An Administrative Alternate Review for 213 South Harrington Street was submitted and will be discussed at the Appearance Commission. See it here: ACAgenda.pdf (172.0 KB)
The applicant is requesting an administrative alternate to the building massing standards for a 20-
story building as applied to the building’s frontage on S. Harrington Street. The building does not
provide a change in building materials to mimic a change in wall plane or propose a building
setback behind the sidewalk in lieu of a step-back, so this request addresses findings 1, 2 & 5.
Now this is from a feasibility study so I’m not sure how accurate this rendering is but:
Completely unfounded speculation here, but this is giving me Hobgood vibes. They’ve done so many conceptual/speculative proposals for Raleigh developers that never came to fruition, so I hope that’s not the case here if it is their design. Looks great in any case!
EDIT: oops, should’ve read through the PDF. It’s an LA firm.
Why would they build this in the middle of a parking lot when there are plenty of other smaller corner lots scattered around downtown. Leave this lot for a bigger development
Part of the reason why newer downtowns often feel alienating to pedestrians compared to older cities is the scale of development… Developers often take out entire blocks at once, and we lose the tighter grain that you see in older cities. Designers then try to imitate a smaller scale by cheaply adding “interest” to longer elevations (see any number of student housing developments on Hillsborough).
I think this kind of building would be great for the city no matter where it’s located. It will already be surrounded by large-scale development on many sides, and I hope other smaller-scale projects would follow to fill in the gaps.
Look at the three levels of “parking” at the base… how do you access those spots? Is there a car elevator in there somewhere? Why not just do away with parking altogether?
Yes, there will be multiple car lifts from a company called “citylifts”.
Page 10 and 12 will better illustrate where these lifts will be and look like.
Like someone else said these should expect Mil + for these high end units.
I really, really hope this gets built. It reminds me of the Bosco Verticale development in Milan. This is the kind of quality architecture Raleigh needs more of. Perhaps this could also guide the new municipal complex’s design in terms of incorporating vegetation into the architecture. I think trees and our forest cover is a big component of Raleigh’s identity and we should find ways to incorporate it even in the most dense and developed areas.
Personally I would prefer if the base retail floors incorporated brick into the facades to ground the building a bit more as well as connect it to the warehouse district context.
I used to work at Red Hat. They would ask their employees to go to the Apple store personally for repairs and send any invoices back. If Apple was smart they would open a 3rd store in the Triangle in Downtown Raleigh. It would be super crowded all the time Crabtree Apple store won’t mind.
Wow. This looks amazing. I would love for Raleigh to get buildings with innovative architecture like this. Also agree with elevatoroperator about the older cities having multiple smaller scale buildings which provide a nicer pedestrian experience. I really hope this gets built.
Especially if GoRaleigh wipes out most of the Five Star block for their bus platform and ‘tower’. Oh well. Until the 1950’s this area was much more residential than warehouse, with the warehouses hugging the tracks tightly. The bigger, more sprawling warehouse district was north of Hillsborough St starting with the 518 rail depot and the Powerhouse district connecting up to the mills north of Peace. One mill along Salisbury (Martin Mill) and all the gigantic railroad repair shops and other stuff, hugging Salisbury St, has been demolished. Seaboard is a late remnant of that larger district, as is Melrose Mill, Raleigh Cotton Mill and Pilot Mill. There were several factories and lumber yards too.
