I know a guy who bought a house there for around $80k. Couple years ago he sold it and is building a half a million dollar house from the profits.
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Yes. We bought our house in 2011. The value according to Zillow has early doubled in 8 years. We could not afford our house if we bought it today.
Everyone was mostly bitching about the traffic. And while it has increased, its not near as bad (IMO) as expected based on the amount Kane has built.
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People often mistakenly think that density is going to bring additional traffic that’s equivalent to the increase in population + services, but it doesn’t necessarily work out that way. When we develop so that less car trips are needed, the increase in traffic slows its growth in comparison.
Do you what does increase traffic?..auto-dependency development. When you MUST get in your car to do most everything, traffic will always increase in parallel with the growth.
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Looks like the rezoning here is going to hit the Central CAC meeting on Monday April 1. Lots of other DT rezonings will be presented as well.
Presentation: Rezoning Case Z-28-18
(Location: 400 S. West St., 518 & 600
W. Cabarrus St)
Existing Zoning: IX-7-UL
Requested Zoning: PD
CAC VOTE See map below
https://www.raleighnc.gov/home/content/CommServices/Articles/CAC/CentralCAC.html
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The big takeaways from our neighborhood meeting with Kane:
- They propose stepping the residential height down from along the tracks to where they are closest to single family houses along Cabarrus. They mentioned their project 601 Meeting St in Charleston as an example.
- The building depth will articulate, with 10 ft min and 30 ft max setbacks in addition to the sidewalk.
I was concerned about feeling like I lived in a little shack at the bottom of the Grand Canyon (imagining the Dillon apartments directly across the street), seeing as I’m already down in a hollow. I think what they’ve proposed will feel less like that.
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My notes from last night’s Central CAC meeting on this request:
Z-28-18
DX-7 > DX-20 (in part of the plot)
Asking for Planned Development District
Will require a master plan due to being Planned Dev
TIA will be required
Multiple rounds of approvals
Looking at 4 years to development
Would include trail head to Rosengarden greenway (future path) and future connection to Dix
Have done a traffic study already and a refresher study, will reduce afternoon traffic more so than existing zoning allows for
Kane is redesigning the property layout based on community feedback to preserve views as much as reasonably possible. Even current zoning would impact current views. Some buildings no more than 5 stories
20 story building would be closer to the tracks, pushed back from the street to better to preserve views
Kane very excited about this project and even more so the version 2 site plan that was presented for the first time tonight
People are getting grumpier (another general observation as this is the last presentation 2 hours after start of the meeting)
Kane asked for a vote, was stated as such in the agenda that was published but the Boylan association didn’t know and is asking to defer to next month’s meeting
Also, staff wasn’t aware that Kane had presented their latest response to questions 2 weeks prior so they couldn’t speak to it much less make their recommendation which also fueled…
Vote is being deferred (motion and 2nd)
Kane is fine with that though it pushes their project schedule plan
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First, thank you for such awesome notes in all of these CAC meetings! 
And finally, 4 years? Is that for “process” reasons? A developer is gong to “have” to wait that long? Or a developer “chooses” to wait that long? 
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Between process, approvals, design, permitting and construction, that’s about right. We are looking at approximately 5 years for Smokey Hollow phase 3.
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Are you able to tell me it that time frame is normal for most cities across this country?
I am truly not trying to be an ass, I really would like to know, if possible. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for process and reviews in general. However, most requirements in my opinion should be in some sort of template or easy to utilize form by now. Maybe it’s time to partner the city with an outside entity?
I have no idea if it’s normal or not. I’m sure others in here can provide some feedback.
Apparently the review and approval process (including zoning and permitting) will take about 2 years per Kane staff at last week’s meeting. The rest of the time is construction.
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I would expect that Kane is pipelining his projects so that as his real estate team hands one project off to the master planning team, the master planners hand it off to the architects, and the architects hand what they were working on to the team who engineers the building systems, who hand what they were working on to the construction project managers, and so on.
An organization like Kane’s cannot just scale to have an infinite number of projects in the same phase of development simultaneously. As time goes on, the organization grows, and the junior guys get trained up and promoted, so their overall capability is increasing, but these things take time. With all the projects proposed and underway in both NH and Downtown right now, Kane probably has that throttle wide open and is growing as fast as possible without destabilizing the whole operation. If you put too many inexperienced people or new hires in higher level positions too quickly things can come apart in a rather ugly way. (Remember what happened at the failed Hillsborough Lofts?)
All I can say is that I am super glad to have a local developer who really means business. Aside from the office buildings that were planned along Six Forks at North Hills West that were cancelled because the city wouldn’t approve a setback reduction, I can’t think of a project he has proposed that hasn’t moved forward. Once approved, I fully expect this one to happen.
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If you think about it, five years isn’t much. Look at how much time has passed from when the plans for Smokey Hollow were first released until now. The Smoky Hollow Neighborhood May Be Making a Comeback – The Raleigh Connoisseur It’s been almost three years and phase one has barely been topped off and clad. Phase two hasn’t even started yet.
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Also for case study: The Dillon (dates roughly estimated based on dtraleigh.com blog posts)
Zoning change requested: January 2015
Zoning change approved: September 2015
Site plans: November 2015
Demo begins: January 2016
Construction begins: June 2016
Construction complete: February 2018
Keep in mind, the Dillon isn’t adjacent to any single family neighborhoods, so there were less contentious considerations to be made during the rezoning process.
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This project will be coming back to the Central CAC on Monday, May 6th. 7pm at the Top Greene Community Center. 401 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Raleigh, NC 27601. You access it from East Street.
It seems the Boylan Heights Neighborhood will be coming to the meeting with its own informal vote opposing the plan as it stands*. There is actually more support for the project within that group than I expected. Some support exactly as-is. I think that’s important to be known (because I fully support it).
*And it seems that the issue isn’t the 20 story building. It’s how tall the residences are on Cabarrus and Dupont.
No matter which way you lean, if you want to vote on this, your chance is coming up.
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I plan to be there but I’m not currently a Central CAC resident so I’ll just sit and listen, of course not vote. I attended the last meeting and it was pretty clear the Boylan crew wasn’t happy and planned to bring a force for the next meeting. I know there are many Boylan residents in this forum. Is the general neighborhood there NIMBY? It seems Kane has redesigned their original plans a couple of times based on voluntary meetings with the same group yet they are still unhappy (at least from what I can tell).
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They don’t identify the people at these meetings as residents or not. Go ahead and vote. I might go and do the same and bring people. It’s our city too.
I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it so you could masquerade as me. I think a lot of the people who are Boylan NIMBYs might not consider themselves NIMBYs they just think their version of how things should be done trumps all others.
(Hopefully this response is germane to the original post 
)
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FWIW, I think if you’re a Raleigh resident AND under contract to purchase (or lease) a space in a specific CAC, then you can’t be faulted for voicing your opinion and/or voting about something that will impact that CAC.
I’d fight tooth and nail if someone tried to tell me otherwise.
I might go and do the same and bring people. It’s our city too.
Would you want out of area NIMBYs voting at your CAC meetings to advocate against something that you want in your neighborhood (or right across the street from your house, as the case may be)? What’s good for the goose…
I can’t speak for people in Boylan (I’m not technically part of the Boylan neighborhood, but I live right next to it and across the street from this project), but my main beef since the plans have evolved is that it’s going to be 100% apartments. I’d rather have a mix of apartments/condos so that residents are more invested in the neighborhood. That doesn’t mean I’d vote against the rezoning.
I’ve heard Boylan residents talking about some kind of overlay in the UDO that the rezoning would be violating. I haven’t been able to figure out what that is, though.
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