DrWebChancellor says ‘long overdue’ Carolina North project will break ground in 2027 – The Daily Tar Heel
UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts listens to other speakers at the Board of Trustees meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. Photo by Eva DewChancellor says ‘long overdue’ Carolina North project will break ground in 2027
Editor’s Note: The featured image at the top is from WP AI.
By Regan Butler, University Editor, January 21
@reganxbutler, @dailytarheel | university@dailytarheel.com
Regan Butler is the 2025-26 university editor. She previously served as the summer university editor and a senior writer on the University Desk. Regan is a sophomore majoring in media and journalism and English with a creative writing concentration. Send tips to reganmb.68 on Signal.
Updated as of 11:02 a.m.
The Carolina North project will officially start its first phase of development this spring and is set to break ground in summer 2027, Chancellor Lee Roberts announced at the Board of Trustees University Affairs Committee meeting on Wednesday. The planned development, in the works since the early 2000s, would act as UNC’s own satellite campus about 2 miles north of main campus.
“This will be the largest expansion of the University since the cornerstone of the Old East building was laid in 1793, over 232 years ago,” a campuswide email announcement, sent to The Daily Tar Heel in advance, states.
The BOT approved a proposal for advance planning spending authority for Carolina North on Monday during its Budget, Finance and Infrastructure Committee meeting. The proposal will grant the University $8 million to hire consultants for the project and refine the design for the proposed multi-purpose tract.
Roberts also said, in an interview with The DTH, that the University favors the site as a “good possible location” for a new iteration of the Dean E. Smith Center — amid contentious debate about where the beloved basketball arena should land.
A map of the regional transportation network surrounding the Carolina North property from UNC’s 2007 Carolina North Master Plan. Map courtesy of UNC-Chapel Hill.What the Carolina North campus will host
The email announcement dubs Carolina North a multi-purpose “learn-live-work-play” area focusing on academics, research, housing, recreation, retail and dining — for both the University and the Town of Chapel Hill. The mixed-use space will act as an extension of UNC’s current main campus foothold, with new transportation plans aiming to connect the two.
The plot of land set aside for the project is roughly 230 acres, set on a larger University-owned site that consists of about 1,000 acres — west of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Chapel Hill.
First imagined in 2006, then formalized in the 2007 Carolina North Master Plan, the development project has been postponed over the years due to UNC contending with “constrained resources,” according to UNC’s facilities website. In the meantime, the 2019 Campus Master Plan opted for renovating existing infrastructure and keeping new builds on the main campus.
Roberts said an increased demand for STEM degrees and the tremendous demand for housing both on campus and in The Town of Chapel Hill were forces that drove UNC to take action on the Carolina North project now.
As incoming class sizes continue to grow, on-campus housing and facilities needs at UNC surge. The chancellor said that UNC’s projected 2,000-student expansion over the next four years heightened the need for space in all aspects of campus life. Carolina North will host housing for undergraduate and graduate students and local workforce families.
“My question is not ‘Why now?’ but ‘What has taken so long?’” Roberts said. “To me, this is long overdue.”
Carolina North’s academic and research infrastructure will have a particular focus in certain STEM fields: the health sciences, artificial intelligence, data and biomedical engineering, with an emphasis interdisciplinary research.
UNC will also partner with the Town to implement the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project by 2030, which includes dedicated bus lanes between the campuses aimed at improving traffic flow. Multi-use paths for pedestrians and biking, separate from vehicle traffic, are also included in the project.
Recreation on the site includes planned additions of “civic, cultural, artistic and performing arts spaces,” and also “enhanced connections” with Carolina North Forest trails.
The Dean Dome dilemma
Via Wikipedia…No decisions have been made about the Dean E. Smith Center yet, Roberts said, but UNC contends Carolina North is a good possible spot.
“There’s no perfect location,” he said.
Before spending a large sum on renovating the Smith Center — an estimated $80 to 100 million minimum needed for a roof replacement alone — the chancellor said UNC needs to step back and consider whether that is the best use of the money.
But, Roberts said UNC is still considering multiple possibilities in what he projects will be a 40-or-50-year decision: renovating the arena, building something new close by, or building something new in a different location.
There has been some high-profile opposition to the relocation of the Smith Center, including from former men’s basketball coach Roy Williams, who made a call-to-action video condemning the consideration and promoting a petition created by community members.
In the video, Williams said his predecessor and the center’s namesake, former coach Dean Smith, implored him to help keep the center on campus. Many community members and signatories have expressed a desire to keep the center in its current location, primarily so it is accessible to students hoping to attend home games on campus.
Roberts said it is a good thing there is a wide range of views on the matter because it indicates a passion for UNC basketball.
“But one thing that’s not an option for the arena is the status quo,” he said.
Funding streams, sustainability
Carolina North projects will be funded through a mix of internal and external streams: state support, University trust funds, revenue-backed debt, private donations and third-party investment, the campuswide email states.
The go-ahead on this project comes amid the implementation of $70 million in budget cuts across the University, due to what Roberts has called an era of necessary “belt-tightening.”
Community members were recently critical of the administration’s decision to close UNC’s six area studies centers as part of these cuts, with more centers and institutes and academic program slashes soon to come. But, Roberts said he thinks these cuts can coexist with spending on a large developmental undertaking like Carolina North.
“I really squarely reject the idea that if we are retrenching in one area, we can’t be growing somewhere else,” he said. “We have an incredibly complex organization, and I think as the world changes around us, we’re almost always going to be growing in some areas and shrinking in others.”
In the 2007 outline for Carolina North, there was a focus on sustainability in construction and maintenance, but the campuswide email announcement did not mention any plans of the sort.
In 2010, UNC pledged to end coal use by 2020, but went back on that promise — and now, the University is beholden to a plan to be carbon neutral by 2040. UNC has seen immense opposition to the use of coal power on campus from community members, notably the student climate advocacy group Sunrise UNC.
When The DTH asked Roberts if the University would pledge to make Carolina North carbon neutral, he said that “there is a lot that can and will be done with sustainability on the campus.”
He also added that a benefit of completely new construction, as opposed to remodels, is that it allows for usage of the latest LEED-certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards.
The announcement of this plan comes amid facilities workers at UNC voicing concerns of an overburdening workload, citing fewer specialized employees. On whether Carolina North would spark a proportional hiring wave for maintenance staff, Roberts said the University needs to “provide the resources to maintain our facilities as we continue to grow.”
Next steps
To channel community feedback throughout Carolina North’s development, the University is forming an “umbrella advisory group” — representing “faculty, staff, students, alumni, trustees, former student-athletes, and community stakeholders,” according to the email announcement.
Roberts announced the committee’s three co-chairs at the BOT’s University Affairs committee meeting: Trustee Brian Allen, Gladys Hall Coates Distinguished Professor of Public Law and Government Anita Brown-Graham and Aaron Nelson, President and CEO of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce.
The University will soon seek advance planning funds for the project, and issue qualification requests this spring. UNC projects to begin groundbreaking in summer 2027, the email states.
Phase 1 of the project will include evaluations of “student housing, academic and research space, multi-family residential, hotel and ground-floor retail,” largely through public-private partnerships.
@dailytarheel | university@dailytarheel.com
See Also: https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2026/01/20/roy-williams-urges-unc-to-renovate-dean-dome-instead-of-building-off-campus-arena/ and https://www.cbs17.com/sports/unc/roy-williams-passionate-plea-keep-north-carolina-tar-heels-basketball-dean-smith-center/ and updates for latest news.
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