Sorry I misspoke. You are correct. E. Lenior and Blount.
Your buildings are looking awesome. And boy howdy, the Highland is really going to make a difference on the skyline from this perspective. Thanks for sharing this!!
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IMO, East Raleigh around Chavis, Ligon, and Transfer is one of the best places to live in all of Raleigh. You get a real, organic neighborhood feel that’s relatively quiet while still being incredibly close to the city center. Add in the potential for long-term appreciation, continued investment and growth, and pricing that’s still attractive compared to many other close-in neighborhoods.
Pair all of that with the City Gateway, planned strollways and heritage trails, new schools, and future BRT access, and I think this area is a homerun. It has a combination of location, neighborhood character, infrastructure investment, and upside that’s getting harder and harder to find this close to Downtown.
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As a resident here, I 1000% agree.
I moved here from San Francisco with my wife (an NC native) 8 years ago. I’d never lived here so my only stipulation was I wanted to be somewhere walkable. Since we’ve landed here, we’ve watched Transfer come up, Chavis get revamped, facilities like Little by Little (a daycare) move in, and retail like Raleigh Wine Shop, Left Hook, Little Native, and Roshambo open up. It’s been super exciting.
At the same time, we’ve also witnessed the area go through some difficult transitions. It’s a historically Black neighborhood with a large section dedicated to public housing. The divide between people living paycheck to paycheck and those buying up the $1M homes getting built is just getting bigger. I feel like the gentrification train has already left the station, but we’ve tried to do what we can along the way.
I helped start up the Haywood St. Community Group a while back after a number of shootings riled up the neighborhood. It produced a lot of good (I think): a neighborhood block party, a community mural, regular neighborhood clean ups, a food pantry. While we’ve gone dormant for a while (long story short, a lot of it was falling on my wife and me and we burned out), we were able to create some real connections between neighbors that persist in informal meetups and other social activities. The food pantry, in particular, has become a surprising hub of activity and important local resource. (It’s at Haywood and Candor if you want to donate!)
I bring all that up because I hope that the city and neighborhood continues to think about our long-term neighbors as it continues down its path. There are a ton of exciting projects on the horizon (Chavis aquatic center, whatever the DMV ends up being, BRT and related redevelopment of New Bern, the Exploris space turning into a grocery store (the school is projected to move next year and start their first class in 2028 at their new campus), and maybe even the back half of Transfer and/or the south and east sides of Moore Square finally getting developed), but I hope an equal amount of investment is made into helping this neighborhood serve everyone.
How? I suppose I’d start with bigger investments into updated public and BMR housing, expanded access to affordable and healthy food options, health and employment services (would be wonderful if what goes into the DMV spot has some of this), and so on.
But yea, this neighborhood has SO much potential. With everything happening downtown and around here, I’m super excited.
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I think the gentrification train has probably already left the station as you’ve stated, and the fact that many longtime residents can no longer afford to buy here,or even remain here, deserves to be acknowledged.
At the same time, I’m very supportive of the growth. What makes this neighborhood special is that $1M+ homes, affordable housing, apartments, and longtime residents can all coexist and share the same parks, sidewalks, and sense of community.
Build the $1M, $2M, and $3M homes. Build the affordable housing too. Keep investing in Chavis, walkability, local businesses, schools, transit, and infrastructure, but preserve what makes the area special as it grows. I hope we keep the stroller walks, porch conversations, neighbors knowing each other, kids outside, block parties, and mix of people that make this feel like a real neighborhood rather than just another expensive extension of downtown. Hearing the stories from neighbors that have been here for 50+ years and those that have just moved in from other areas >1yr continue to be a daily highlight. We have lived in mass planned communities (Wendell Falls, Cary, etc.) and this area is just special.
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Agree, I’ve lived in that area for 11 years now and it’s an amazing place to be. We’re so lucky to have joined the neighborhood when we did.
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Some of us have been saying this about ER for a long time. But there’s no reason we can’t keep longtime residents here who want to stay. Most new homes are missing middle, not million dollar homes. Prices have been stagnant or declining for 4 years and counting. Hundreds of new subsidized units have been delivered. It’s been a really slow crawl (if you’re going to call it gentrification) compared to many similar neighborhoods around the country. The fate of the neighborhood is still totally controllable and density is being added everywhere you look. No one posts any of the new townhomes and creative du/triplexes going up all over the place in ER. Very few one-for-one SFH tear downs like you see in Mordecai, King Charles, five points, Oberlin village, etc. It’s completely different in ER but I don’t hear anyone discuss the nuances.
And we shouldn’t rename anything. “Olde East” being rooted in nothing and created by white folks is a bad look. Let’s get rid of that. The neighborhoods within ER already have names, i.e. Hunter Park, Quarry Hill, etc.
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Preach. It’s bugged me for A LONG time how the old (black) neighborhoods get lumped into “Olde East” Raleigh. That’s a one to one functional equivalent of calling Mordecai/Peace/Seaboard/and Oakwood “Olde Northeast” and never mentioning those neighborhoods again. See how dumb that sounds???
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Also absolutely true with missing middle going up everywhere on this side of town. Its wild someone hasn’t walked a 10x10 block radius around Chavis/Ligon to take pictures and show all the multi family developments happening everywhere. Its honestly the best example ive seen in the entire city of missing middle really playing out well, consistent, and making a difference.
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Respectfully, I don’t discount the individual neighborhood names, but I do like to refer to the collective area as Olde East Raleigh as it defines the collection of neighborhoods in this area. Similar to using the term “Five Points” or “Midtown”.
According to AI here is the Olde East Raleigh branding history:
Historic reality: East Raleigh contained several distinct, largely Black communities—including Hungry Neck, St. Petersburg, Cotton Place, Old Fairgrounds and Smith-Haywood, alongside South Park and other neighborhoods.
Early 2000s planning problem: “East Raleigh” had become too broad a geographic term to describe this specific historic inner-city area.
Community/planning solution: Create an umbrella name for the older portion of East Raleigh.
Result: “Olde East Raleigh.”
The 2007 plan then institutionalized that name. Interestingly, the actual City plan doesn’t hide the area’s history at all—it opens by describing East Raleigh as a destination for Raleigh’s African American population and discusses Shaw University, St. Augustine’s, Chavis Park and Black cultural life.
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I dont mind it as a description, as you say, of the whole area. However, for the love of all that is descent, drop that stupid e!!! I have mocked olde, rightly so, since they slapped it on the shopping center on creedmore and blue ridge. Old-E is goofy and pretentious.
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East Raleigh is still pretty much an affordable working-class area for the most part, and like others said, a good option for those wanting to be near downtown without breaking the bank. The Gentrification & luxury house issue is mostly just the parts closest to downtown.
If you go a bit out further out eastward, it’s totally different. Neighbors of mine have worried for ages that gentrification and such was coming, but I haven’t seen any whatsoever yet.
There’s a 1000+ sq ft 2bd/2ba townhouse across the street from me in really great condition listed at only 225k, and another a few blocks away at 230k. I can drive to downtown in 8 minutes. So if those who want some affordability are looking, they can still find it if they’re willing to think outside the box—or gasp venture out a couple miles. 
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Thanks, you got a few of them at least. For those wondering if I misspoke, no: pic 1 was a 1-for-2 (not great but still added density). Pic 2 is 4 units in one building with no built-in parking, pic 3 was also a 1-for-2 and one was a tiny home that went for <$400k new, pic 4 was a reno not a new build (they built up and it looks new). There’s very little 1-1 replacement of SFHs. Even the $MM home on the corner of Tipton and State has a separate downstairs unit.
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None of this matters man. Sure, you can make an argument for it that sounds logical, but renaming places that already have names just accelerates gentrification. It’s insensitive to people who have lived there for a long time. We’re white washing history if you really want to call it what it is. I don’t support it.
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I think “Olde East” was part of a name given to the study area of a community lead plan for the area from the early 2000s. I think I have the doc, I’ll try and find it. The problem it sounds like is that this was just a planning doc and wasn’t ever meant to rename anything. However, “Olde East” seems to have stuck to a certain degree.
So from my POV, the residents of those areas came up with the name of Olde East for that short term planning effort only but it lasted longer than anyone intended. Oh well. 
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No one renamed the neighborhoods. As stated, it was a planning name that ended up catching on to define a grouping of neighborhoods within a specific area. My 50 year resident neighbors call it Olde East Raleigh, so I think we should respect that as well. At the same time, there are a lot of new residents that have contributed to increased safety, infrastructure, and helped to preserve, in many ways, the community and if Olde East Raleigh is a marketing term that helps define this area and contribute to enhancements like the Heritage Trail, Top Green Community Center, Chavis Park, multiple affordable housing developments, cultural place markers, sidewalks, food pantries, etc than Olde East Raleigh is ok with me.
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The same thing happened to near-north Raleigh neighborhoods being collected under the name Midtown. While North Hills survives as a name interchangeable with Midtown, others haven’t survived in the collective contemporary lexicon.
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