Being that Maywood is a bridge between Dix Park, Centennial Campus and the future Downtown South, this item is not surprising.
Hope you don’t mind I replaced the Facebook to N&O link with the direct N&O link. Some offices block Facebook.
Maywood? …
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Seeing Earp’s Seafood go is a sentinel event of change. There are amenities developing south of downtown which entice people to start investing. So, what is a collection of garages, repair shops, and low-density housing is now attractive.
It’s evolutionary. Fortunately, affordable housing already is established in protected pockets. And, City of Hope cemetery is safe, too. Caraleigh Mills adaptive reuse is probably safe as a historic property.
But, the rest of those single family dwellings are going to be getting their mailboxes filled with offers. What will hurt are those who rent their homes. And, am not sure what the rate of non-tenant ownership is in that sector.
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@dtraleigh
Maybe someone will offer you and your family tons of money 
and then ya’ll can relocate to a new home in one of the new homes in one of the new neighborhoods in the up and coming DTSR (DownTownSouthRaleigh) area? 
And if ya’ll do move, don’t forget your friends (a.k.a. US) Lol 
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So the site is about 35,000 square feet. To get 200 apartments, it would definitely have to be 12 floors with some setbacks.
Developer’s website doesn’t really indicate they’ve ever done a project like this before. http://www.wajmanagement.com/
The Fuller Heights neighborhood is going to gentrify, no matter what, with its proximity to downtown and with an amenity like Dix Park next door. It’s actually already underway. No amount of opposition or downzoning or NCODs or restrictive covenants can prevent that. Period. Rents are only going one way. The days of renting a whole house for under $1k/mo here are long gone, history, never coming back. This is already no longer an affordable neighborhood.
The only question is, do we let the neighborhood redevelop into an extension of downtown as it gentrifies, increasing our density and walkability, or do we try to preserve its nature as a single-story neighborhood forever? If the existing zoning is kept, we can expect to see a lot of 1:1 tear-downs with houses 4 times as large (and nearly four times as expensive) going in.
If they really want to preserve the neighborhood in amber, a very restrictive NCOD that keeps the zoning and adds restrictions on building form. But then you’d wind up with people paying $650k for 1100 square foot houses, instead of $1 million for 4000 square foot homes. And is that even actually a better outcome in terms of affordability?
Anybody who suggests preservation will keep it affordable is being completely disingenuous.
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I predict this rezoning will be met with a lot of resistance from the SW CAC. Even if the developers manage to incorporate a new Earp’s into the proposed apartment development it won’t be the same to the old guard. I can hear it now: “I’ve lived here for 187 years and Earp’s has always been there. . . yada, yada, yada.”
@dbearhugnc - You’re referring to Gateway Park, Heritage Park, and Walnut Terrace when you say protected pockets of affordable housing? There’s some “naturally occurring” affordable housing in the area (Fuller Heights, Caraleigh), but a lot of those places are already starting to change hands.
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N&O article also mentions 15% (or 30 of 200 units) reserved for tenants at 80% of Raleigh median income.
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Haha, you can just stop at “offer you and your family tons of money” 
Honestly, Maywood is still not a walkable area, IMO, it’s a hike to get to Fayetteville Street. That’s my kind of barometer on what is walkable in downtown.
Still, the area can be made walkable with some infill. I actually love the houses being built across from Trophy.
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Also, I had to look it up which properties exactly we’re talking about. I’m thinking it’s these. About 0.81 acres.
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I don’t know about that. I used to be in the SW CAC and things were changing after Renaissance Park was built out. Alot of those Renaissance Park people have been active in the CAC so it’s not just dominated by the 70 years old, long time resident crowd.
Earp’s has probably been there long enough to have a big say in the future of their property. I think if there is opposition it will probably come from people outside the CAC who are concerned with the Citywide gentrification issue. From my time in the SWCAC it seemed like they felt there was too much affordable housing in being built in the SW, and that the City was promoting “clustering” of affordable development in the South and Southwest rather than trying to distribute it throughout the city. To me having the 15% of units earning under 80% of the median is a pretty good solution.
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I would like to be pleasantly surprised but I’m in the SW CAC and haven’t seen many Renaissance Park folks at meetings. At least not in the last year or so.
Not sure what you mean that Earp’s will have a say in the future of their property. They don’t own it anymore.
I think folks in the SW CAC might’ve been growing weary of all the apartments geared toward students going up in the Tryon/Lake Wheeler/Lineberry area.
I agree - reserving 15% of units for those earning under 80% of the median is a start.
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I’m feeling confident that the City of Raleigh will put a positive spin on this being that it’s on the Southern BRT corridor.
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I say we rezone the whole triangle of Maywood/Lake Wheeler/South Saunders as DX-12, not just Earp’s. Build out a street grid, and let the development fly on this, the new frontier of Downtown Raleigh!
If you are interested in preservation, “Preserve everything exactly as it is” is, to me, not an acceptable platform, certainly not if you hope to preserve affordability. You have to pick your battles. Letting go in Fuller Heights might create an escape valve that lessens the pressure on other areas like Southeast Raleigh, Carolina Pines, etc.
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It has been over a year since I was there. The last time I was involved, around 2014-15? the officers were all residents of Renaissance Park. Compared to 2002-2012 when everyone was from Fairway acres or the Lake Wheeler corridor that was a massive change in attitude. I was there back in the Caraleigh Mills renovation and Renaissance Park PUD days.
Earp’s had their say when they sold their land to a residential developer. Nobody can make them stay there.
I think the dynamic is a little more complex than that. You do have alot of student apartments in that Lake Wheeler/Tryon corridor. Students aren’t engaged in the local public process so the area isn’t that well represented politically. The city uses it as a dumping ground for affordable housing because nobody complains about it if it’s next to student housing. The problem is that student housing is often cheap housing, even if it isn’t technically “affordable” housing, so you end up with this high concentration of residential at the lower end of the development scale. Then you have a large, low income area all districted to the same school which further perpetuates the cycle.
I have a big problem with how the City has handled student and affordable housing in the past.
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How come we aren’t presuming that Earp’s will persist as part of a new development? Is their elimination a foregone conclusion?
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“We hope (the market) is around for a long, long time,” Adams said. “There’s a plan to incorporate the seafood market in the development. But there’s no guarantee it would work out. We still have design and engineering phases and a seafood market comes with its own challenges.”
The lip service is there but what actually happens in negotiations is anyone’s guess. I heard that the new developers over at Seaboard wanted to include 18 Seaboard in their plans as well, but they couldn’t come to an agreement with Jason Smith and he decided to walk away.
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But doesn’t the owner of the property actually own Earp’s now?