# @chapelboronews on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DKh_Bq1Pi2O
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/31240901-chapelboronews-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/be9a77297b.jpg
- **Posted:** 2025-06-05T19:34:18.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Chapelboro.com (@chapelboronews) — https://gondola.cc/chapelboronews

## Caption

Roughly three hundred people crowded into the meeting room of the Whitted Building on May 28 for a community meeting on the future of the property that once was Maple View Farm. Throughout the event, the crowd cheered and applauded emphatically as speakers voiced opposition toward Union Grove Farm and its majority owner, Greg Bohlen, for his plans to further commercialize the land.

While part of a land conservancy, the farm is also within the Orange County Rural Buffer zoning district, which prohibits most commercial and industrial activities in order to preserve locations for rural residential development and agricultural uses. While state law exempts farm-related activities from county zoning rules, this does not apply to non-farm-related land uses even if they’re taking place on farmland. Agritourism activities only qualify for the exemption if the farm setting is essential to the activity, rather than just being incidental.

Derb Carter — an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center who owns a nearby farm and who grew up as a neighbor of the Nutters — laid out the specific requests of the group regarding the county government’s consideration of the development plans.

"We hope that the Planning Department, the Board of Adjustments, and the county commissioners stand behind the rural buffer zoning that was put in place for this area and this region, and that we think has served it well for the last 40 years," he said. "We hope they continue to protect the agricultural uses that it promotes in that area, along with the low-density residential development that has occurred."

On Wednesday, June 4, the Orange County Planning and Inspections Director sent a "Final and Binding Determination" letter to Union Grove Farm on the project elements. While the distillery and a culinary garden were deemed to have "bona fide farm purpose," the local government said its zoning regulations would not permit the amphitheater nor any hotel and cottages.

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#orangecountync #farming #farmland #development #hillsboroughnc #chapelhill #agritourism

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## Tags

agritourism, orangecountync, hillsboroughnc, farming, development, chapelhill, farmland

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