I’m with John - you just don’t see 8’ ceilings these days, least of all in what will surely be marketed as luxury apartments. Even if they were, you still need to account for slab thickness. I’d guess 10’ floor-to-floor, 9’-6" at the very least.
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IMHO they build the apartments over the hotel. 1 building, nice and tall. 5+ floors of CBD view apartments, couple floors of suites for the hotel, bingo. Those would be fantastic views.
Anyone ever heard of building a hotel on speculation? Create the shell, then sign a chain, and finish as the market improves.
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Sounds like wishful thinking at this point (though I, too, wish you were right)
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I may be in the minority, but I have no love for that particular brick structure. Rather have something more complimentary to the tower.
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The Fallon president said they weren’t going taller than 20 stories.
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Because that is why the brave and the bold are successful.
Downtown Raleigh is pretty badly under-served by hotels, and has been for years. For a decades, there were just three:
- Clarion/Holiday Inn
- Sheraton
- Best Western/Longleaf.
There are several more hotels today:
- Marriott
- Residence Inn
- Origin
- Hampton Inn
- AC Hotel (aka Willard) in progress.
- Could maybe count Aloft on Hillsborough
So 8, maybe 9 total. Contrast with Charlotte (which has, admittedly a larger business district) which has about 30 hotels built or under construction. They have a lot more large hotels than we do, too, so the room count is even more unbalanced. If things do go back to the way they were, there’s probably room to grow here.
I think that long term, there’s no way that hotels don’t fully bounce back. Again, look at the 1920s.
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If you’re counting the Aloft, you’d have to include the Doubletree that’s a block closer to downtown on Hillsborough. Agree that’s still way too few, though.
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TBJ reports of 301H
https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2021/04/16/raleigh-development-301-hillsborough-need-tenants.html
Still, with several months left to go before tenants could move in, Fallon Company Managing Director [Zac Vuncannon](https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/search/results?q=Zac Vuncannon)says delivery will come just in time to meet pent-up demand.
“Our timing is great to capitalize on the renewed sense of enthusiasm,” Vuncannon said.
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Enthusiasm for NEW commercial space?
I hope he’s right. Not sure that’s so evident right now, but I could have missed it I guess.
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Yea, very mixed signals on office demand. Can daily find “it’s going to be great” and “take your money out of REIT’s and run”. Thought this was interesting being it’s about a specific project in Raleigh.
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Article in the N&O about expected office vs. home plans for large companies in the area “Hybrid Work Here to Stay”: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article250503769.html
Not sure how much this affects downtown specifically–Redhat already had pretty flexible work.
My office is moving in June and combining our two local offices under a single roof. For ~350 total employees, we will have ~120 workstations in the new office. They are selling it to folks that there are “flex spaces” and “breakout rooms” with enough seating for everyone. What they don’t say directly is that each desk also had a cushion on a rolling file drawer so that a second person can sit at each desk.
They are encouraging folks to work from home by grossly reducing our office space. They are also making us reduce nearly all of our hard copies with the move. Some of us that are a little older (40+) are having a hard time going 100% digital.
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That sounds like pretty severe consolidation, and cushions on a rolling file cabinet would convince me to stay home if I could lol.
My company has 3 (basically brand new) office buildings in Cary on Lake Crabtree. As we’re moving to a hybrid model, they are consolidating us into 2 of the buildings and leasing out the third one. The third one wasn’t fully utilized yet anyway though.
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My company is surveying us to see what we want. Looks like if you sign up for 3+ days in office, you keep your dedicated workspace. Otherwise you use a hotel space. They haven’t published the results yet.
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Yeah, that’s kind of what happened for us, and they did a survey as well.
Our company said they more than likely won’t have people come in until next year. They may allow optional this year.
I was hoping we could move into a smaller office at the Bloc 83 lol. The bus I take stops right by it. I have to walk a bit more at our current location downtown.
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I think that A LOT of people are going to end up choosing to work from home when they realize that things are not going to be the same in the office for quite some time. Not having an assigned desk is going to be the least of the changes likely seen. Protocols, including masks, how many can be in an elevator, how we get coffee, etc., are likely to be different for some time to come. This is going to be especially true if we can’t get enough vaccines in arms. If we run into vaccine resistance before we reach herd immunity, it’s an open ended scenario. I’ve been working remotely/hybrid for 20 years now, and I’m not anxious to run to an office even occasionally if my company isn’t going to assure me that my colleagues there are vaccinated. I am not interested in putting my health at danger, whatever the small risk may be for me. I am also not interested in wearing a mask in the office when I can work from home without one.
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The crane is coming down soon per their instagram announcement. Anyone know when? Looks like we’re back to 1 crane in downtown again.
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The reason that I liked this was because this will make way for future towers & projects .
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