I didn’t say it was a tourist attraction or a marvel of engineering but what does any of that matter? I said it was existing, historic, and a landmark. In other words - worth saving. A complete fucking waste to take it down and build new. Especially in a city like Raleigh that has plenty of room. Maybe you need to look up the definition of a landmark? Everything else is just like…your opinion, man.
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Well, I do agree with your first part anyway. 
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Is it historic and a landmark, though?
It’s fun looking in a weird way, and it used to be the tallest in the city which is admittedly cool, but there’s none of the craftsmanship and beauty of an art deco highrise, or even a good brutalist one. It’s a mass-produced design that no visitor would look twice at.
Functionally, it’s a hotel with low ceilings that needs millions of dollars of repairs to get to the standards of even a new Holiday Inn. It’s not the Dewberry in Charleston where the necessary bones were there and the market can command hefty room prices to cover the cost of the renovation.
Fundamentally, there’s just not enough there there to justify it in my opinion.
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This is objectively true. The building has terrible bones, tiny rooms with low ceilings, a terrible site plan that wastes the land beneath it, and comes with nothing particularly notable other than the fact that it has a shape that was repeated over and over and over across the country with minor modifications. It’s like how Skyhouse repeated itself over and over and over, and there’s nothing terribly special about those buildings either. I won’t cry one tear when someone wants to take ours down and replace it with something better, and I won’t miss the hair curler either when it’s replaced with a much better hotel experience.
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Yes, and yes. Without question.
It’s ‘historic’, built in '69 right…? It’s been a landmark, visible from most anywhere in the city since it was once ‘tall’ relative to our building stock. It’s iconic, in a strange ‘I remember when’ sorta way.
If everyone on here had the money and could vote with it (as the folks who purchased this are doing…) - would you keep it or preserve it…? I know my vote.
Also if I HAD the money to vote to spend a bunch of money retrofitting a building to bring it up to modern hospitality expectation in our downtown into a boutique hotel, I’d choose a different building (over on Fayetteville St) 
My upside on this is the Kimpton likely brings better activated experiences for locals and visitors alike, hopefully increasing impact in the area and, bonus, it cleans up a lackluster surface lot.
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I think we’re pretty aligned. It’s historic in the lowercase “h” sense of the word, and obviously I’d prefer one of the scruffy single-story blocks or surface parking lots bit the dust while this gets a cool period renovation that includes the surface lots next door, but I just don’t think that’s possible in Raleigh right now. This Kimpton is a faaaar better use of the space than some forlorn hope that some wealthy development group sees the hair curler as the next big thing.
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My first reaction was it’s a NCSU building with the red brick 
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That’d be a top 4 NCState building!
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If we’re saying that the government should preserve into perpetuity anything that could be considered historic or a landmark then I dunno, man.
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It does exist, and it is reasonably old. The rest is…your opinion. My opinion is that it’s an eyesore, and I’ll be glad when it’s gone. If it brings you a little bit of sadness or frustration, that’s just extra fun for me. Maybe a weird fun, kind of like the fun you have blocking drivers downtown?
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Do I even want to ask??? 
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It was another post he made about driving habits downtown. I was just poking fun.
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Wow, globalization going way too far now.
It has always seemed to me that Kimpton’s brand is molded to fit each local market and that they seem open to the design professionals that they engage on each project.
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We all know you won’t be happy until every old building is razed to the ground. I hope it stays so you have to look at it for the rest of your life. That would bring me a wee bit of cheer.
Y’all… grow up. We often have differing opinions. None of them actually matter until one of us gets into property development and starts making millions of dollars, anyway.
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Lighten up bud. Pretty sure its just friendly back and forth (For me it is anyway). Also, there are ways to save/preserve old buildings that don’t require you to be a developer.
fair enough, don’t let me be a fun sheriff! And I’m with you on wanting to preserve old buildings that hold an historic or architectural significance for sure (the Goodnight’s building being one that just boils my blood it was never protected with an Historic Status). But unfortunately the Hilton Hair Curler is objectively neither. You may like the way it looks (I also personally think its so damn ugly its cute) - but like others have said, it’s a copy/paste design from the 60s that can be found all over the country. I actually remember driving by the one in LA a few years ago and grinning like an idiot when I realized ours had a twin on the other end of the country.
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Correction - I LOVE the way it looks.
Sure beats the copy and paste designs of today. Its infinitely more interesting than 90% of what gets built around here. Including its proposed replacement.
Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one around here with any sense of aesthetics and beauty. I know, I know…to each his own…blah blah blah.
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