Chapel Hill, NC Accessory Structures: Shed & Carport Rules (2026)

Section 4.9.1(a) of the Land Use Management Ordinance makes it unlawful to begin construction of "any building or other structure, including accessory structures and signs," until the town manager issues a zoning compliance permit certifying the work complies with the ordinance, though the same subsection lets the town manager set up a waiver process for smaller residential jobs such as decks, porches, sheds, garages and stoops tied to single-family, two-family or up-to-four-unit development. Section 4.9.1(c) spells out the exemption thresholds after an initial staff review: the project must add less than five hundred square feet of impervious surface, disturb less than fifteen hundred square feet of land, involve no grading or filling, sit at least five feet from the nearest setback line and building height limitation, stay at least five feet from any Resource Conservation District or Jordan Watershed Riparian Buffer, avoid the regulatory floodplain and steep slopes defined in Section 5.3.2, and remove no more than twenty-five hundred square feet or twenty-five percent of tree canopy, whichever is less.

Appendix A's definitions describe garages, carports and storage sheds as common accessory structures, and accessory structures generally must meet the same dimensional standards as the principal structure on the lot.