611 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. — Central Proposed Rezoning Site
A Texas-based developer has asked Chapel Hill to rezone a 3-acre stretch of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard for up to 310 apartments and ground-floor retail, just over a year after the town approved a fully affordable housing project on the very same land. SMN ATX Investments LLC filed the application Aug. 31, and unlike the plan it could displace, only a fraction of the new units would be priced within reach of lower-income renters.
The site at 611 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, a half-mile north of Franklin Street and the UNC-Chapel Hill campus, was approved in May 2025 for Hillside Trace, a 100% affordable six-story building with 190 apartments, according to the Raleigh News & Observer. That project was meant to serve middle-income workers and families, the paper reports. But Lawler Development Group LLC pulled out of the Hillside Trace deal earlier this year, according to a Chapel Hill spokeswoman cited in the same report, leaving the site’s future wide open just as SMN ATX moved in with its own vision…