I don’t think many people actively intends to box others out of the market, but history shows that many people will choose to do so if it means keeping their property values higher.
See, this already has me concerned. By that definition, if they ever started building enough units to actually catch up to demand for walkable urban living in downtown Raleigh enough to actually reduce prices, it would necessarily qualify as an “insane oversupply”. Rent in Tokyo hasn’t gone up in 20 years despite more residents flocking there each year, because they build plenty of new housing each year. There’s not really a good reason that it should cost more money to buy a smaller unit that costs less tax dollars to support in terms of infrastructure. There is no real reason that denser housing should cost more than suburban sprawl does, but the people who bought in at current prices will end up opposing it if it means that the condo they bought for $350k would be worth only $200k in 10 years.
Show me the history that backs up your assertion about people will choose to do so.
I’ll just speak for Miami. The housing being built isn’t for the demand; it’s built for speculation, parking ones money (from South America in particular), introducing Miami as an investment to new markets (like Okan Tower is now doing with Turkish investors), etc.
In the run-up to the 2008 great recession, investors of all types, including local investors out to make a quick buck, took out home equity loans to put 20% down on a new condo that they intended to flip after the project was completed. This worked fine for people in the early part of the 2000s, but everyone was left holding the bag (and losing their asses) after about 2006/7. The Miami market was not about responding to demand, but more like creating the demand as a get-rich-quick scheme.
The Planning Commission agenda is out for the Dec 10 meeting. Under old business, has this rezoning case and “The deadline for action for the Planning Commission’s second round of review of the case is February 25, 2020”.
However, the rezoning application and city staff report pdf file has both mentions of application request to Proposed Zoning: DX-40-SH-CU in some locations and DX-20-SH-CU in other locations. Which is it?
Geez. Using the Downtown West Gateway Plan as the standard is ridiculous. It was outdated the minute it was released in 2009. “High-density” areas are shown with 4 stories??
It does say 4 stories/30units per acre minimum. But yeah, I remember seeing this and thinking “WTF.” In every city with useful commuter rail, being near to the central station is a huge benefit, especially for office development. With a single line of commuter rail at first, we will certainly not be New York, Chicago, or Boston - but getting the development near the station right (basically, as intense as possible; mostly office) is the key to robust ridership.
It was always basically a given that developers would figure this out. Really, extrapolating out over the next 100 years, I predict that Fayetteville Street will lose prominence as an office cluster and become more residential, while the city’s center of gravity in terms of employment will gradually shift west towards Union Station. This follows the pattern where NY’s most prominent business district shifted from downtown to midtown, or Chicago’s shifted from the loop towards the west loop.
Is staff allowed to think about their response or just be a robot and reflect based on the previously outdated maps/plans? I mean, something like “this doesn’t meet X, Y, or Z but we think it’s a great project and silly to have these minimums in this area”. I guess nobody is really asking for their opinion.
I don’t imagine that in 2007, during the last big downtown growth spurt, that anybody dreamed there would be anything other than the Fayetteville Street corridor. The ‘Warehouse District’ would simply be dressed up warehouses. Now…
Councils or Commissioners and/or managers often direct staff not to say anything other than X does/doesn’t meet Y, etc. as they think it puts pressure on them or can make them look bad if they disregard staff. Or if staff doesn’t feel trusted by councilors (or the public) then they may rather just leave the ‘facts’ to the councilors to make the ‘political’ decisions. This varies from place to place, some give staff more leeway
Reviewing the agenda for the council meeting tomorrow and saw that the CAM development may opt to go back to planning commission for a 40-story request (previously 20 stories).
This (20 > 40) was reported by @niko on 12/6 (above) but good to see it scheduled and I’m beyond curious how this goes with our new council members. I wish I could go! Anybody else able to go?
Slightly old news but because the developers are willing to write in conditions for affordable housing the rezoning to 40 stories has been met with only positive feedback from the planning commission. This is likely to pass for recommendation when the planning commission makes their decision.
The residential portion of this project will be 980 units!
The Planning Commission has asked the developers to request a Central CAC re-vote on this project on the January 6th meeting. Please attend if you can, I will try myself.
This is hands-down my favorite development project in all of Raleigh right now. They’re going to rezone it to 40 stories and there’s going to be affordable housing. And 980 units! 980! Right next to a train station!
That’s more exclamation points than I typically use in a week. Oh, I’m so excited for this thing to get built.
