I’ll shrug my shoulders on this one. Not the most exciting, but not terrible. The extra housing/residents should help the area businesses.
With the 40 story zoning at Legends, the remaining phases of Raleigh Crossing, and 400H lot, there’s still plenty of opportunity for office space to come in. I’d prefer the 7 story residential + retail instead of dreaming of “what could be”.
The Edison Lofts is 6 stories and has some retail. I like that it stays active throughout the day/night. Granted RedHat is across the street. Does anyone know if RedHat is back in the office?
I’m sorry y’all but of all locations, this is a travesty. Not to mention it is yet another incredibly- almost offensively bland grey and beige/brick street level apartment building. Nearly half the cities buildings look almost identical. Additional residential units be damned, this is not a good thing at all, IMO.
EDIT: OH MY GOD, and I’m also just realizing the old retail spaces along Hillsborough that this would destroy. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY AWFUL.
I’m sorry… I just need to vent, and y’all are my safe space hahahaha. But between the Goodnights building, and now this, this shit is really starting to piss me off. I’m all for redevelopment of dilapidated, under-utilized buildings, and especially of surface parking lots. 100%. And then in some cases where there are old one story buildings that have given Raleigh its (slowly declining) character for 50, 70, sometimes 100 years, it’s cool to building something over them and preserve the original street level experience. That’s even better! But here is a row of old, interesting/diverse looking retail spaces along Hillsborough that will be turned into the blandest, sameiest of same looking bullshit - and Goodnights, a nearly 100 year old building that looks old and interesting, will be exactly the same. This is truly pissing me off.
I remember when they started planting these oaks - in the early 80’s there were almost no trees on this stretch. A friend then told me that these were the wrong trees, they would get to big and the street & sidewalk would start to buckle. I don’t recall noticing this problem when I walked it in March, but it is coming.
Overall pretty disappointing. Very bland design and I especially hate to lose the 509 Hillsborough building. They aren’t even maximizing what appears to be existing 12 story zoning. Lack of activation on west Morgan facing the food hall.
The positives are 233 new resi units downtown, ground floor retail on Hillsborough, and the parking is mostly hidden.
The negatives so massively outweigh the positives for me that I can’t be anything other than ENRAGED by this completely lazy, uninspired, waste of space proposal. Who is paying for these f**king designs?
Yeah I’m definitely not excited about this. Unambitious in scope, clad with mediocre materials (cementitious lap siding, panels, and a moderate amount of brick - at least no EIFS or vinyl), and I’m definitely not a fan of the parking entrance on Hillsborough Street. (Isn’t one, on Morgan, enough?)
At the same time, I really don’t quite get the panic over these retail buildings getting torn down.
One of them (the one in the middle) is a little bit nice, is a bit more substantial and has some detail in the brickwork, and was built in 1935. The detail in the brickwork is of the kind that is easily replicated today. It’s a loss, but not a big one.
The other three buildings on the block were built in the 1940s and 1950s and are short, unremarkable, and utterly forgettable. From looking at the plans, the retail spaces in this new apartment building, mediocre as they are, might literally be an upgrade. Old(ish) does not always mean nice and does not always imply that preservation is necessary. Those buildings approach the West Street sidewalk with parking lots and blank brick walls. The new buildings have storefronts and residential windows.
Seriously, is there anything City Council can do about this? Perhaps block the proposal and require to maximize the zoning, preserve the Hillsborough St storefronts (especially 509 H), and come up with a design that looks at least slightly better than this? I will email them all every week if there’s anything they can do to block this ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT.
You are right on the nose about street activation on West & Morgan. This nexus of Hillsborough, West, Morgan and Glenwood is so important to knitting all three of these corridors together. I didn’t consider what a key piece of property is till now. But this is probably as important, if not more, than N&O/Nexus block, at least currently, the way West particularly has developed.
Looking from above makes me really want to see the railroad tracks bridge - either for @atl_transplant greenway/park - or for a better building then we are getting here, lol.
I understand that. But this is a wake up call that our CC needs more power to at least require better from the free-market capitalists that muck up the character of our city to make a quick buck. Anyone have contact info for the design firm and/or development company behind this, so I can at least shoot them an email that just says “Are you f**king serious with this bullshit?”
It’s a reasonably dense proposal. Adds probably somewhere between 300 and 400 residents to downtown. The design is uninspired. But what it replaces is 70% parking lot, 20% similarly uninspired single-story brick buildings, and 10% decent but still single story building.
To me it’s a
If we obsess over making sure Every.Single.Block. is developed with a meticulously curated site plan and facade, it’ll take forever. Uninspired, mass produced buildings can still make for a vibrant, exciting city. If nothing special were getting built, I’d worry, but Bloc 83, Dillon, The Line, and the Seaboard redevelopment are all pretty nice. Having some boring background buildings is just part-and-parcel of the whole city building gig.
I’ve often commented to my wife that time is running out on that small motor place. I hoped something cool would go in there.
I didn’t realize it would get grouped with the retail buildings on Hillsborough and end up basically being the back of a building. Feels like a big, unfortunate miss/underutilization.
I understand a lot of the hate around this proposal but, is it really worse than a building that has sat empty for over a decade? I moved here in 2005 and I think the only space that has had tenant is Flex bar and that is primarily located in the basement. Doesn’t seem like the owner ever cared about restoring the building or renting out space for retail or office space. This area of downtown needs more foot traffic and I think this will add to that. I definitely would like a development of at least 12+ here but at this point I’ll take what we get.
For those who have lived in Raleigh for awhile, we all know this could easily never get built anyways. It’s very likely that this is just another proposed development that never comes out of the ground.
This and the goodnights new buildings have made me think we need some kind of bonus like extra density or something that historical buildings in Raleigh. It would be really cool if we incentivized developers to build around or incorporate the old buildings like what the Dillon did. Whenever a building is over 75 years old it automatically kicks in to give a density bonus if you keep the old structure facade in place. Maybe like a 5-10 foot set back from the top of the old building for the new stuff to start.
