I can’t imagine it wouldn’t pass either — though we never know what the current council will think. But since the Dillon has already broken and set the height precedent in the Warehouse District, and RUSBUS is planned to be about the same height, disallowing this project the same height when it’s literally across the street from those two buildings would be very questionable if done on the basis of height alone.
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Have you ever done a Life Cycle Assessment for a building? You say it is “rarely an environmental win to demolish an existing building,” but what proof do you have?
You have ‘cyclist’ in your handle so you clearly want to know what is the correct answer here. Anyway, I have done lifecycle analysis for wastewater infrastructure. It’s a little different ballgame for sure, but the energy associated with the already built product and the energy associated with tearing it down and the energy associated with any ongoing disposal monitoring must all be accounted for and not just energy consumption starting from some point in time. There are a million different angles to look at this from but the widest lens seems to be ‘climate’ perspectives which rope in energy use, other forms of material waste and such. This Norwegian example concludes that for equivalent size buildings, it takes 50 years for new construction to catch up to a refurbished building. My statement essentially came from here. You can use google, go read some more. I understand the argument here is that a new building is going to be larger in this case. My counter, remains, build more grid and build the new, bigger buildings there and stop accepting that downtown style urban environments are fixed forever and all we’ll ever get from here on out is total crap. Subdivisions, Office Parks and Shopping Malls are your enemy…not historic buildings occupying their historic place in the street grid. Back to you David Donovan…historic buildings are very much part of the collective interest so says the Department of the Interior, City of Raleigh, State of NC and every historic preservation entity given a non-profit status. How do you feel about, say, building setbacks? Too much government? How about zoning in general? You should see how much of a collective concern it is in other places…here is the window replacement guidance in a couple of Alexandria VA districts. Yikes.
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“Back to you David Donovan”
Thanks, … Mark. But these buildings aren’t “historic,” they’re just old. Like, look, obviously it would be dumb to raze the Joel Lane House and build a skyscraper there. That building is legitimately historic. These aren’t. They’re just old. And because of their oldness they’re not well suited to their current purpose of hosting co-working space, despite the incredible done by the folks at HQ to retrofit them as much as is humanly possible. (I work in this very building we’re discussing. This is my work space.) There is not enough space to meet demand, the building cannot be made ADA compliant, and gutting the building and starting over would make it vastly better suited for the purpose it serves today.
And sure, I would I love to bulldoze some low-density residential developments and build street grids instead, but how feasible is that, really? That’s privately owned land, and under the U.S. Constitution, you can’t bulldoze the houses people live in without paying them just compensation, and that money starts to run out very quickly. on the other hand, the vision of just letting landowners build taller buildings on their land is a thing that can and does happen in real life.
It is true that new buildings start out with a carbon debt they have to pay off, but those studies generally don’t try to estimate how the new building will impact the behavior of the humans living nearby. I have an extremely high level of confidence that constructing a 20-story building right next to Raleigh’s train station and a block away from its new bus transit hub is a decision that will pay off handsomely from an environmental perspective.
Also, yes, setbacks are really, really bad and we should get rid of them! You could even say that they’re 
setting us back 
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It would likely cause a lawsuit.
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I read the article which focuses on how setbacks are a waste of space, but can you elaborate on this some more? Setbacks definitely make sense in suburban residential, so you don’t have windows looking into neighbors windows 2 ft away. In an urban setting, I’m not sure what exactly this means. Setback=larger sidewalk? Space for a row of trees? Is this so the city can have the space to widen roads in the future to add bike lanes/bus lanes without having to purchase 20 story buildings to do so? I’m trying to picture in my head in DTR buildings setback, but I can’t picture unless we’re talking about the sidewalk between the street and building.
They may not be historically significant but they are historic nonetheless. They have intrinsic and aesthetic value that cannot be recreated. And being part of the “warehouse” district - they are necessary.
Agreed on setbacks.
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Can’t help myself here… You know the old adage, “in suburbia they cut down the trees and name the streets after them…” So in Raleigh (the beige suburban city) we rip out warehouses and name a downtown district after them. 
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To be fair, Citrix, The Dillon and Union Station kept their old warehouses in one form or another. So did MSFH.
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This is a good point. Really, rather than making the owner of every single parcel have to go through the whole re-zoning process from scratch, they ought to just zone everything between the railroad and Dawson St. to DX-20 and let developers apply for a variance if they want to go any higher than 20 stories.
At the end of the day, this land will soon be highly walkable to both of Raleigh’s two main transit hubs. Whatever aesthetic value the buildings might arguably have, and notwithstanding that the buildings have been there a long time, it would be egregiously irresponsible to mandate a two-story height limit for the land right next to the transit hubs. Yes, they are warehouses, and this area is called the “Warehouse District” because there used to be a ton of warehouses there, but Raleigh’s economy has changed a lot since the 1930s, and there’s not really a ton of demand for warehouses in this area. The buildings have already been retrofitted to serve modern purposes, but there’s only so much of that you can do within the existing confines of the buildings. It seems logical to let people rebuild on this land to make the buildings much more suitable for the purposes they’re used for today instead of the purposes they were used for in the 1930s while incorporating that “warehouse” aesthetic into the facade.
@Lucius great questions, but just in the interests of not letting this thread get off-topic, I’m going to see if there’s another thread that might be a better place for all things setback-related.
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Historic is just the bureaucratic method of ensuring at least some old buildings stand a chance of being saved. “Historic” is obviously not an objective measure. “Old” clearly is and for that reason we should always be considering saving old, irreplaceable buildings. Anything built with modern materials and building techniques, even with an amazing design, is expendable in my head, because you can throw up anther one anyone. Structural brick, stone lintels, and virgin timber are all long gone from our construction vernacular and therefore all old things are worthy, to me. Perhaps moving somethings makes the most sense, but I’m almost always on the side of saving the building. Pre WWII is a good approximate litmus test for me. Certainly anything pre automobile passes muster.
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That take is a little too black and white for my taste. Take Dorton Arena (Maciej Nowicki’s “Paraboleum” at the State Fairgrounds.) If for some unfortunate reason it were ever destroyed (a tornado, for example) it would be easy to replicate with modern materials and techniques; lessons learned and technology developed since its construction in 1951 could handily improve upon some of its shortcomings, while remaining entirely true to the original concept, appearance, and execution if it were to be rebuilt.
It is, however, not expendible because it is likely the single most architecturally significant and influential building in the city, perhaps the entire state, at least in the 20th century. It was designed by the then-head of the department of architecture at the newly formed NCSU college of design, who tragically died before its completion. Countless buildings of similarly impeccable pedigree held in extremely high regard copied and adapted many of its innovations. It is emblematic of and inextricable from that moment in North Carolina’s history when the state began to turn its economy from the “big three” of the past (tobacco, textiles, and furniture) toward the future of research and technology (RTP was founded in 1951, the same year as Dorton began construction.)
Admittedly Dorton is a very exceptional specimen, but the existence of such a specimen throws into question the whole “old is gold, new is poo” axiom.
I do agree that anything old merits consideration but the answer is not always yes.
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Ok, so maybe HQ isn’t really all that historically significant or elaborate design, but I like the idea of keeping it and CAM to keep some of the warehouse character, but also to force the rest of the site into higher density, and require unique building shapes and designs to fit onto the site rather than the massive mega block developments like 301 Hillsborough if the existing warehouses were demo’d.
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So I’ve had a chance to speak with multiple sources involved with different stakeholders, and here’s what I’ve been told, none of which is especially surprising:
We’re looking at multiple years (probably at least three years, possibly more) before any actual work starts to happen, so it’ll probably multiple years before we even see any architectural renderings of anything at all.
HQ Raleigh has about 20,000 feet of space in its Warehouse location, including the 311 building across the street. Coincidentally, that’s almost exactly the amount of space that they’ll have in the new Gateway Plaza location, which I learned is scheduled to open for business Sept. 1.
Nothing is finalized, but everyone seems to be operating under the assumption that the buildings facing Harrington Street will get knocked down, which makes sense since any new building would pretty much have to have its main entrance on Harrington Street. (No word about what might be in the CAM building’s future.)
If you look at the Wake County Real Estate Database, there are two small buildings owned by a fourth owner who is not part of the rezoning request. I get the sense that this is not expected to be any kind of impediment to this project, though.
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Sorry, but I have to laugh at this phrase for 301…massive? Lol
Yes, massive. Full of mass. Full block-size developments appear much more contiguous and overbearing than if the buildings were separated - especially when the bottom 6-8 floors are merely screened parking levels.
Geez, nothing to do with height. Quite the obsession with height on these pages.
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Lol I was thinking the same thing like since when did massive been height? It’s a huge project. Almost 1 million sqft I would say that’s massive.
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This project will no doubt be large, especially compared to Raleigh or most of NC for that matter. I guess that I am comparing this entire project with a single building of 1 million sq ft…and that in my mind is massive…my two cents.
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I saw the owner of the two warehouses that Martin Street present to the planning commission “Committee of the Whole” meeting last week. The owner actually lives in the second floor of one of them. He thinks the buildings are very historic and worth saving, so his plan is to get that rezoning so he can build behind them and preserve them. He was very entertaining to listen to.
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One might say that he wants to build a giant ADU in his backyard.
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