I might be wrong, but I think William-Cozart is not part of this rezoning request. I think that property is owned by someone else. We met the guy probably about 10 years ago and he gave us a tour of the warehouses (including the one that’s now gone). An interesting fellow, and I’m not surprised if he’s not interested in developing it.
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My objective comments are 1) a bunch of density in the dead end corner of a downtown isn’t really functionally sound. Its not connected through to much else. I’d just slam a bunch of cool 3-5 story apartments in on the parking lots and call it good. I think residential cache is where the warehouse district needs to put its eggs 2) speaking of warehouse district, might as well hang up that moniker or else just admit everything you support is gloss and marketing BS. There will not be a warehouse ‘district’ to speak of if this happens as rendered. Subjectively I just like what is there better. No architect can build the soul that is the historical stuff that is there. Leave the existing soul alone and build the shiny fan boi stuff up on Departure Drive’s warehouse row. Make that better. The warehouse district as-is needs no improvement beyond filling in parking lots.
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If you squint really hard you can see Crowder clutching her pearls
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Wow I love it. Do you know how tall they are getting the rezoning for those two buildings? I thought I remember them wanting 20stories but I’m wondering if they actually had detail on what exactly those two towers come out to…
In your opinion, does point 1 change if the West St. extension is built? I agree, this seems like a lot of volume without much ingress/egress, though on the other side it may encourage public transit use and improvements.
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This is also eventually compounded by development at the RUSbus facility and whatever happens with the GCF site, and probably even further away things like 301 Hillsborough, the new City Hall, and Nexus if all of that happens. As a car commuter, everyone will likely be coming down Dawson or up McDowell.
Garner-Durham & Raleigh-Wake Forest Commuter Rail would be awesome here, as well as better transit options through downtown. We need to build dense and also consider more options for moving people in and around DTR.
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Of all the places in downtown to build offices I think this is the best.
I think that the best use next to a downtown commuter rail station is a dense office district. Even in places like Tokyo and Paris, basically the biggest factor driving rail use is CBD employment, and having that employment as close as possible to the rail station is a big plus.
It seems to me that developers are really recognizing this now.
I would completely redevelop the blocks to the west as far as Snow as well.
To me this is kind of a choice between preserving a neighborhood or saving the planet. For me, on the preservation front, if they do what they have done at the Dillon by maintaining the more distinctive parts of the facade, I will be satisfied.
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That was kind of my thought asking if the CAM building is preserved in some fashion… It’s not really the “warehouse” district anymore once most/all of the WAREHOUSES are gone… 
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Warehouse extrusion district.
But, seriously, the district has done a good job so far at retaining its buildings, even if they have new extrusions coming out of them. For the CAM block, it sure looks like most of the streetscape will remain with the new buildings layered behind it.
Citrix, The Dillon, MSFH, Union Station, The Depot, and a smattering of small out-buildings all retain their warehouse bones.
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This is very true. And I really can’t be too upset that CAM will be given even more space to take up. With a larger modern art gallery inside this super modern, tiered set-back building - the “Warehouse District” is going to look more like “New Brooklyn” haha - and I don’t mean that as a bad thing!
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Warehouse District hasn’t made much sense for a while. Maybe time for a new name like Union District. Or something unique like the Wye District or Wyewood.
Same thing happened with Austin with their Warehouse District. It’s just a heap of new condominiums and offices and new federal courthouse. There’s not a single warehouse to be seen.
Wyeleigh* hehe
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This is interesting. Clearly, there is cultural/aesthetic value to the warehouses, to the point where we named the area after them. However, we allow them to be destroyed. I for one am okay with most of he design of the Dillon, and I think the renderings for this block are cool. But, as a city we are piecemeal removing the factors (read: warehouses) which we celebrated in naming the district.
Would we stifle development with more strict design codes here? That is the last thing I want. Or, do we just accept the designs of the developers and let it ride?
You mean the Union Station District?
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I like the Warehouse District, points to history of area even if no real warehouses left. Kind of like Smoky/Smokey Hollow which has nothing at all of original structures left. At lease a lot of the the new buildings will save building frontages showing warehouse origins.
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I like that line of thinking. I can only hope that the RUSbus buildings leave the 5 Star warehouse somewhat intact - both because I hope 5 Star can stay in place as-is, and also because I love the color of that specific brick. It’s so rich and dark compared to the dry, clay color of pretty much all other brick around the city/NC state campus.
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Warehouse District is just not really unique. There’s probably more cities with Warehouse Districts than without in the US.
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This so much. The intersection of Davie and Harrington is currently a disaster for pedestrians. Cars get there and see an unexpected dead end in front of them and proceed to make u-turns in the middle of the intersection. There are no crosswalks, and this intersection only has one stop sign. Some drivers stop despite not having a stop sign and are generally confused. It’s a real cluster. I hope better infrastructure is planned in coordination with the development.
I’d like to see conditions put on this development and the Kane development to the south that require contributions to the West St project that seems to be otherwise hamstrung due to changes in federal funding requirements. Without that connection, this specific area is just going to become more pedestrian hostile than it already is.
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That’d be a fair and appropriate renaming. Maybe the City would even bring back the original Union Station, reconstruct its historic appearance and make it like a City Market west or a history museum of the area to compliment the area’s other resources.
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Except that I support things like the 40 story rezonings at Peace and Capital.
I am super excited about this. As has been mentioned once or twice in this thread, my office is in the existing building on this space, so I’ll be tossed out of my space for a little while, but I’m totally fine with that, for multiple reasons.
First, TOD is awesome, and Raleigh needs a ton more of it. This is exactly where we need to be adding more height and density, right next to our centerpiece train station, so kudos for that. As noted elsewhere in the thread, I think this makes it all the more important to extend West Street under the railroad tracks, so hopefully this will help kick-start that.
Second, the architectural rendering for new building looks amazing. They clearly wanted to do something distinctive and aesthetically appealing with this project, which is nice to see, and I think they executed on that very well here. (And I’m super excited about having more space for CAM.)
Third, the current building is emphatically not ADA-compliant. I realize some people have been writing eulogies mourning these old-timey warehouses that are going away, but in all seriousness, I would definitely encourage these folks to try to navigate this building in a wheelchair or with other mobility constraints and then come back and tell me how sad it is that we can’t keep time locked up in a bottle forever.
So, yeah, way to go Central CAC! Let’s build this thing!
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