Tiffany Lacey leads the vision for Carolina North development

Tiffany Lacey began her career in her home country of Australia as a consultant focusing on complex real estate and development projects. “Like all good Australians, I wanted to work overseas to have the grand adventure,” she said.

She realized her dream with roles in Texas and California, leading mixed-use development projects. These included a joint venture redeveloping a 2,400-acre ranch outside San Antonio, as well as the transformation of Candlestick Park & Hunter Point Shipyard (the former home of the San Francisco 49ers NFL team) and Google’s Mountain View campus into mixed-use neighborhoods.

In January, Lacey joined UNC-Chapel Hill as executive director of real estate development for Carolina North. Lacey described her new role as two-fold: making Carolina North the best version of itself and facilitating the creation of welcoming and inviting spaces.

“Ten years from now, I want Carolina North to be a place students gravitate to, and to be the community’s day-to-day destination of choice: whether that is somewhere to live, teach, work, grab lunch, let the kids burn off some energy in the park, or hit the trail,” she said.

The vision for Carolina North is a 230-acre learn-live-work-play campus and new engine for Carolina research and academics, with shared spaces for learning and community. It is the largest new development initiative at Carolina since the cornerstone of Old East was laid in 1793. Lacey said her charge is to help move the mixed-use development from ideas on paper to actual physical development.

“Carolina North is interesting, as it’s not a traditional campus dedicated 100% to academic learning,” she said. “The site will blur those edges, intertwining the campus community and the larger community.”

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To help make that vision come to life, UNC-Chapel Hill is in the process of hiring a master planning team and consultants to develop a “place strategy.” In the late spring, the team will issue a request for proposal for a development partner that will work with the University design team to develop a land use master plan and delivery of the first phase of development.

Lacey says she is excited about working on the place strategy, which is the vision for what Carolina North will feel and look like from Carolina’s perspective.

“I want Carolina North to very much feel a part of the community, not an offshoot from the main campus, that it is integrated with and woven into UNC-Chapel Hill and the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro,” said Lacey. “I also want it to have its own unique identity and feel special.”

To get to that point, Lacey is leading the effort to help the community’s diverse stakeholders provide feedback on how Carolina North is developed.

“Part of our job is to balance priorities and conflicts,” she said. “I want to help facilitate how the University accommodates its growth in a way that provides an enriching experience to students, faculty, staff and the community.”

The direction of Carolina North will evolve and expand as more stakeholders are invited into the discussion. One way this will happen is through a stakeholder advisory committee led by Lacey, along with Ivy Taylor, local relations director, and Marcus Ginyard, special projects director and a former Tar Heel basketball player. Members of the group, which will soon be announced, will include students, staff, faculty, alumni, former student-athletes and community members.

Lacey is committed to putting herself out into the community, both on campus and in town.

“This is a listening exercise for me to understand how everyone feels about Carolina North, what they would like to see there, what they would not like to see there, and how they would like the relationship to be with the main campus,” she said. “I didn’t come here with a predetermined idea or concept. I am here to listen to what everyone has to say and try and take that to create the best place that we can.”