It’s his money, we have no right to dictate who he hires that’s ignorant!!!
For a PD the city and developer basically agree on a clean sheet development plan that is not necessarily grounded in existing zoning code.
The basic premise is that, developers get more flexibility to do things not allowed under existing zoning, in exchange for being more specific about what they will build. PDs are usually but not always used for larger scale developments (like this) where conditions would be too complicated and numerous to spell out in a standard conditional zoning. Often they include something similar to a master plan.
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I agree that it would’ve prevented a LOT of people on all sides from being confused and concerned if Kane didn’t push this as a simple rezoning case. But I think the reason is simple: a simple rezoning requires less work, and no one forced them to do the harder thing.
Click here for more details on what Owen described.
A Planned Development (PD) is a special type of zone according to Raleigh’s Unified Development Ordinance (UDO).
Normally, you’d submit your building plans each time you need a building permit -or, if you need 'em, in rezoning applications. This lets City Council (and before them, relevant subcommittees like the Planning Commission) check whether individual buildings agree with the city’s long-term wish lists and planning rules.
But what if you want to build a whole development or a district based on multiple buildings? That’s where you would re-“zone” your land as a PD special zoning district. With this, you’ll tell the city exactly about all the buildings you want to build (and check them against the UDO and other city expectations) at the very beginning.
When a developer and the City agrees on what will be built, you’ll have an approved “master plan”. Every time the developer wants to build something on PD-zoned land, they’ll just need to show that their proposal is consistent with the approved master plan. Even though a master plan can let developers get around some kinds of red tape, it’s not really a “blank check”. Instead, the developer’s just doing the work upfront.
In the application they submitted in October, Kane Realty wrote that PD requirements are not applicable to their project. If that was a problem, city staffers should have required Kane to fill out the PD-related pages. The city asked for (and got) some corrections in Kane’s application in the end. But the need for a master plan was not among the flags raised. That decision is on city staffers just as much as the applicant.
City Council has the right to deny the zoning request, though, and ask Kane to re-submit with a master plan. Kane’s already done like a majority of the work for that, anyways, while answering environmental and affordable housing-related questions.
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OK - stupid question:
what is a PD?
Planned Development.
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If I had to venture a guess as to what ONE Wake will think about the addition of a black developer team, I’d say they will likely not care very much at all. There’s a popular Twitter meme where someone describes the difference between “liberal” (generally capitalist with a focus on diversity) and “leftist” (anti-capitalist, diverse but more class-focused) with the “leftist” saying to end the prison-industrial complex and the “liberal” saying to just hire more women guards. ONE Wake would probably say the black developer team falls into that latter category.
Is this tedious? Maybe. But we better get used to it. This is the lens through which social justice organizations are going to be fighting these projects for the foreseeable future. Either you play ball to find solutions that work for everyone or you give up and focus your investment to the exurbs and urban fringe. Hopefully Kane realizes these groups aren’t going to be going away any time soon, and trying to ram through an approval is not the best way to approach this.
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It’s not an insinuation it’s the truth because the housing prices will not be anywhere near affordable in that area without people with experience with racial inequity is involved. It’s so much a race thing since their is a larger percentage of middle to upper class black people than most other big cities but disadvantaged people will be negatively affected if they don’t have people like Levelle vouching for them.
The thing is you can afford to move others in areas surrounding this part of town might not be able to financially.
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This Downtown South project is starting to bring back a lot of memories of Cocker Towers near Cameron Village…
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The market is not here buddy. Plus we literally have one of the largest youth soccer organizations in the country, have women and men from the US Soccer teams, and has a big enough fan base that is growing every year. Whereas, we don’t even have a minor league baseball team within 10 miles of downtown or anywhere in Raleigh. Also, the MLS committee considered Raleigh and the MLB would never waste money to even come down here to disgust funding a team with no sponsor or developer.
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Please forgive my spelling and grammatical mistakes my phone loves to autocorrect and put unrelated words 
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I did a little research on who sits on the planning commission and am wondering why there is not a single businessperson or real estate professional represented on this commission?
Basically you do not have a single person who actually understands business as best as I can tell OR what it takes to put together a deal and actually build something. I think there is one architect…but that doesn’t mean he has any clue what it takes.
The rest of the commission seems to be filled with with “activist types”…some of whom I cant really tell if their job is a real thing or just some made up nonsense that allows them to go complain about projects just like this. Further, in terms of “diversity” I only see one race other than the white people which to me…is not a representation of our City…but what appears to be an attempt to stack with one narrow view…which is how we end up in situations like this…
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Autocorrect is the spawn of the Devil.
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How will the status quo preserve affordability? With proximity to downtown and Dix, under existing development rules it’s heading the way of every modest single family home getting torn down and replaced by a 4000 square foot mansion.
I am kind of thinking that preserving local affordability of market-rate housing is impossible in an environment of growth. Preserving regional affordability is only possible by building a lot of housing.
Is it possible to achieve this without massive displacement? Homeowners are not really part of the picture as they benefit from increased property values. They can continue to live in their homes, and sell out/cash in voluntarily whenever they please, choosing money over community, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do! (“Community” is not some priceless artifact that must be preserved at all costs; it actually has a real dollar value to people, and that’s not actually evil at all - it’s an expression of individual freedom of association.) (Gosh I am sounding like a conservative here, but I really do believe this.)
As for renters? That’s the tricky part. We could earmark enough capital-A Affordable housing in the neighborhood for existing renters, especially long-time renters. Or we could subsidize their rent. But either way, that’s difficult to manage: Who qualifies and who doesn’t? What are the boundaries? How many of them are there? Do we grant them Affordable housing for life? Is this fair for people who don’t happen to live in this neighborhood? SO, do we need a citywide anti-displacement AH policy? But does that create a “privileged” set of people who happen to be living here now, at the expense of future residents? Should we even be holding up DTS at all, while we figure out the answer to these problems which are essentially universal in any capitalist economy?
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One question that I haven’t seen addressed is what happens to the development dollars when you stop a project in a predominately black part of any city. My guess is that the dollars go to predominately white parts of the city and those areas are more welcoming of development and “gentrification”. So if you stop Downtown South and that area stays basically the same or someone comes in and builds some suburban style shopping centers and housing units, is that a better outcome for south Raleigh and its residents? My sense of it is that most of the development dollars in most American cities have always gone to white parts of the cities and I just don’t see that as helpful for the mostly black and brown areas.
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I honestly feel the same way but I just think more affordable housing units need to be added in this area beforehand or near the units already built about a mile away? So then these people complaining can move out before the prices go up.
Apple just wants me to get a new phone that’s all 
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If you’d like to support this project, please email the Raleigh City Council (cityclerk@raleighnc.gov) before December 15th. More info: Downtown South District - Support, Project overview: Downtown South District - About
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Click here for all the race-related things, since this should really be in its own topic.
Since we’re not talking about taxes right now and TIGs (the particular type of tax break DTS is asking for) is too new to answer your original question, I’m going to rephrase your question as “what happens to development projects” instead of “development dollars”.
I think that’s true regardless of whether you treat race as the main motivator for development. If you are Kane and DTS never gets passed, for example, you could tone down the project and make it more suburb-y 'til it gets a thumb’s up from Council, or you could cut your losses and move on (where other developers could come in and eventually get something built).
On a macro level, I think this is true here: most major, non-highway developments that I can think of have been built in northern, western, or downtown Raleigh. But you could find out for yourself by making a list of all the projects since 1965 (after RTP got built and the Civil Rights Act got passed), and slapping that on top of a map of self-reported ethnicities in 2010 Census responses.
Is it really that narrow? And was it any broader and more inclusive in the past?
For context, I agree that it doesn’t help when you over-simplify the conversation and make it only about white or Black people. After all, I’m Asian; personally, I’m often annoyed at how the issue of race is seen as literally black-and-white when there’s a million shades of other colors. But I don’t think that means policies that explicitly help Black communities are bad for other people (or even has to be racialized to begin with).
If anything, I think you’re setting a baseline expectation: by saying you want to correct for historical inequities, you’re defining the problems you want to solve in a more explicit way, and you’re being clearer about how you measure your success. Affordable public housing, environmental protections, a more robust public input process,… even if you specifically target Black people through those policies, you can still serve the interests of others.
Unless… do you think Black people are wrong about what they see and feel in their own lives? Do you think the reasons for those challenges are solely their own responsibility (and nothing else was at fault)?
Wouldn’t that make it too easy to have a conflict of interest?
Even if you address the ethical problems, is there anyone like that who’d want the position? There’s a vacancy opening up this March.
I have already emailed them Dan . Thanks for posting this . Lets Everyone email them that supports this project because there will be a lot of people speaking against this project @ the December 15th meeting . David Cox had over 200 people last night @ his virtual meeting . I did not watch this .
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