From what we've heard, few residents are opposed to UNC's plan for building the research and entrepreneurial facility that is known as the Innovation Center.

And, indeed, it sounds like a wonderful prospect. By all indications, the center, intended to help faculty researchers develop and market new products and techniques, will draw some of the brightest and most energetic minds to our little burg and help keep them here. It should help generate economic activity, create important new products and advance the store of knowledge. All good things.

What little objection has been raised has had more to do with some of the particulars, not with the need for the project as a whole.

The university proposes to put the Innovation Center on a part of the Carolina North tract, and it wants Chapel Hill to grant a special-use permit for the center before the town has had a chance to fully review the master plan for the wider Carolina North project. The university hopes to move swiftly on the Innovation Center, partly because of concerns that a long delay might dissuade the developer it has been working with on the project.

That's a valid concern. So is the one expressed by those who wonder at the wisdom of approving individual buildings at Carolina North before signing off on a master plan that is supposed to guide the development of the tract.

This is the first piece of the huge puzzle that will be Carolina North, and it's important that the university and the town work well together to make it fit. The town has to respect the legitimacy of the university's goals, and the university has to respect the town's responsibility to the wider community.

The Innovation Center will set the tone for the rest of Carolina North, both in terms of what it is and the process by which it comes to be built. Let's make sure we get it right.