Count me in the group that likes what Grubb seems to be up to over in this district…
3 Likes
I would not have thought to salvage / repurpose those 1-story cheapo industrial buildings but very cool vision for the site!
Still hoping for some kind of punch through connection from Ironworks to Capital / Crabtree Blvd to the Gateway Plaza area.
5 Likes
That parking deck has to be getting built in preparation for eventually rebuilding those 1-story industrial buildings.
3 Likes
Can’t imagine they’d do all that work to tear them down. Looks like the parking deck might be required based on the ASR Application page 2? Says 739 spaces are required?! Wow! seems excessive for basically renovating existing buildings and actually removing 14,277 square feet.
1 Like
Ugh. This. I live in Brookside/Mordecai and it is super frustrating how hard it is to walk/bike to for as close as it is. If you could make Atlantic pedestrian/bike friendly and have a ‘punch through’ off Crabtree it would do wonders for that entire area.
Has anything ever been discussed officially for this?
9 Likes
Totally need some kind of bike / pedestrian friendly way to cross over capital near Atlantic.
3 Likes
Yes… A small group of us biked from DT to Lynnwood recently and it was legit scary going over capital on Atlantic. I don’t typically get scared on a bike but when you’re sharing five auto lanes and there is no sidewalk or bike lane, and no natural traffic calming features like driveways or medians, there’s a pretty high chance of an incident
6 Likes
East End Market seems to be moving forward. There is a neighborhood meeting on Jan 6.
I didn’t realize previously that the rezoning doesn’t include the Car Fix garage at Wake Forest/Whitaker Mill corner. Who can imagine a brand new 15 story tower with that garage in front of it? Sounds like low cost to me… I would be ready to guess that the land owner was expecting more money for that piece of land…
3 Likes
Great, let us know what happens Vic
That corner wasn’t until Phase 3 anyway, so maybe it wasn’t a priority? I definitely assume that it will eventually get incorporated into the project.
Surface Parking costs $5k to $10k per space.
Structure Parking costs $25k to $50k per space.
So it’s not realistic to propose to the dealers: “hey, just spend bazillions of dollars you don’t have to spend if you stay here and do nothing.”
I’m a business owner. If someone proposed that to me, I’d tell them to pound sand.
If you had a choice to lift up your revenue generating property to prevent it from flooding for the cost of essentially a parking structure (which you are likely to have to build on site anyway), you wouldn’t do that? okay…
I don’t own a car dealership, but if I did, it doesn’t cost $25k to $50k times 100 or 500 spaces to pay a bunch of 100% commission car salesmen (and salesladies 
)to move cars around for a couple hours if there’s a flood coming. So no, I wouldn’t do that with my own money.
1 Like
I am not talking about the legacy surface lot car dealerships. The proposals we see for this area are denser and will require garage parking.
Right, but I’m just saying if I already own the car lot, why am I going to build a parking garage at the existing car lot if what I do moving cars when it floods saves me millions of dollars instead?
If the car dealers get bought out (after they find an alternative place to set up shop without violating their territory as described by another poster), then I could see someone who wants to redevelop car sales lot into something having nothing to do with car sales and thus garage parking is assumed part of the cost to build new.
But if I plan to remain a car dealer on my existing lot, I’m not spending bazillions of dollars to build myself a garage just because things get more dense around me
1 Like
Marathon station about to be torn down and replaced by a bank branch…yeah? I live in 5Points and don’t have an issue with one less gas station but a bank branch is about as exciting as watching a city council meeting.
Chris Corchiani is getting paid reportedly for the site like a ridiculous # for that small parcel. Everyone wants to be in 5 Points…at least the banks do.
1 Like
Makes no sense for the car dealers to be in this area now. Move them further out and redevelop the land. Converting all the asphalt parking to add more greenspace will help alleviate some of the flooding issues.
3 Likes
That’s interesting! We just stopped at the LoneRider Hide Out place randomly on Saturday…haven’t been to Five Points in forever, and I noticed that it was looking closed. We were wondering if anything would be going in. Like you said, getting rid of one of those gas stations is great, but a bank branch isn’t exactly adding to the area. I honestly don’t get why there’s so many bank branches around. I can’t think of the last time I went into mine…
4 Likes
I hate to be that guy, but by moving the car dealerships out of the city, you are just adding to the sprawl. I used to live near Capital/Durant… when we first moved up there, there was an abandoned golf course right along Capital Blvd with a Toyota dealership on the north end before Durant. Then the Leith folks bought it and it is mostly paved car lots. This all happened over a pretty quick time period. We lived there for less than 10 years and watched all this happen in real time. Since we moved away, there are even more dealerships on that old golf course, and I believe the Leith Motors is building their offices on what was a wooded lot at the intersection of Capital and Durant. By displacing the car dealerships, we’re just pushing the problem out to the fringes of the city (also see Glenwood Ave around Lumley Road, just read that another dealership is coming soon). When will we finally get away from the privately owned auto as our primary source of transportation? Haven’t we paved over enough of paradise yet?
1 Like
I don’t think moving car dealerships outside of town is adding to sprawl. How often do you go to a car dealer? I don’t mind driving 15-20 minutes once a year for service or once every 3 for buying a new car. That’s not really contributing to sprawl. There’s MUCH better use for the land to reduce sprawl and traffic.
10 Likes