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Recommendations
5.3 Future Land Use Categories, cont’d
7. OFFICE
A. Function
i. Provide a broad spectrum of local and regional employment that offers high quality
employment opportunities and supports a balanced tax base.
ii. Provide suitably located sites for single-use with the ancillary services necessary to sup-
port the predominant office use, in locations with good regional transportation acces-
sibility.
B. Preferred Uses
i. Land uses in the designation should consist of large-scale regional office developments
that feature high visual quality and high trip-generating uses, including office parks, re-
search and development parks, corporate headquarters, and emerging technologies
facilities that support local and regional employment opportunities balanced with the
Town’s small town historic character.
ii. Open space and recreational uses, such as walkways, greenways, and public plazas
and promenades, should be incorporated within this designation as an important ame-
nity to the Town and employees that work there.
C. General Policies + Development Character
i. Projects should be designed architecturally and functionally as a well-integrated unit.
Vehicular, transit, pedestrian and bicycle circulation should tie the district together in-
ternally and provide linkages with surrounding office, service and residential areas.
ii. Concentrations of office uses have high visibility along major corridors, their structures
accented with heavily landscaped greens and tree-lined boulevards, and reflect the
Town’s growing prominence as a local crossroads for business.
iii. Office buildings should be located close to the roadways with parking behind, or un-
derneath and/or located in the interior of the development, so that building fronts and
entrances face the street.
iv. The use of structured parking, shared parking or parking contained within buildings is
encouraged as a way of minimizing impervious surfaces and large expanses of surface
parking on sites.
v. In general, buildings should be of moderate scale, from three to seven stories. However,
land use or intensity/density transitions should be provided between this designation
and surrounding areas.
vi. Development along new or existing public streets should foster a walkable and enjoy-
able pedestrian environment. New development should avoid large expanses of blank
walls, should provide frequent street level entries, and should provide sidewalk ameni-
ties such as street furniture and lighting that encourage year round pedestrian use.
vii. Development shouldminimize impacts to sensitive natural resources, such as floodplains
and ponds, and should consider green building design techniques as an approach to
minimizing impacts.
viii.Design elements should be integrated with transit shelters, wide sidewalks, pedestrian
scaled lighting, street trees, benches, and entrances to buildings at the edges of street
rights-of-way. Bicycle facilities and usable public spaces should be provided.
ix. Alleys, thoroughfares, and service ways should be utilized to ensure trash pickup and
deliveries for commercial establishments do not take place along public right of ways.
Structured parking should be hidden behind
or under buildings, rather than fronting on the
streetscape.
Planted medians help to create a sense of place,
enhance roadway aesthetics, and improve air
quality. Median landscaping includes low
landscape shrubs, grasses, flowers, or well-
manicured street trees that are limbed high
enough to preserve visibility between cars, bi-
cycles and pedestrians. The Town should work
with NCDOT to request waivers to allow me-
dian landscaping where appropriate.
Reducing impervious surfaces on site, such as
parking lots, rooftops, sidewalks, and roads,
helps to minimize water velocity and storm-
water run-off associated with rain events.
Incorporating planting strips in parking lot
design, narrowing road widths, replacing
driveways/parking lots with porous paving,
adding green roofs and other green building
techniques, will aid the reduction of pollutants
and sediment deposits in waterways.
Office buildings can reduce the loss of green space
and increase energy efficiency by incorporating
green building design techniques. In this
example, the roof of the building is covered with
native grasses and wildflowers, which provides
habitat for plants and animals, slows water run-
off into local storm drains, and provides extra
insulation to help heat and cool the building.
This Morrisville example shows an attractive
but singular building isolated from the roadway
and nearby buildings, and surrounded by
parking. Such a design conflicts with the
desire to create a walkable center that is
connected to surrounding neighborhoods
with building frontages facing the street.
encouraged
discouraged