I guess my main thought there is just that it will cost more than it would otherwise to develop that plot, even if the cleanup isn’t as expensive as some (me) would assume, and since it’s such a small plot on a busy section of road… all those factors together = no one is going to bother developing this plot so long as the ugly round hotel remains. Whoever owns it probably makes plenty of scratch from it just being a surface parking lot.
I’d love to be wrong, but then in that case I’d only expect a 3, maybe 5 story “whatever” building to go up.
Quite frankly, if we are going to take the old hair curler and make it hip, my mind immediately goes to some sort of hippie period vibe connected to the era of the hotel building itself. I keep seeing east Austin in my head when I think of it. I imagine vintage trailers serving coffee and baked goods like an old-school & mini food truck rodeo. I can imagine it becoming a cool hang-out space that’s complementary to the hotel. I can also imagine an open air structure like Longleaf Swine here, but a little more rustic/deconstructed. First they have to get the Indigo Hotel vibe right in order for these sort of things to happen.
I agree that it might be a good idea to lean into the vintage feel. With the old bones of the building, it seems to me difficult to make it feel new and luxurious, so I think you lean into the retro aesthetic, kind of like the Long Leaf Hotel on a grander scale. I think that could really distinguish it, and help Raleigh embrace some of its history, which is often a bit difficult to come by.
I think that we are both on the same wavelength here. From what I can figure, Indigo likes to draw inspiration locally, and that’s why my mind went to Longleaf Swine. It seems to marry the mid-century/mod aesthetic with authentically NC sort of vibe.
I don’t know. That second vacant lot is just under .5 acre and in Charlotte we built a 35 story apartment on that size lot. It can be done with a podium style building easily. (The Ascent Uptown apartment tower). And on other lot that size we built a 16 story hotel. So that vacant parcel can be built on and I would suspect it would be 10 plus stories or more.
I’d be supportive of a 5-10 story condo building there to be completely honest. I hate to say it but it would help draw more attention to the hotel, which would be the tallest building on the block.
The corporate culture in Charlotte is more supportive of urbanism. I think there is an attitude among developers and employers that it is a major city and should act like one.
Raleigh has a disproportionate number of NIMBYs, a lot of people throughout its history who refuse to see it as a major city and fight like hell to ensure it doesn’t become one. It also has some large employers that are actively hostile towards urbanism and downtown.
This is part of it at least. The other part is that a lot of Raleigh’s growth is getting shunted into North Hills. If all of that had been built downtown, I could see the case for Raleigh being perceived as more of a tiger the way Nashville, Charlotte, and Austin are, albeit a smaller one.
I wonder how our downtowns would look different today if the Research Triangle corporate tax breaks didn’t only apply to offices built on farmland.
Maybe our municipalities shouldn’t be in a competitive race to the bottom in terms of corporate tax rates in the first place, but if that’s the game we’re playing is there a good reason we shouldn’t give the same deal to companies that want to have offices downtown? Google has an office in downtown Durham, but only temporarily because they are planning to build an office in RTP. Maybe they would stay and invest in downtown if they weren’t being actively incentivized to leave?
Exactly. Perhaps it looks “small” because our perceptions of space are very different for outdoors vs indoors. But it is 22k square feet which is really not small at all. It’s a full block wide along Dawson! It is pretty much the exact same dimensions as the lot the Residence Inn down by the convention center sits on for example - and that in no way feels like a small building.
A factor is successful recruiting. Place your business in a downtown (Raleigh, Durham, or CH) and you may find it harder to attract workers who live in the other two cities. Place your business at North Hills or one of the Cary/Morrisville/RTP office parks or one of the office parks off 15/501 and you may find it easier to attract workers.
It’s unfortunate that RTP was being envisioned at a time when mass suburbanization and general exodus from city centers was happening across the country. It’s also unfortunate the Raleigh’s one “corporate client”, the state government, has been more recently on a path of decentralization.
For both Raleigh and Durham, they fortunately each have a major university near their city centers and throngs of young professionals who want to make the city centers their homes.
Eventually corporations will learn that being downtown gives them a recruitment and retention advantage when it comes to talent, because the new talent will be at their doorsteps.
Raleigh stands at the brink of a wave of 20+ story developments throughout its core downtown, a scale of growth that could easily satisfy demand for the next decade. It’s increasingly unlikely that 5 to 7-story buildings will be developed in downtown moving forward, except along its peripheral edges in places like Village District or east Raleigh.
For reference, if 30 development sites averaging 0.70 acres each were built out with 20-story towers covering approximately 85% of the land area, the resulting new development would total roughly 15.5 million square feet—enough to accommodate over 17,000 apartments.
Raleigh is unlikely to become a dense urban hub overnight; its transformation will unfold gradually over the coming decades. Still, today we see sustained and growing interest in urban development which is a promising indicator of what lies ahead. While patience will be required especially as not all projects, like the Holiday Inn conversion, involve ground-up construction as promised the overall momentum suggests we’re heading firmly in the right direction!
I used 0.7-acre sites in my example to introduce more variability, but even if you model 15 sites at 1.5 acres each or look at projects like The Weld, you still end up with around 15 million square feet of new high-rise development over the coming decade. The more important point is that landowners and buyers are no longer viewing downtown sites as viable for mid-rise projects like Alexa Moto. Even 10-story developments like Peace Apartments are becoming less likely.
From conversations with brokers, it’s clear that if a developer approaches a downtown site and says, “Yes, it’s zoned for 30 stories, but we only plan to build 10 floors,” they’re essentially asking for a discounted land price because they’re not maximizing the site’s potential. That approach no longer aligns with market expectations. The developers who will remain active are those with the experience and conviction to pursue 20-story + towers.
To make this happen, you start to get hotels charging $500+ night because they offer Umstead level or better of luxury. You start to charge $5/sf for rent because you have Related level offering, condos start selling for $1,000+ SF, and Class A+ office space renting for $80/SF.
Yes and No. Consider the number of high-tech employers in Silicon Valley (Google, Apple, etc) relative to the number in downtown San Francisco and downtown San Jose. From their point of view, suburbia is not a recruiting problem. Likewise in Dallas where most of the high-tech jobs are north of I-635, NorVa and I-495, Boston and Rte 128. Atlanta has been more successful bringing high-tech jobs into the city center, but even there I’d bet that 70% of the high-tech jobs are outside 285.
