When you can , read the city council agenda for their Tuesday December 4th Meeting concerning The Blount St. Parking Deck . If I have this right , the city will grant Highwoods Properties until June 22 , 2019 to start on their tower on the former Edison Site . Highwoods says that they will start by this date to build a 20 story office tower with a 6 story parking deck as a part of this project . What I’m confused on is are they saying a 26 story tower or are they saying a 14 story office + 6 stories of parking to total 20 stories ? What do all of you think on this ?
I can’t find the Edison on their website anymore but I remember before looking at it and they had the tower listed with 20 stories of leasable space. So my understanding has always been a 20 story office tower on top of 6 stories of parking. Which always made sense to me because the renderings made it look like the tower was in the 350-400ft range.
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26 stories. 6 of them for parking. Look at their website for the building for clarification.
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I couldn’t find it but I remember it the same way. 26 total stories. I wonder if they took the rendering down since they are making tweaks to the architecture. The agenda does say that they have agreed to start construction before June! So that’s exciting! Can’t wait to see the new design.
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I just fear the street front will be corporate and dead with overpriced rental spaces that will sit empty for years.
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Better than a gravel parking lot one block from the heart of downtown.
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This should probably all be moved to the Edison topic but looking at the rendering below, I think it looks like 6 stories of parking and 14 office.
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Can you share link to rendering?
Looks great - just wish it was taller
Let’s start a new topic on this project.
There is a parking deck in the middle of that block that was built just for a building like this… I am guessing this deck and a few other nearby decks must be at capacity if the need for the Edison to have 6 levels of parking. Does anybody know any parking deck details for this area?
I believe the residents of Skyhouse and another residential building use that deck.
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Niko, that is an old rendering I found from twitter. As mentioned above, Highwoods no longer has a rendering on their website so it is probably changing.
Ted, there is virtually no available parking near Fayetteville St. People at my work have been on the waiting list with McLaurin for months now.
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Yes. I am not surprised by that but I just wanted to confirm it. I am constantly seeing comments about how Raleigh should not be building more parking decks but obviously there is a strong need for parking and that need will continue for many years (I park in one of those parking decks). Still hoping for some kind of light rail or commuter train but I think I will be retired before that happens…
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With respect to building parking decks, I think the days of the city providing parking is over. They are not going to do it directly but have moved to partnering with developments, like what happened at The Dillon. They needed parking for RUS and I’m sure a deal was made in some way to get the spaces into The Dillon’s parking deck.
This is a good way to move us (again The City) from providing the parking as the city can focus on transit instead while the current city-provided parking operates only to cover their own cost.
Someday, the city-owned decks will get too old to maintain and have to come down. The needle moves forward again when the city partners with a developer to build new mixed-use, probably with some parking, but with density that supports transit.
I see it as a very slow transition but it’s being done in the right way as transit takes time to take hold. For now, if The Edison needs to add more parking underneath office, that’s ok cause it’ll make the parking decks that have nothing on top more and more obsolete.
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Currently, the top three floors of the Blount St. deck, with 531 spaces, are owned by Highwoods. The 706 spaces on the first five levels are owned by the city, with the understanding that 297 of those spaces will be made available for use by the office tower. Additionally, the tower will contain six levels of internal parking totaling around 330 spaces, and access to the Blount St. deck will be made on the fourth level.
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Yeah, that looks like 14+6 to me as well with six levels of parking over a first floor Lobby level, and then 13 more floors. The top “level” appears to be parapet walls to hide rooftop services. Total height definitely looks sub 300ft to me. If I presume a nominal 14ft slab to slab for the office levels, 8ft for each parking level, 20ft for the lobby level, and a 8ft parapet, that puts it around 258ft. What’s the UDO zoning on this site? 40? 20?
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I don’t want to start any rumors, but this plus the timing of the AAP announcement…I wonder if this tower can grow at all? This is a good site for something tall, 400’ or taller.
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Do we even know that AAP wants to be downtown? Maybe I missed something but I’ve not seen where they are specifically talking about being downtown.
There was a thread awhile back that indicated as such:
Whether or not they’ll only look downtown remains to be seen, but I think they’re off to a good start.
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David Cox said that they will be locating to Millbrook Rd on twitter yesterday. https://twitter.com/dcox4council/status/1068147599327285248
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