by Tracey Theret
Carrboro Commons Co-Editor

A new bike path available to Carrboro residents will help pave the way for a family to purchase an affordable home in town.

The path, which begins in the back of Roberson Place, runs behind a long strip of the neighborhood’s backyards and snakes up to a piece of property on Eugene Street, formerly owned by Piedmont Electric.

The new Roberson bike path runs from the bottom of Roberson Place up to the old Piedmont Electric property on Eugene Street. The Carrboro Board of Aldermen transferred remaining property to the Orange Community Housing and Land Trust, which will build an affordable home on the land.

Photo by Tracey Theret

When the Carrboro Board of Aldermen initially discussed purchasing this property in efforts to complete the path, members said they wanted to use the remaining Eugene Street land to build an affordable home.

“Anytime we get an opportunity to add even one affordable unit we want to take it,” Alderman Jacquelyn Gist said.

The board unanimously passed a resolution transferring the remaining property to the Orange Community Housing and Land Trust in a meeting Feb. 5.

The Land Trust is a nonprofit organization that works to provide affordable housing to people who live or work in Orange County and make less than 80 percent of the area’s medium income. It has provided 13 units of affordable housing in Carrboro since 2000.

Executive Director Robert Dowling said plans are in the works to build a single-family bungalow-style house at the Eugene Street location. The house will have three bedrooms and two bathrooms, comprising about 1,400 square feet.

It will cost approximately $190,000 to build the house, Dowling said, but it will be sold at about $125,000. The trust uses federal and state subsidies to make affordable housing available to Orange County residents.

For a family to be eligible to purchase an affordable home with the trust, they must apply to the program and qualify financially.

“They have to make enough income to qualify for mortgage, but not too much income, or else they won’t qualify,” Dowling said.

The income cut-off point for a family of three is $51,350. Dowling said this is the type of family that will most likely inhabit the home.

“The house we’re going to build on Eugene Street is going to be a nice opportunity for someone because it’s going to be a really close walk to downtown Chapel Hill and Carrboro,” Dowling said.

In the meantime, the rest of the Carrboro community can use the completed Roberson bike path. Construction was funded by the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization.

According to Transportation Planner Adena Messinger, the path connects Roberson Place, which is south of downtown off of Greensboro Street, and provides an off-road connection up to the Carr Mill Mall area.

“So if you take it up to the railroad tracks you can go left to downtown Carrboro, right to UNC or straight to downtown Chapel Hill,” Messinger said.

Initially, some residents were hesitant to welcome the project into their neighborhood, Gist said.

“People were a little freaked out about it at first,” Gist said. “It was a big visual change from kind of wooded to this… bike freeway in your backyard.”

Although Gist lives close to the new path, she has not yet used it. She said she imagines it eventually will be frequented by Roberson Place residents.

For more online:

- Carrboro Board of Aldermen:

http://townofcarrboro.org/gov.htm

- Orange Community Housing and Land Trust:

http:ochlt.org/