One would think that should be the case; alas no.
The city continues to squander their opportunity to provide more downtown affordable housing in deference to suburban model development.
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It’s right there in the name - Affordable Housing. This is subsidized housing that costs money to run and therefore the city is constrained by the budget. Capital Square is building a tower across the street because they can (probably) make money renting those units. I too wish that we lived in a world where public services were not constrained by the government’s ability to finance them but alas we do not.
I count 2.5 city blocks covered by the housing project (if the Parcel E lot is hypothetical future phase private development), and I would guess there’s probably 400 - 500 units in there.
This is not that different than the market rate Platform buildings going up a few blocks away. Y’all are really acting like the sky is falling.
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Couldn’t the city densify the units at Heritage and then sell off the remaining land for big bucks that could then be used to fund more affordable housing?
IMO, the type of development built should be commensurate with cost/value of the land its on. Build higher density housing downtown and build lower density, surface parking type projects away from the city center where the value of the land is lower.
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Show me the surface lot parking at Platform. The proposal for Heritage has buildings ringed by surface lot parking. In fact, it looks like all of the parking is surface lot. That’s a lot of valuable land going to parking and driveways. Large scale market rate housing isn’t being built downtown with surface lot parking, and it hasn’t been for quite some time.
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It sounds like you are going off of the old plan. I don’t know how final the JDavis plan is but that should be the more recent plan and it doesn’t have as much surface parking as you are describing. I agree that any surface parking is less efficient but I’d bet you that the residents don’t want to be jammed into a mega block à la the Bed Stuy Projects. In our electoral system it is generally bad practice to tear down a public housing project and tell the residents “tough shit, this is what you get.”
I don’t know what the capital stack here looks like but I’m willing to guess that this already includes realized costs from the sale of property for private development. That would only include the portion under the current Heritage Park and not any of the property under the interchange. That’s like $20mm tops which doesn’t get you much anymore.
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Platform was also originally planned to be larger, but its rezoning did not pass and it got scaled down to 7 stories.
When I refer to four city blocks, I refer to the entire area bounded by South, Dawson, Western, and Saunders, which is the current footprint of HP, plus the loop ramp that the city is likely to remove.
My disillusionment with this project stems from some of the initial discussions and documentation. As I recall, the initial plan was to build literally the lowest density development possible that would still allow 1:1 replacement of the 122 existing units and allow all current residents to return.
That would probably make existing residents happy but RHA’s mission goes beyond that. Their mission is to provide affordable housing for residents of Raleigh.
It seems that they have come on board and realized that a larger market rate component can bankroll a larger affordable component, but they seem to reluctant to maximize it. Last I checked there is a pretty dire shortage of affordable units in Raleigh. This is downtown. People who live here will have maximum access to the best the city has to offer. Intentionally keeping the scale small might be what current residents want, but I firmly do not believe that it is the best thing for the city.
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How tall was the platform supposed to have been?
20 stories. And 20 characters.
Kane wanted towers there with view corridors for Boylan Heights residents through the project. B.H. didn’t want that so now they have this huge bunker building that covers most of the property and goes up 7 stories. Now B.H. has no view corridor.
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There are meetings next week on this with presentations. They are looking at over 600 units if not more to replace the 122 existing.
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The 20 floors was only for the office tower on the phase 2 side of the property. The residential building as it is was built exactly as proposed in the PD except it’s a flat 7 floors instead of stepping up from 5. So there are probably a few more resi units there right now than there would have been under the PD.
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So, I went to iMaps to check out how many acres this site is, and I think that it’s about 12.6 acres excluding the cloverleaf intersection. 600 units across almost 13 acres is meh sort of density for downtown. That’s less than 50 units an acre.
For comparison, let’s look at the market rate tower at 400H. That site is 1.01 acre and has 242 apartments, 144,000 sf of office space and 16,000 sf of retail. To be fair, some parking is on site, but other spaces are built on top of the existing deck that’s a block away. But, also to be fair, had the zoning allowed it at the time, I am guessing that the building would have been taller with all of the parking incorporated into the tower.
For additional comparison, Fairweather has 45 condos on .77 acre. This is still more units per acre and it’s a small building. No doubt that it would be larger if pursued today.
Platform has 442 apartments and ground floor retail on 3.81 acres. That’s much more than double the density of units per acre than Heritage @ 600 units.
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Turn the layers on for stormwater as there is a 72" storm pipe along eastern part of the property in large easement along with major sewer line. Duke also has major transmission mains along the site reducing the ability to be built closer to ROW line. Not sure the width of Duke’s easement. They are in early design. They will keep it under high rise limits $$$$$.
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They are having open to public design meetings on the redevelopment at the community center on Dorothea Drive today and tomorrow.
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Missing the hourglass reaction right now (2026 start!) but seems like there’s some hope baked into the plan since they’re ‘temporarily displacing’ residents (and helping with relocation) to tear down / rebuild up to 900 units here while replacing crumbling infrastructure. Not sure how we cover the budget gaps between maximizing land use for AH and the financial reality of building taller…
They could add a bunch of market rate apartments to their plan to generate additional revenue.
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Sounds great to me. So does mixed use.
Could you site a couple successful market examples ?
Absolutely not. I have no idea what I’m actually talking about it. It just seems like it could work.
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