GET SMART IN CHAPEL HILL This college town brin gs energ y and excitement to mee tin gs By Gabi Logan
Top of the Hill Distillery is a popular attraction in Chapel Hill.
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“The university itself holds a lot of national meetings, but as a destination, we are better for small meetings, meetings under 150 attendees; but we can do up to 400.”
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ollege town, tech hub, top foodie city: Though it’s difficult to skylight-lit atrium. Renovations have added the ability to easily pinpoint exactly how to define Chapel Hill, North Carolina, all arrange video recordings of meeting or conference proceedings or of its common descriptions underscore the area’s incredible incorporate teleconferencing, as well as touchpad controls of audioviundercurrent of energy, evolution and exciting spaces. It is a Southern sual systems. city, among others, that makes headlines for its newness and trendiThe Kenan-Flager Business School also includes two buildings availness without betraying its glorious history, which creates an ideal able for outside meeting and event rentals: the Kenan Center and the backdrop for planners looking for a setting for events with class as well Rizzo Conference Center. The Kenan Center offers a dining room for up as the best modern amenities. to 220 guests, a tiered conference room for up to “Orange County has the highest concentra150 guests, three breakout rooms and two extetion of PhDs in the country, which creates a rior terraces. The IACC-certified Rizzo Conference great mix of people and draws a lot of internaCenter centers on the DuBose House, a Georgian tional folks to the university,” said Marlene home listed on the National Register of Historic Barbera, director of sales for the Chapel Hill and Places, and features 21,000 square feet of meetOrange County Visitors Bureau. “The university ing space spread over 41 light-filled meeting itself holds a lot of national meetings, but as a rooms. The Rizzo Conference Center also destination, we are better for small meetings, includes 116 guest rooms. meetings under 150 attendees; but we can do up to 400.” Major Hotels Chapel Hill’s strength in the small meetings On the UNC campus, the elegant 185-room, arena comes in part from its venues, which tend AAA Four Diamond Carolina Inn looks much toward boutique hotels and atmospheric spaces, older than its 90 years — in a good way. When and its walkability, as most of the city’s meeting an alumnus of the class of 1889 opened the venues are in and around the University of hotel in 1924 at the cost of approximately University of North Carolina North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus, which $250,000, it included all of the top amenities of lies on the city’s main drag, Franklin Street. the time in an exterior meant to evoke George “You have four craft beer places, award-winAll p photos courtesy y Chapel p Hill/Orange g Co. VB Washington’s home at Mount Vernon. Historic ning restaurants, James Beard Award-winning portraits in gilded frames line the walls of its chefs, a comedy club and all kinds of other meeting and dining rooms between drapery things groups could do right on Franklin Street. that wouldn’t look out of place in a Baroque LOCATION [That’s why] we like to see the destination as French castle. Central North Carolina super-small-town charm with big-city flair,” The hotel and its restaurant, which both have Barbera said. Forbes four-star status, are fresh from recent ACCESS renovations. The major renovation to the hotel, Interstate 40, completed in 2013, breathed fresh air into all Major Meeting Venues Raleigh-Durham International Airport aspects of the hotel’s infrastructure and gave a As a small meeting market with a major unifresh look to all guest and meeting rooms and versity, Chapel Hill is not home to a traditional MAJOR MEETING SPACES public areas. Last fall, the Crossroads Chapel city convention center as the hub for its larger Friday Center, Rizzo Conference Center Hill restaurant updated its menu and layout, meetings. Rather, several conference centers on HOTEL ROOMS adding new outdoor spaces and a fire pit, and the University of North Carolina (UNC) campus, 1,208 migrating the bar and dining spaces to create a which ranks every year as one of the most cozier lounge environment and increased beautiful college campuses in the nation, serve OFFSITE VENUES the same function while offering every visiting North Carolina Botanical Garden, Southern opportunities for private dining. Following renovations, the Carolina Inn features 14,365 square group the feeling that they are the only ones Season, Barn at Valhalla, Morehead feet of indoor event space and 15,035 square feet holding an event that day. Planetarium and Science Center, of outdoor event space. The William and Ida Friday Center for Ackland Art Museum On Franklin Street and two blocks from UNC Continuing Education, within walking distance CONTACT INFO in the heart of downtown, the 67-room Franklin of the Courtyard by Marriott, is the largest meeting venue in town, with 25,000 square feet Chapel Hill and Orange County Visitors Bureau Hotel Chapel Hill, recently added to the Curio 888-968-2060 Collection by Hilton, features modern meeting of recently renovated, state-of-the-art meeting www.visitchapelhill.org rooms with built-in features like fireplaces and space that includes 25 meeting rooms and a
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Visitors enjoy the giant chess set at North Carolina Botanical Garden floor-to-ceiling windows in more than 7,800 square feet of event space, including its Windows restaurant. At the other end of downtown, the hypermodern Aloft Chapel Hill offers 130 guest rooms and three meeting rooms geared toward board meetings and retreats, two combinable 500-square-foot “ex:change” meeting rooms and a 600-square-foot “tactic” meeting room. At the eastern end of Franklin Street, outside of downtown Chapel Hill, the AAA Four Diamond Siena Hotel Autograph Collection was created as a labor of love. Inspired by the original owners’ trips to Italy, the hotel is true to its Italian namesake, the Tuscan hill town Siena. It features rare Italian antique furnishings and wall decor that displays the neighborhood flags of Siena’s “contrada” on the hotel’s interior, and fountains and bocce ball courts on the “terrazza.” The hotel’s 79 guest rooms feature touches like marble showers and balconies, and its 3,000 square feet of meeting space offers natural lighting and Italianate chandeliers. The newly renovated Il Palio restaurant features multiple opportunities for semiprivate dining.
Unusual Venues One of Chapel Hill’s most popular and unusual locations for an offsite or team-building event is Southern Season, a gourmet specialty
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store with facilities for private dining and cooking classes. The culinary center began in Chapel Hill 1975 with one 800-square-foot location and has grown to include locations in Raleigh and Asheville, North Carolina, and Charleston, South Carolina. Its original location features everything from an old-fashioned soda fountain to four distinct meeting spaces: the oak room and adjacent garden patio; the 12-seat boardroom; and the mezzanine, which overlooks the main restaurant and store. Planners should also build in time for attendees to explore and shop, as the extensive store features deep selections in gift items from coffee to chocolate. “Their wine store is bigger than the visitors bureau,” said Barbera. Just outside the city, providing a sharp contrast to the high-tech, modern facilities now common throughout Chapel Hill, the Barn at Valhalla allows groups to step away from projectors and smartphones and focus on a glamping meeting or reception in the great outdoors. Spread over 30 acres, the Barn at Valhalla offers groups opportunities for outdoor team building, lakeside picnic lunches and retreats for up to 150 attendees. In addition to more traditional meeting spaces at the Carolina Inn, the Rizzo Conference Center and the Kenan Center, the UNC campus also includes several unusual venues. Spreading out in an imposing
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blocklong brick edifice just off Franklin Street, the Ackland Art Museum includes an 18,000-piece collection that spans the centuries and continents. Groups can take over the entire museum outside of operating hours, either in the evening or during the Monday or Tuesday closings. The museum gives rental priority to university groups and other nonprofits, and outside groups must pay an additional fee to become museum sponsors in order to reserve the space. Groups can also rent the rotunda, the state dining room and the 220-seat full-dome theater of UNC’s Morehead Planetarium and Science Center, one of the largest planetariums in the United States. When it opened, it was the most expensive building in North Carolina and only the sixth planetarium in the United States. The planetarium has similar guidelines for for-profit rental groups. The North Carolina Botanical Garden, also affiliated with the university, features a variety of event spaces in its LEED Platinum-certified James and Delight Allen Education Center as well as throughout its gardens. For an unusual meeting setting, groups can use the 1,595-squarefoot Reeves Auditorium, which is flooded with natural light and has 28-foot ceilings, space for up to 200 attendees and a private, covered deck. The center also includes two classrooms that seat up to 50 guests and an antique-outfitted seminar room for up to 15 guests. In season, the Forest Theatre, with open-air amphitheater seating and a natural stone wall as a backdrop, can be used for a fresh take on a general session or award show. The gardens and patio adjacent to the Education Center are available for rental for larger groups, and smaller groups can take their cocktail reception into the botanical garden’s display gardens, which include wide-ranging collections of ferns and carnivorous plants and plants used in horticultural therapy.
Meeting planners can take advantage of venues at the University of North Carolina, including the Friday Center for Continuing Education.
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