That looks wonderful, I hope it happens.
It’s hard to get super optimistic: Redeveloping public housing is such a political minefield, and people are so scared of putting it in multifamily buildings after the disasters of the 50s-80s. So we end up with these sad rinky-dink suburban-style neighborhoods surrounded by moats of parking.
Any chance this actually gets built?
This looks identical to the original plan except for the block highlighted below is now a 5 over 1 instead of 3-4 story buildings. The tower in the back is Parcel E, which is likely still a placeholder for a future building.
Impressive, So question is…what about the residents that are there now going to live ?? Once again people of low to middle income are displaced for the sake of high rise towers and outrageous costs.
Isn’t the idea with this one that the low income housing gets replaced in the development? They’re just adding more of all the other kinds too, so it’s not just an isolated low-income development.
Let’s hope that is the plan. Isolating lower income has proven to be terrible policy in America.
Except the JDavis render doesn’t include the highway loop, which is consistent with the City of Raleigh Western BRT report, which recommended eliminating the loop in favor of a square loop interchange
We should be actively be grid-ifying south Raleigh, an area that is shaped by highways that are designed to basically steer you away from the area as fast as possible. Great if you have no business in south Raleigh, shitty for south Raleigh.
That rendering is too unambitious. Any surface parking downtown is a waste.
I have previously had the impression that they are prioritizing current residents’ opinions regarding the format of this development over the notion of maximizing housing here (both affordable and market rate.)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: 1000 units is the absolute minimum, and even that would seem a bit wasteful. 2000 is easily possible. 4000… now that would be some ambition! This is four full city blocks, FFS!
Completely agreed 
An overall waste despite its good intentions 
Hopefully the plan is to phase the construction to mitigate the displacement with tiered affordable units that get integrated along with market rate units within the larger development, allowing more housing opportunity across the spectrum.
Yeah… as much as I love green space, with this being so close to DIX PARK, I don’t see the need for any of that wasted open space in this drawing. Basically an office park setup right in the heart of the city.
You know people are still going to complain that it’s not a suburban cul-de-sac development. This seems like an ok compromise for a public project.
Especially replacing a legacy city housing property! Some of y’all gotta get with the program here. If they jammed 3 mega blocks in to replace this there would be protests, tenant issues galore, and everyone involved would increase the chances of losing their jobs by several orders of magnitude, either through elections or friction or both. Note that the Housing Authority scheduled several listening sessions to give the residents here a say in what the redevelopment would look like.
Sometimes it’s ok to take the win instead of playing armchair quarterback
Raleigh has a history of putting suburban model, low density, surface lot, car oriented, affordable housing in/around its core. This one is not as low density as previous ones, but it’s certainly lower density than recent market rate housing projects in the city. In the end, it’s still a waste of valuable land where more affordable housing can be provided. Between this and those fighting to keep the BRT corridor/station locations low density, I just don’t know anymore what the point is.
I give up.
Birmingham, AL had a similar housing project (probably even bigger) that desperately needed redevelopment and it finally happened after years and years of planning. It’s not impossible, but it is a longer process.
That is most likely going to be the approach that RHA takes. Also, we have to understand that the city will have to maintain all of these buildings with limited funds.
Hey, this apple doesn’t taste anything like an orange!
This redevelopment should be piece-by-piece to maximize affordable housing units because there’s a hyper-focus to maximize potential. Take an acre, build as many units as possible on this one acre and then move onto the next acre to start a new building. Takes many years to run out of space but you’ll get a lot more units overall.
It also means that the city doesn’t have to buy as much very expensive land to build where possible.
But why should affordable housing projects be treated differently than market rate housing projects? At the end of the day, are we not in a HOUSING shortage, full stop? Shouldn’t all housing projects - affordable, market rate, etc - maximize density in a fast growing city?
Housing is housing.
