollar wants to save a house. Lately it’s been the Kidder-Graham House owned by the former UNC president on Battle Lane. In 1968 a movie director filmed a sexploitation flick there called “Three in the Attic.” Dollar tried to watch it recently and gave up. Not a classic.

Now, instead of a house, Dollar wants to save a neighborhood.

He’s been getting 15 to 20 e-mails a day from folks in Glen Lennox. Property owner Grubb Properties wants to tear down the 400-plus cottage-style apartments and historic shopping center and build a multi-story mix of new homes, apartments and shopping.

It would be the envy of almost any town. But Glen Lennox has a special place in people’s hearts. Built for soldiers after the war, it remains a quaint neighborhood of green matchbook lawns and flower beds. When you drive down N.C. 54 into town, you can’t help but glance over and smile.

But when Dollar broached the topic with his board — who better to lead the preservationist charge than the preservation society? — he found not everyone was ready to log on to www.saveglenlennox.org.

“Somehow, I’ve got to find out how Chapel Hill feels about Glen Lennox,” he says.

The board’s desire for more discussion makes sense, Dollar grudgingly concedes. There’s a lot we need to learn about Glen Lennox: Who lives there? How long have they lived there? Where would they go if they had to move?

I told Dollar about a discussion the Carrboro Board of Aldermen had years ago when some wanted to create a historic preservation district around the old mill houses. (This was before the 800-square-foot mill houses were selling for $250,000.)

Alderman Hilliard Caldwell opposed any rules that would keep homeowners from making changes. The tin-roof houses were shacks, he said, built as cheap housing for folks who couldn’t afford anything better. What was worth preserving?

Glen Lennox’s brick bungalows are not architecturally stellar, Dollar says.

But people aren’t thinking bricks when they’re thinking about Glen Lennox.

“Most people have a sentimental connection; everyone talks about that wonderful entrance,” Dollar says. “I think it really embodies what people think of Chapel Hill.”

“It is iconic of what Chapel Hill was, and with redevelopment, what it is becoming.”

Mark Schultz is the editor of The Chapel Hill News and the Orange editor of The News & Observer. Contact him at 932-2003 or mark.schultz@nando.com