Christina Jones and Mary Black are not Centrist in my opinion and this comes from knowing them personally, but again this is America so we get to respectfully just disagree.
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Actually, itâs 150% MORE, you forgot one unit. HUGE improvement!
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No like to call them âcentristâ is kind of insane, they definitely fancy themselves as Raleighâs #TheSquad
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They need to be gone! Send them back⌠Send them back. (P.S. Iâm trying to make this joke as politically correct as possible)
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They better be allowed to build the tallest building in Raleigh for this.
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Yeah, mixed feelings on holding rezonings hostage to affordable housing, but if I ignore that issue for a moment, gotta say⌠those offers are kind of pathetic. When you consider that cities that have mandatory inclusionary zoning in place tend to target 10-20% of units in each development to be affordable, a development of this size should be able to offer more.
For further frame of reference, in Durham, a developer wanted to buy a parking garage from the city to build a 32-story apartment building in its place. They offered $650,000 for the affordable housing fund, and city council pushed back that it wasnât enough, and theyâd rather the developer just build the affordable units on-site in the tower. I donât think the deal went through. 200k is an insult.
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So Durham got neither the $650k nor the affordable units? (corrected $$)
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They also missed out on the additional tax revenue a 32 story building would create for them. I canât imagine a parking deck would generate nearly as much.
So, congrats to Durham?
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Or the $5 million for the parking deck that they also couldâve put toward affordable housing?
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For reference, we shouldnât be commending anything the Durham Council has been doing. Considering that one of the members of their council has allegations of extortion for these types of scenarios.
While itâs not confirmed, itâs always possible that there were other reasons at play beyond the affordable housing fund contribution. $650k is a lot of money to give for a program like this for what they were asking. The fact that the council didnât think it was sufficient is head-scratching enough to make me think that other things were at play here.
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My comment was not intended as snark, so I hope @elevatoroperator doesnât take it that way.
I do have real questions about how far cities/counties can push private developers. The triangle is lucky that it is booming and folks are clamoring to build. That gives the towns a lot more leverage for all sorts of demands that my little postage stamp of a town in NE Alabama canât even consider.
With affordable housing in particular, do city leaders want to expand the overall number of units and thus reduce over all pressure on prices, or hold out for concessions from developers with the potential that nothing gets built? Remember these âdonationsâ to housing funds and set-asides donât appear magically, the effect the bottom line. The more that is asked, the more that building costs, the more the rest rent/sell for.
I think there are good arguments on both sides. The trick as in all things, is to find that sweet spot. I lean towards adding housing with conditions that are reasonable and realistic.
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At the risk of turning this into the Durham Possible New Development Locations and Projects thread, Durham City Councilâs approach to new projects has become the exact opposite of what Raleigh should be doing. Thereâs a reason why their undeveloped land on the edges of downtown are being filled up with generic apartments being built by right within existing zoning. Itâs nearly impossible to get anything rezoned and built with all the unrealistic hurdles.
The best examples is their Councilâs ongoing battle to do something with the old police station property. I think this is their 3rd attempt to get a developer on board, after the last 2 dropped out. They have added so many more wishlist conditions since then, I canât see it ever working out.
- They want to preserve that hideous old police station box (which itself is controversial with some âactivistsâ because it reminds people of police, and thatâs triggering or something).
- They want a bunch of affordable housing in it.
- They expect a signature/world class design as an attractive entrance to the city.
- They want to actually still own the project themselves.
- They want to generate revenue for the city with it going forward.
- They want a museum about black neighborhoods in it.
- They want it to have commercial spaces that create jobs for the locals.
And then theyâre going to choose one lucky winner from the massive pool of developers who will obviously be falling all over themselves for this amazing opportunity to lose a bunch of money.
Meanwhile, this property continues to sit vacant for more years. They could easily just sell the land for many millions to a developer and build a bunch of affordable housing on less valuable land with the proceeds.
This probably should be in a different thread, but I was writing it in regards to how Raleigh should/should not be approaching new projects.
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The city of Raleigh said Hold My Beer and decided to spend 40% more than appraisal on land they werenât in bids against anyone for the DMV lot. We are about to see a similar fate as the Durham police station. Iâll be shocked if anything happens there before 2030. Meanwhile weâve forgone millions in lost tax revenue from selling/conditioning a developer to just build.
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I donât know where it ended up after the article (the project is not dead; theyâre probably still in negotiations. All I know is that particular proposal did not go through). BUT I echo the comments in this thread in that if the end result is that the development doesnât happen at all, the cityâs shooting itself in the foot. Of particular note were these comments:
âIâm having a real hard time understanding the benefit to the city,â â Mayor OâNeal.
ââWe donât really need $5 million. But we do need affordable housing.â â Councilwoman Freeman.
âŚlolâŚ
That said, I absolutely think this is a situation where the city should not have just accepted any offer, and Iâm glad they didnât. The developer has spent years in design for this lot because they own the air rights, just not the parking garage below. Theyâve poured a ton of money into it. They have a full set of CDs and have already submitted plans to the city; theyâre not just going to walk away over a few hundred k. I think the city is uniquely leveraged to demand more here. I also suspect that some of it is political theater, because I find it hard to believe that the developer would spend all this money if there wasnât some sort of assurance that the city was open to selling.
The other side of this, of course, is the public reaction. People were concerned about the city selling a public parking garage that the Carolina Theater, Durham Arts Council, The Armory, and other businesses have relied on for years to a developer who has plans to privatize the parking for residents only. Many were confused why the city wouldnât retain ownership but enter some kind of land-lease agreement.
With affordable housing in particular, do city leaders want to expand the overall number of units and thus reduce over all pressure on prices
The city wants capital A affordable housing, i.e. below-market rate units. Increasing supply is never going to create these. It can reduce pressure on other ends of the market, for example by slowing the rate of housing cost increases. But if you want 30% or 60% AMI units, only targeted, intentional creation of subsidized housing will do this in the near term.
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Thereâs a reason why their undeveloped land on the edges of downtown are being filled up with generic apartments being built by right within existing zoning. Itâs nearly impossible to get anything rezoned and built with all the unrealistic hurdles.
I donât think this is true, but Iâll leave that discussion for another thread.
In regard to Police HQ, Iâm intimately familiar with it because our firm was the runner-up team both times. The way youâve presented what happened here is not entirely accurate, nor is the wish list, but the idea that any developer would lose money on this is laughable. The city got plenty of bids, and thereâs plenty of profit to be made here even with the requirements. The affordable housing would be financed through subsidies; itâs not like the developer was donating it. The commercial space to create jobs for locals is⌠just standard retail. Generating revenue for the city is⌠tax revenue. The museum part is just not true, nor is the city retaining ownership? The developers made a financial offer to the city to buy the land from them. The reason these deals fell through is not because the city was asking too much in their wish list.
The first time around, a developer team was awarded the project â the teamâs proposal accomplished the cityâs entire wish list. The design team spent a year doing further feasibility studies of the existing building and found that it was in much worse shape than anticipated. They revised their financial offer to the city by several million dollars, and the city declined, so the deal collapsed.
The second time around, it was after COVID and I think the city was expecting the land to be worth a lot more. They did not actually award the project to anyone because they were unhappy with the financial offers. After round 2, the city said it would re-evaluate whether the Police HQ was worth preserving. The entire thing has been a spectacle with some perplexing decisions, but I donât think that the takeaway is that affordable housing or a signature design or quality placemaking cannot be achieved in a development of this scale. It just came down to the specific financial terms of the deal.
In any case, before I get scolded, yes â very off topic. Iâm done!
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215 N. Dawson (next to the Metropolitan) rezoning moves from Additional Materials Required to Under Review until 6/27
https://community.dtraleigh.com/t/the-raleigh-wire-service/748/2228?u=oakcityyimby
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I think Iâve lost every links to all rezoning files, can someone show me? I want to see ASRs and the Latest proposals.
https://raleighnc.gov/planning/services/administrative-site-review-cases
And
https://raleighnc.gov/planning/services/development-approvals
Learn your way around those two pages, and maybe the development portal if you have any interest in reading city review comments, and you basically wonât ever need this site
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Thinking more on this original Union Station site up for saleâŚ
The city had been planning on moving the Central Fire Station - no idea if that is still on the table. The city should come in and buy this, group it with their adjacent properties, rezone to 20-40 floors, and release another RFP stipulating incorporating the original depot structure and providing XX number of affordable resident units.
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The old Union Station could be an epic location for a permanent city museum.
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