The nearly one-acre property at 301 W. Cabarrus St. has been sold, according to TBJ, to Taft Family Ventures, which hopes to build a mixed-use residential/retail development on the site.
Well, the building it’s set to replace can be seen in the foregrounds of the forum banner image, so that should give you an idea of how it will impact the view from that perspective (just north of the Fairweather). Twelves stories here would make quite an impact, but not as much as the Kane development in Boylan Heights would.
I think the residents of the Fairweather are really lucky there’s a substation the block next to them. They’ll at least have some type of view for a long long time.
Yeh, something like that substation has its pluses and minuses. On the one hand, it’s a substation. On the other hand, it’s sort of a guarantee that you won’t have a building directly across the street from the best views.
Something interesting to note here is that North Carolina Railroad claims a 200’ wide corridor across nearly the entire state, with very few exceptions. However, on their website, they do state that “there are areas of the NCRR corridor that are not a uniform 200-feet-wide”, specifically mentioning central Raleigh as one of four towns in the state where this is the case. If you look at the map, this very block seems to be abutting the most constrained part of the NCRR, where the right of way is only 100 feet wide, and by my eye it seems that a corner of this building may even encroach slightly into this right of way.
One can almost be certain that, as this parcel is developed, NCRR will look to protect and expand their corridor. Perhaps they will look to buy or even condemn the back 50’ of this property in order to do this.
You get used to it. Years ago in college I lived in a place directly behind some tracks. Maybe 30 feet from the window to the tracks. Every night a train would roll by blasting the horn. After a week or two I started to sleep right through it.