I guess developers don’t really care about things like this, but a little surprised they didn’t push it an extra 3 ft to be the 2nd tallest building in the city.
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100% in alignment with you on this. There are very few buildings I think deserve protection for a myriad of reasons.
Far left
Far right
Build everything
Build nothing
NIMBY
YIMBY
Gotta be in the middle somewhere.
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Obviously the dream is that they don’t need this sliver of land (it’s kind of odd it’s included in the assemblage) — Raleigh is definitely short on historic structures. That said, aside from the bar inside this is a pretty snoozy old building that’s getting a great replacement. I’ll give this a rueful shrug and then get excited about the tower.
The two state buildings they’re tearing down are more interesting architecturally, and one of them isn’t even getting replaced with anything.
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Exactly why this keeps happening. And soon, we won’t have any of these cool old buildings left. This isn’t about interesting architecture (though I do strongly prefer Berkeley’s old 1920’s look vs that horrid brutalist [and not historic] Bath building you referenced).This is about buildings that have stood for close to if not over a century in this city. Raleigh is super old - though you’d hardly realize that if you were just walking around as a newcomer. Contrast this with another old city like Philadelphia - which still manages to build beautiful, brand new towers while you can still walk down entire streets and feel as though you’ve stepped back in time.
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This one better happen. Farewell Berkeley 
.
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Considering how long it takes to get projects approved by the planning department and the current inflation rate, I’d be surprised if this gets out of the ground. Unless, they have built in a large inflation contingency.
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Sadly, if First Citizens Bank can get their own 1898 HQ’s building, complete with gargoyles and grotesques: the scary figures carved into stone corbels, keystones, and friezes on the building façade razed, then Berkeley Café doesn’t have much of a chance… 
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I’d be hard pressed to make a case for the actual establishment having good reason to stay. I’m not arguing the Berkeley Cafe business is Raleigh history. This building was the hotel across the street from the original train station. It has character and history. Forget the business that occupies it. If it were completely empty and not being used, I’d have the same stance.
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Y’all have no respect for our city’s history, I see.
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I will also point out that the original 1898 FCB HQ (currently the PNC Plaza building now sits) was also on the National Historic Registry! 
And now everybody knows why I was, am and will always be mad with them… 
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Don’t jinx it. This is good for the skyline. I’m glad ASR is approved we can get started.
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I actually agree with you, as a city we’ve already lost a lot of culturally valuable historic buildings. There are countless examples mentioned and pictures posted in the lost buildings forum. It would be nice if the developer found a way to preserve the building somehow and rearranged the loading dock area.
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If you ask me, it should be required - not just “nice if they would try” - as in; they don’t have to try, they absolutely can figure out a way to both preserve the historic structure and build new. So could the POS developers that knocked down the Goodnights building only to (so far) do nothing with the land. Instead, all they’ve done is highlighted just how much surface parking is behind/around the (former) Goodnight’s building’s footprint that absolutely could’ve been developed around the historic structure.
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I like the looks of the building, and it will be exciting if we get something under construction that is over 400 ft high and will meaningfully impact the skyline. That being said, I agree that the city needs to do more to protect the limited number of architecturally interesting buildings that we have.
If I recall, the city made a symbolic gesture by not upzoning the Berkely Cafe building itself, but approving the rest of it. That really was purely symbolic b/c now we are getting the Berkely Cafe building torn down and replaced anyway, just with a shorter portion of a building. They could have approved the rezoning for the other properties on condition of retaining the Bekely, or at the very least its facade. IMO the city should proactively protect buildings like this and Goodnights so we stop losing them. I like seeing much of this new activity, but think we can work something out to keep getting new development but also preserve historical character.
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They already did. According to Olde Raleigh, the building on the corner, while hidden by a modern skin, dated back to 1892 and was an inn and grocery catering to Union Station travelers. It continued as a meat market, grocery, and then convenience store until 1980 even ownership changed haha and it eventually became a law firm. The Layton’s Catering building next to it was built in 1908. Both are gone now and I have no doubt the rest of the block will fall eventually.
I agree with you, though. It’s a shame we’re losing what little of the human scale buildings we have. With all the undeveloped surface parking lots downtown just begging for something, there’s no reason we should be racing to eliminate the few bits of history that remain.
The most interesting cities I’ve visited have a good mix off new and old. We’re rapidly losing the old for some fairly mediocre new.
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I agree with your last statement. It’s hard for me to get excited about a lot of the development because it’s all happening around the same time, much of it is fairly boring (IMO), and it will all be dated at the same time.
And adding to that - Raleigh has never had the historical significance of a Boston or Philadelphia and doesn’t have a navigable river or a port that would have attracted development hundreds of years ago, so there just doesn’t seem to be any old buildings to counteract the new mediocre stuff.
Frankly, what makes some of downtown interesting is the churches (not a church person, but they at least add some character). This is true in those cities that combine old and new as well.
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Nail, meet hammer. 
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Those of you okay with the demo, ask yourselves if you’d still be okay if the height gets reduced to 20 floors.
Lotto devs seem to wave the height carrot to get their demo and then whack Raleigh with the scaledown stick to what they were actually always gonna build.
I see no reason the project couldn’t use a sliver on the south side or be redesigned to not need it.
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I love history, I studied archeology in college, and I love towns with vibrant human scale street life. In a perfect world, I absolutely want this building not to use that sliver.
But I think it’s an unexceptional building with an unexceptional history that people mostly love because they have fond memories of the bar inside it. The new proposal is an enormous upgrade over the combined two lots.
If they were tearing down the old train station, for instance, I’d be up in arms. As I was about Seaboard Station, which I find to be a prettier, more interesting building.
Now, I think we can all agree we should find a way to build more unexceptional human-scaled buildings. They’re where we get interesting businesses like Berkeley Cafe.
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