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Larry Chason and his wife, Tina, bought their modest ranch house on Guyer Street in High Point 38 years ago. The couple liked the quiet neighborhood. They raised their daughter there and planned to spend their retirement days gardening and working on Larry’s 1968 Pontiac.

A mile from High Point University, they never considered that the school would end up in their backyard. Not until last year, when it purchased more than 10 acres of wooded property behind their home to build a 560-person dorm complex.

“They’ve practically ruined our retirement,” Larry Chason said.

HPU, like UNCG and N.C. A&T, has seen unprecedented growth in recent years. As enrollment swells at the universities, growth is a tense issue among some neighboring communities, businesses and local governments.

The schools are looking outside their boundaries to meet needs — with mixed receptions. Some neighbors object to what they see as the destruction of their communities, while others welcome the changes.

Squeezed by growth

In the past three years, as HPU added new facilities, the school purchased 140 homes — including nearly every home on the Chasons’ side of the street. That site is set to become a parking lot for the new dorm.

School officials say they paid better than market value for most of the properties, some of which they say were nearly uninhabitable.

Marshall Morgan offered three rental properties he owns near the development, including one next door to Chason. HPU bought the Guyer Street property for $125,000, about $35,000 more than Morgan — a real estate agent by trade — estimates the home was worth. “Given the circumstances, I think they’ve been very generous,” he said.

“We try to keep great relations with the neighbors,” said HPU spokesman Chris Dudley.

However, Chason and his wife do not want to leave the home they made so many memories in. He says he has heard a lot lately about sacrifices being made for the sake of progress — but wonders what the university gave up.

“We’re the ones sacrificing,” he said. “I don’t understand how any part of it is their sacrifice.”
Dudley said the university’s growth is increasing national focus on High Point and improving the local economy. He said the school always is open to hearing the concerns of its neighbors.

Chason and HPU may resolve the conflict in the next few weeks. The High Point City Council tabled a vote to approve HPU’s rezoning request for the parking lot earlier this month until the two parties discuss the issue.

In Greensboro, neighbors living near UNCG have dealt with issues similar to the Chasons’ for years.

Neighbors in College Park rallied last year after the school expressed an interest in buying their property.

Many property owners took offense, and some feared the school would use eminent domain to force them out.

School officials met with the property owners to alleviate fears. College Park remains a potential growth area in the university’s master plan, but UNCG officials said they have no intention of purchasing property there.

The private sector

The indirect impact of growth at the universities raised even more concerns.

UNCG reported a 23 percent increase in the number of students living off campus from 2003 to 2007. The school anticipates more than 17,200 students taking classes on campus this fall. About 75 percent of students live off campus each year, according to the school’s data. The demand for off-campus housing created an apartment boom in the past decade.

Developers leveled rows of houses to make room for new apartment complexes, while larger developments replaced older, smaller ones.

Sara Kraft is among those students looking to move into one of these complexes.
Kraft spent a recent summer afternoon apartment shopping. The UNCG junior decided to move off campus and looked to nearby apartment complexes for a new place.

“An apartment feels more like home,” she said. “I can live in it year-round.”

However, many of those living in the neighborhoods where the apartment buildings are being built aren’t happy with the changes.

“A good, vibrant city has to have development,” said Lindley Park resident Brooks Truitt, “but ask them if they would want it in their backyard.”

Truitt grew up in Greensboro’s Starmount neighborhood but moved to one of the many craftsman-style bungalows on Walker Avenue in 1985. The youthful, Bohemian feel of Lindley Park drew Truitt to the area, which is home to bars, restaurants, a small grocery store and a few other businesses.

The neighborhood’s concerns boiled over earlier this summer when a contractor said he intended to build an apartment complex at Walker Avenue and Greenway Drive.

Lindley Park and Sunset Hills residents rallied, quickly using mass e-mails and neighborhood meetings to organize. They stood ready to present a unified front opposing the development to City Hall.

The developer’s plan eventually failed. In a letter to residents, developer Don Cato apologized for upsetting the neighborhood. He wrote that he made a mistake and failed to purchase enough land to build the apartments.

“They have a right to grow,” Truitt said of the university. “But not to alter the aesthetic of Lindley Park and Sunset Hills.”

Making compromises

Seth Coker co-owns Signature Property Group, a development firm that specializes in apartment construction and management. Coker said building in and around the neighborhoods close to the universities is tricky business.

Part of the trick, Coker said, is finding property to develop that will not upset neighbors. Coker built several complexes on former industrial sites and warehouses, and one over a former junkyard.

“I don’t want to be in the business of destroying viable single-family neighborhoods,” he said.
Despite that, he’s not unfamiliar with controversy. Several homeowners raised concerns a few years ago when Signature began plans for its Campus Crossing on Spring Garden complex.

Coker met with the homeowners and tried to develop compromises, including moving the complex’s parking lot out of sight.

In another instance, Coker converted a home into a leasing office rather than destroy it to help blend the apartment building into the neighborhood. They’re not cheap compromises, and they seldom satisfy everyone, but it’s a price Coker says he’s willing to pay to keep the peace.

Embracing the growth

Some areas welcome the effects of increased enrollment. The red clay glows in the summer sun as workers dig and build at Fulton Place Apartments on West Lee Street, a former industrial site. The busy work site is the first sign of new construction along this section of Lee Street in decades. The complex, marketed to college students, will be able to house 244 people.

Many see it as a turning point for Lee Street and the Glenwood neighborhood.

“We’re just hoping there’s some way to connect the dots between our downtown and the interstate,” said Frank Mellon, a principal owner of Berkley Hall Construction, the company responsible for the project.

UNCG owns three properties on Lee Street and added other properties along the corridor to its master plan in 2007, according to Mike Byers, assistant vice chancellor of business affairs.
“It hasn’t morphed into that next phase yet. That next phase may involve us heavily, we don’t know, but it’s worth looking at seriously,” Byers said.

Mayor Yvonne Johnson said she believes UNCG’s development plans and growth related to the university, such as Fulton Place, could help transform the nearby Glenwood neighborhood.

“I think it can really bring some services and businesses that aren’t there that could help economic development,” Johnson said.

Plagued by crime in recent decades, many of Glenwood’s once-beautiful craftsman homes are boarded up and in disrepair. Some residents see a community worth saving, a place where college professionals and students could live alongside longtime residents.

Chief among its advocates is Bulent Bediz. An architect by training and artist by trade, Bediz is now a blend of the two, plus a landlord as he attempts to manage and renovate the more than 70 homes and properties he owns in Glenwood.

“It’s not about making money,” he said. “I really had a vision here and I’m too stubborn and too foolish to quit.”

Bediz has seen the good and bad sides of Glenwood.

He talks about its architectural features longer than he talks about being beaten with a hammer this spring by a man he caught stealing copper from one of his homes.

Bediz said he believes UNCG’s interest and the interest of developers could help revive the area he loves so much, so long as it’s good growth.

“This is really a great location in the city,” he said. “It just needs some attention.”

Good student neighbors

A few miles away, another community is embracing the growth spurred by A&T.

Carolyn Boyd has lived on a street that bears her family name for more than 71 years. A student at A&T in the late 1950s, Boyd remembers growing up in the shadow of the campus and the pride that locals took in the school.

But the neighborhood began to shift about 12 years ago. Longtime residents began to move or die, their homes becoming rental properties. Boyd and her son Charles watched from their front porch as crime began to rise. A homicide occurred across the street last year. Abandoned houses became crack dens. The change broke Boyd’s heart.

The neighborhood is shifting again, however, this time with students filling the houses and new apartment complexes. Sixty-four percent of A&T students live off campus.

The Boyds said they feel safer, that the students are quiet for the most part and respectful. For the Boyds, A&T is the agent of change they’ve been looking for.

“The neighborhood’s just gone so bad,” Charles Boyd said. “We just wish A&T would come on and take it over.” But not completely, Carolyn Boyd adds.

Sullivan Welborne Jr., A&T vice chancellor of student affairs, said the school makes an effort to reach out to the community and make homeowners and business owners partners in the school’s growth.

“In the end, our university has a responsibility to make not just the community in the university positive, but have a positive impact on the community outside the university,” he said.

Carolyn Boyd wants to leave the house to her children and grandchildren so that the family’s tie to the school goes unbroken.

“Just like those fine houses around UNCG, I intend to stay here and be around them,” she said.

Life after the spurt

In an effort to help guide growth, Greensboro planning officials are working with neighborhood groups, the schools and developers to create development overlays and master plans.

“There’s no question they have a responsibility to the city and the city has a responsibility to facilitate that,” said Mike Kirkman, a comprehensive planner with the city.

In High Point, Mayor Becky Smothers said the city has adopted new rules in the planning and zoning department to address the university’s rapid growth.

All three schools believe they’ve hit a plateau for development but anticipate future growth. Projections show college enrollment leveling off during the next five years, then climbing again by 2013.

Seth Coker said he believes development related to the universities will slow as well.

“I think we’ve reached a point where we’ve finally gotten enough housing for students,” he said.

Contact J. Brian Ewing at 373-7351 or brian.ewing@news-record.com