A Seat at the Table: Chela Tu Named to UNC's Carolina North Stakeholder Advisory Committee

Chela Tu, CCIM, Senior Associate Broker with BOLD Commercial Real Estate, has been named to UNC-Chapel Hill’s new Carolina North Stakeholder Advisory Committee, a group that will help advise on the University’s 230-acre campus expansion.

What Is Carolina North?

Carolina North is UNC-Chapel Hill's most ambitious development initiative in over two centuries: a 230-acre mixed-use campus expansion built on and around the former Horace Williams Airport site, about two miles from the main campus along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The plans call for collaborative research facilities, mixed-use housing, retail, dining, civic space, and rapid bus transit linking the two campuses.

Aaron Nelson, CEO of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce and one of the project's three committee co-chairs, has described it as one of the most consequential opportunities for the community and the University in the last hundred years. Groundbreaking is targeted for 2027.

Chela's Role

The Stakeholder Advisory Committee's job is to provide feedback and perspective as UNC's team develops the project's master plan and place strategy, advising on how Carolina North will integrate with the surrounding community, serve the state's workforce, and reflect the University's mission. It's an advisory role, not a decision-making one, but it's a real seat among the people who will shape how this region grows.

Chela brings what most of the committee doesn't have: a commercial real estate practitioner's view of what it actually takes to get from raw land to a functioning built community. As a CCIM designee, the gold standard credential in commercial real estate, she can speak to the market realities the project will have to navigate: what uses the market will support, how development should be phased, what a live-work-learn district actually requires to attract tenants, residents, and retailers.

The committee sits alongside UNC Trustees, School of Government leadership, town officials, faculty, students, and alumni. Public forums are held every two months.

The Through-Line

For Chela, there's a direct line between this work and what she does every day at BOLD. Commercial real estate is fundamentally about understanding how land becomes community: how a site's potential gets unlocked, how development serves the people who will actually use it, and how to think through the long arc of a project rather than just its immediate returns. Carolina North is asking exactly those questions, just at a scale most practitioners never get to engage with.

It's also personal. As a Carolina alum (Class of '09), being asked to come back as an advisor, someone whose professional expertise earned her a seat at the table, means something.

What to Watch

The committee will meet publicly every two months as the master plan takes shape. Key open questions include the housing mix, the role of athletics facilities, transit integration, and how the development interacts with Chapel Hill and Carrboro's existing neighborhoods. We'll be following it closely, and we'll have a voice in the room as it unfolds.