Yah, it should be the property owner who has the majority say of what goes up on his or her property. The City and neighbors can and should have input, but if the property owner wants to transform his property we should let them.
I mean this is the same board who is currently pissed at the government for being so restrictive in the UDO. Do we really trust the government to do the right thing?
Goes for pollution too. I have a few hundred gallons of benzene Ima gonna dump right here in my backyard cause its my propertah!
And before anyone says thatâs not apples to apples, I am aware that replacing buildings doesnât straight up kill people but obviously, 1) dumping pollution anywhere you wanted used to be normal, and 2) some people consider tearing out old stuff and building new stuff is a sort of blight that reduces character, reduces sunlight penetration, increase noise and generally pollutes the old area with a bunch of unwanted things. Itâs not unreasonable to think of buildings with social value as belonging to society on some level. Thats what historic tax credits are founded in. These sorts of policies and ideas could be hardened up if enough people wanted it that way. Just like enough people started to understand that pollution flows downhill.
Does anyone else remember the residential tower CAM intially proposed when they first planned to develop this lot in the mid â00âs?
http://www.newraleigh.com/articles/archive/raleigh-contemporary-art-museum/
These were the two final options for the mixed use when they were weighing 7 or 12 floors.
Does CAM own their land? If so, they could be using this development as a mechanism to remain financially viable. The same may be true for HQ2.
Other than expansion opportunities, financial viability seems like a reasonable trigger to partner with that developer.
CAM owns its property. The HQ property is owned by Centerline Digital. My hope is that CAM uses this as an opportunity to expand their space and pocket some cash to strengthen their finances (I have no idea what their finances actually look like), like MOMA did in NYC.
No, absolutely no breaks will be given here, because I donât come to your home and try to tell you how you can or canât improve your property or what sort of stylistic choices you can or canât make. (Yes, there are members of the Raleigh City Council who get their rocks off doing exactly this sort of thing, and itâs awful.)
With very rare exceptions that donât apply to this parcel, when you own the land on which a building sits, then you have the right to keep the buildings the way they are, or improve them, or tear them down and build anything that you can build by right according to the existing zoning. Thatâs what it means to own land.
These properties are all zoned DX-5. The owners could announce tomorrow that theyâre going to raze every one of them down to rubble and replace them with five-story buildings, and they would be perfectly within their rights to do that.
Now, they are requesting a rezone to DX-20, and the city council doesnât have to approve every upzoning request they get, but I canât fathom why we wouldnât want to upzone this land. Itâs literally right next to Raleighâs train hub and one block from the planned bus hub. This is basically a textbook-perfect location for Transit Oriented Development. Thereâs not a single good reason for trying to preserve one- and two-story buildings that are right next to a train station.
And again, I literally work in this building, so itâs not like this is some abstract thing that doesnât affect me in any way. Itâs a great workspace. I will miss it when itâs gone, and itâll be a huge inconvenience for me in the interim. But this project is a great idea. By all means, tear it down and start over with something taller.
I love the old warehouses in the warehouse district⌠however I donât really get to enjoy them as they are. Would be great for them all to be office over retail, but if thatâs never going to be the case I understand reutilizing that land for more dense purposes.
Would be awesome if all warehouses in downtown got the same treatment as Transfer co. That place is $$$
Not only is this not apples to apples, this is not even apples to oranges. Itâs like apples to tennis shoes or something. Replacing a two-story building with a twelve-story isnât a form of âpollutionâ just because you happen not to like taller buildings. In fact, probably one of the single best things American cities could do to reduce pollution from greenhouse gases is to make the buildings taller and closer together.
There are a limited class of buildings in America that have enough historical significance that they are and ought to be protected by law, but these buildings are absolutely, positively, unequivocally not among them. They donât âbelong to societyâ on any level at all. They belong to the people who own them.
Same as when this hypothetical debate came up with the clearscapes warehouse project. The debate over to keep or tear down wonât matter - they WILL keep the majority of the buildings on this site in some fashion. (Based on the history and attitudes of the stakeholders⌠the ones with the money - not me.)
A 20 story building to fit around the existing buildings will require architectural complexities which lends itself to unique design (see S9 portfolio - probably exactly why they were brought on board). Iâm still racking my brain for how this could possibly be a negative.
The owner of most of the land, Gary Fields, told the N&O that the plan was to demolish all of the existing buildings on his land to make way for new development. And I can promise you that the HQ building is getting knocked down. Itâs not clear from the story whether the CAM building would stay or go, but it certainly wouldnât surprise me if that one stayed.
Charles Long or Gary Fields?
Wow, You speak with such authority. Sorry for challenging your expertise. I now see that my views are absolutely, positively, and unequivically misguided. You win Buddy.
Great News! Tear em down!
Dâoh. Should have said Gary Fields. Charles owns the HQ stuff, so it was in my head. Thanks.
Yes, Gary Fields owns the south half of the block. When he bought it 1 or 2 years ago heâs talked about density and going up. The HQ tear down surprises me, but sounds like you have the inside source and better info. Although neither of us bought the land, so are we allowed to talk about this?
By the way, if I had it to do over again, I would have phrased my original comment very differently and with less sarcasm, and I regret the way I chose to say that. My substantive point was that I think itâs actually a really bad idea for folks with no economic stake in a property to try to make granular decisions about what buildings should stay or go, and those decisions really ought to be made by the beneficial owners of the property.
Yeah, I just spoke via Slack with the director and director of development for HQ Raleigh. (Of course this story is breaking on literally the first day all year that Iâm not working from the very building weâre discussing, otherwise I would be like literally interviewing folks in person.) They said the actual development of the space would be âfar in the future.â HQ has a five-year lease with a five-year option after that, and they are very committed to staying there. They also have a three-year lease on the 324 Harrington building that Gary Fields owns and is part of this block.
HQ Raleigh is just the tenant there, so no one was able to explicitly confirm that the 310 building would be knocked down, although no one suggested I was wrong to assume that, either. But just being very familiar with that space and the tenants there, I would be extremely surprised if they didnât just completely gut the existing building.
Yeah, I didnât mean to imply that folks couldnât or shouldnât discuss it. If the owners are interested in my input, I would certainly be very, very happy to give it to them! But at the end of the day, while we all get to have opinions about stuff, I understand that I as a subtenant ultimately have zero control over what they decide to do with it.
Mikeâs original comment was just expressing an opinion of what he would âlikeâ to see done with the property. He wasnât challenging anyoneâs ideas or trying to influence the owner of the property lol. Just stating his opinion on an internet forum literally here for anyone that wants to express their opinion and discuss. Chill out dude.
Another advantage that having CAM involved is that they are going to be a strong voice for compelling design, meaning that the end result is more likely to be an architectural statement.
It is rarely an environmental win to demolish an existing building, period. You attain a much bigger bang for your buck of what youâre trying to describe by not building suburban style development, not overwriting existing development that is already efficiently laid out, oriented and in fine shape to used as-is. Every single person I argue with about this seems to think that the existing historical grid (thereâs that word historical again) is this finite thing and any and all tall buildings must go there, all existing things be damned. Rewrite the streets and take out the strip malls and 5/4/door homes and youâll massive improvements in a host of environmental issues. And for me its much less about the tall buildings and much more about keeping the handful of old things we have left. Build new grid, put in sidewalks and bike lanes and put skyscrapers there to your hearts delight.