Wendell/Knightdale is cheaper because, while it’s quite accessible to Raleigh, it’s less accessible to RTP and Durham, compared with Wake Forest, Cary, Holly Springs, Apex, etc. So you’re not within as short of a commute of as many jobs. But if you work in Raleigh and don’t plan to change that, it is a much better value.
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Very true. It is a rough drive to RTP and pretty much out of possibility for Durham. Thankfully I’ll only be needing to commute maybe once a week
The properties currently there are dumps. Mixed income housing is what needs to replace it not a solitary affordable housing building. When you build a single use (ie: low income) building it immediately hurts the value of everything around it. That’s the simple reality whether we think it is politically correct to say out loud or not.
I really hope the city understands this and will look tk build a mixed income replacement…
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I believe it’s called Capital Park that is over by Seaboard / Pilot Mill that is mixed income. I would hold that up as great model. 15+ years old and still seems like a great community. I lived right beside it for 7 years.
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There are also plans for senior housing behind the Lutheran church next door. I would have to believe that the market-rate housing momentum extending east from downtown won’t stop because of two affordable housing developments next door to one another.
That was more of an issue when RTP was a more dominant job center (by total Triangle %) than it is today. With Raleigh’s ascendance in its core and immediate periphery, faster growth on the east side of Wake County is inevitable.
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Do you know the exact boundaries of the property purchased? I sure hope that the city doesn’t yet again squander the opportunity like they have done in more recent city-led affordable developments.
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I don’t know. This may have been true in the past, but I think we’re in a different era with different demands for housing. Or maybe it’s just areas closet to downtown Raleigh.
I live two streets over from Heritage Park and my property value has about doubled in 9 years. We weren’t too concerned about HP when we bought, either. Properties near Walnut Terrace, Chavis Heights, and the various smaller public housing developments in east downtown continue to be flipped and increase in value with no end in sight.
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Nope. Both the article and city press release only say it’s the “eastern portion” of the site with 24 units; I couldn’t find any maps of the exact properties.
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Pretty interesting video, but it doesn’t answer the question…why can’t architects do anything to make these functionally-all-the-same buildings at least LOOK a bit different from one another? I get that cost is king, but for gods’ sake they could spend an extra hundred grand cladding the buildings in different colors, patterns, or something else. Run some stringcourses! Install a useless frieze! Bring back the cornice! Something!
It truly all comes back to money. A useless frieze costs money. Changes and transitions of material cost money. Decorative cornices, parapets, etc., all cost money. Cleverness within budget is probably one of the most useful skills one can have.
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I saw an interesting thread the other day on, fb maybe, where someone essentially argued that all apartments should add cornice because it just makes people like buildings more.
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I’m consistently frustrated by that question too. I’ve never worked for a firm that does 5-over-1s, so this is all speculation, but I suspect the primary reason is money. From what I’ve heard, developers on these projects pinch literally every penny. I imagine there’s an environment where deviation from tried-and-trued formats are shot down so frequently that the designers hired for the projects just stick to a copy+paste template. It’s better for both their bottom line and the developer’s. It doesn’t help that locally, the same two firms have designed 99% of the apartment buildings, so there’s seldom a fresh perspective. I think there are ways to accomplish vastly improved design for not much added cost, but the developer has to be open to that for you to get anywhere.
That said, I also wonder if there’s a bit of negativity bias in our perception of 5-over-1s. If we look outside our market, there’s a bit more variance in how they look, but we don’t really acknowledge the better ones. Every time another generic one pops up, we see it as a continuation of the status quo.
Take a walk down this street in Portland. Over a 10-block stretch, there’s a decent amount of variation, and examples both good and bad. I also appreciate the variation in size for these – note that it’s not just a series of superblocks.
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This is why City Council needs to enact DESIGN and QUALITY standards, so they can have more control over what a developer (many times out of state, with no care in the world for our city besides how much money they can make from us) does with their property- yes their property, but OUR city. Make the developers work for US.
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I believe the legislature disallowed design standards a few years ago. Even though towns like cary keep informing them.
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I like this one in Cameron Village. I get that these buildings are not the greatest things ever built, but I will say that the dislike for them seems to never be followed up with what people would like for them to look like. This thread makes me want to start a couple surveys to do a March Madness of these types of apartment in Raleigh so we can see which ones people (on this forum) like the most and least
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I def like this one more than most, and a HUGE part is that there’s END-TO-END GROUND FLOOR RETAIL. More of that would go a long way towards making these types of buildings feel like less of a waste of space.
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I agree with you and @Jake, that’s gotta be the most attractive one in Raleigh. Even though it’s not perfect, the tower, arch, and stonework go a long way toward making this building stand out. Especially compared to the building across the street, and 616 at the Village a few blocks up Oberlin, this one is pretty nice.
I’d be down for that! April Apartmenness, shall we say? Or May Multifamilyness? All right, I’ll stop . . . 
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That is not really a design standard issue is it though? I like the ground floor retail. My guess on why most people would like this one more than most is maybe 3 things.
- Materials: Taste full brick that seems to have a good strategy vs hodgepodge.
- Higher level of design touches: nice arch features on ground floor, no dead walls/good window placement and choices, and a nice cupola/tower feature that had nice details.
- Nice details: kind of repetitive, but it feels like little (relatively) things like the windows on the top of the cupola. It all comes together to look very nice.
On the negative side, this apartment does have the “luxury” feel that people dont like new homes from tear-downs. So, while some people will like it more for look, others will see it as just a symbol of how out of reach new housing is.
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