That’s really the fault of an imprecise media that’s not familiar with the process imo. The first line of the article in TBJ was “The architecture firm tapped to lead the design of the upcoming Downtown South development has released new designs for the project,” which immediately implies a level of authority to these renderings that they may or may not have. And I think when the public sees something that says “this is a rendering of XYZ,” they expect XYZ to actually look that way.
Another part of the blame lies on the firms themselves. 10 Design’s website should be much more clear about their level of involvement for everything in their portfolio. To masterplan all of those districts is a completely different undertaking than designing them, and not mentioning their scope of work potentially inflates their work experience.
Kane refers to 10 Design as their “masterplan architect” in their project brochure. The DTS website also lists a mid 2022 target start for construction though, which means design for those buildings would already be underway, and they don’t mention any other architects working on the project. So idk!
What led me to believe that it may be more than just planning was that Kimley Horn was mentioned as the Traffic Engineer. To do an actual traffic impact analysis you’d have to know the actual scope of the development which would seem silly to do if not utilizing actual plans. But hey, maybe if they have money to throw around like that
That’s usually part of master planning though. A masterplan considers things like the overall design drivers for a district (what are the priorities? What do we want the experience of this place to be? Are there unifying elements?), but it also establishes the mix of uses, densities/square footages, analyzes the ideal approaches through different modes of transport, decides how to layout the street grid and organize building heights based on topography/solar orientation/water or land features, and much more. A civil engineer’s analysis is really important for this, and so is a traffic analysis for a development of this size.
They’ve already decided the square footages for each building use, which will allow them to get numbers for residents/workers, and they’ve identified the entrances/exits to the site. This doesn’t require the buildings to actually have been designed though.
If you looks at some early renderings for North Hills East master plans, they are a good bit different from what was actually built. I expect similar at DTS.
In other words, if you had this, combined with square footage/users for each building, wouldn’t that be enough to provide input on the traffic functionality? Even if it’s not a full formal study, wouldn’t you have useful feedback on the number of entry points to the site, potential flow through the site, and the potential impact on surrounding thoroughfares?
Yes I totally get what you’re saying. What I was more so getting at was the fear that they’ll just come in later and just build some 5 story over retail buildings and that’s it.
Ah! Yeah, I don’t really expect that to happen. Park City South was a major curveball to the degree that it seems like they just completely threw the masterplan in the trash. I think something major happened there behind the scenes.
The site plan and design change at Park City South, I could honestly care less about. The elevations as submitted were boring, but, basically fine
Except.
That ridiculous garage, with way more floors than the apartments, and way more spaces than required by the UDO, will stick up above the apartments like a middle finger pointed at the city, and will keep me salty for decades. (If it’s built as proposed)
The building at 1810 Fayetteville was sold and is in LLC. I pretty sure Greg Hatem owns it. It is very Art Deco inside. Cool site in future for restaurant. Rest is functioning water infrastructure on City tract along with two Walnut Creek sewer outfalls. The 10 acres the City owns isn’t going anywhere!
They are being extorted by certain city council & county commissioners which is creating a significant strain on the projects timing…but even more concerning is it is threatening the projects viability in general.
I would guess it’s probably something along the lines of a community benefits agreement. Which is not literal corrupt extortion for cash, but rather the sort of horse trading for development approvals that is at once distasteful and common.
These things aren’t super common in Raleigh, especially not under the current council, but they’re very run of the mill in lots of places.
