Raleigh-area Mall / Life-Style Center / RTP Redevelopments

He would need support from the NCDOT but in this case the city could work with him on that.

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from what i remember dartmouth just flows into SFH neighborhoods…easily bikeable(i did it regularly in the 2000’s) from this spot well into the quail hollow area…and not bad for walking either as there are sidewalks on most of the streets, and the streets arent that busy. Eastgate also has a park with tennis courts 1.5 miles away. to me this is ok.

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If this has been posted then my apologies. But Kane wants the area at Lassiter at North Hills currently zoned for 12 stories to be brought up to 40.

Kane Realty pitches ā€˜micro-units’ in exchange for up to 40 stories in North Hills (msn.com)

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I was just thinking about how much we lament the parking decks at North hills (they do suck). But I would take them any day over this type of development. The surface parking to building ratio I’m here is mind boggling. Literally acres for one restaurant.

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I approve, it’s North Hills, who cares and no less than 40. Start building tomorrow please and thank you.

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Ah yes, that is the answer: $1000/mo 600 square foot closets :rofl:

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I would love a 600 sq. ft. closet, so I could display all of my Gucci apparel properly.

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more like $1800*

<600 sf Studios at North Hills already run 1500-2200+; you can bet they’ll be pricier in a new build. Making apartments smaller doesn’t really seem to provide much affordability. At least to me, it just seems like developers pocket some extra cash.

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I’d have killed for a 600sf studio coming out of college. But I tell myself that living with 5 roommates built character or something.

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The costs do scale but not linearly, since the most expensive parts of a residence to build are the kitchen/bath - and even the tiniest studio still has, by definition, both.

It’s also an invalid comparison to assert that it’s all profit, given that a North Hills high-rise is a much higher-cost product. You only find tiny apartments in the highest-cost locations, and in the highest-cost buildings (high-rises cost 2X more per square foot to build than low-rise buildings!), because (a) that’s where the cost pressures are highest, (b) that’s where the demand is strongest, and (c) that’s where zoning puts them.

So if the price is 2X higher, but the cost is 1.9X higher, it might be the case that ā€œdevelopers pocket some extra cashā€ - but it’s nowhere near as much as what you think.

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It’s also an invalid comparison to assert that it’s all profit, given that a North Hills high-rise is a much higher-cost product.

I don’t think I’m understanding your point here or its relevance to my comment. I would assert developers stand to gain profit from micro-units regardless of construction type, and I wasn’t comparing pricing of wood-frame to concrete construction – I just pulled the first studio apartment rent from North Hills that I could find to show that the ā€œ$1000ā€ figure I was responding to was completely out of sync with what these’ll go for. I think that’s even more true given the higher cost of high-rises, as you’ve pointed out.

Obviously there’s some cost impact to making units smaller, but my point is that micro-units are not a solution to affordability, and I find it disingenuous when developers bill them as such or imply that providing them is a favor to us all when they barely make a dent.

In Durham, a developer promoted ā€œmicro-unitsā€ as their effort to provide affordable housing to the neighborhood, but the new micro-units are more expensive than most 1 bedroom apartments in the area were (in an apples-to-apples 5-over-1 construction comparison). Those other apartment complexes have now increased rents to approach those of the new build. One could make the argument that rent escalation would be even higher if studios were not being built, but I can’t help but notice that it seems like every time new (smaller) studios pop up, all it does is allow developers to push the needle forward in what they charge per sf. There’s little effect on affordability for the rest of us.

Well, there’s your comparison, and why looking at face rents alone isn’t looking at the whole picture. The Triangle’s highest housing prices are in Chapel Hill, a hotbed of NIMBYism, and it’s obviously not a surfeit of new high-rise towers that led to that situation.

Construction costs have escalated substantially over the past few years and the past few decades - double the rate of inflation from 2000-2020. New buildings were far more expensive to build than the things around them, and wouldn’t have been built if they couldn’t rent for more PSF. Smaller unit sizes are offsetting what would otherwise have been much higher prices had unit sizes remained steady.

Of course developers are doing micro-units because they’re more profitable - that’s how businesses operate. But they’re addressing a market niche that has existed forever, but was banned by zoning (for very bad, racist and classist reasons) for decades and has only recently been un-banned. As long as it doesn’t hurt anybody, and as long as nobody’s being coerced into signing an apartment lease, what’s the problem?

Can micro-units be more affordable than other alternatives? Yes. Will newly built units that cost several hundred thousand dollars to build be affordable to low-income workers? Not without subsidy.

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what’s the problem?

There’s no problem; I think studios are a very important housing type. I just don’t think they address housing affordability in any significant way, so I dislike when developers present them that way.

I’m an architect; I’m very familiar with escalating construction costs – every project I’ve worked on is dealing with it. But I don’t think it explains all of the rent increases. Since you seem much more familiar with the developer side of things, I’m curious to hear your read on this scenario:

Two developers purchased land in 2015 for the same cost. Owner A builds a 5-over-1 in 2020 and charges $1400 for a 575sf 1 bedroom. Owner B completes their 5-over-1 in 2022 one block away and charges $1400 for 400sf micro-studios in a building with similar amenities. Is that rent increase explained by construction costs? I see the difference as largely profit-driven because the developer believes the market can support the higher rent, not because the developer is trying to cover the cost of higher investment, which hasn’t increased 44% in two years.

And, yes, of course this is just business and I’m not faulting developers for targeting profitable projects. But my perception – which may be incorrect – is that micro-studios increase profit margins for developers, as opposed to maintaining them. Do you believe that developers’ profit margins are staying consistent through all of these per sf. rent increases?

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But a quick search for 5-over-1 1BRs in downtown Durham shows they’re now $1500 or $1800, so $1400 is still cheaper. Having signed leases in 2020, market conditions then were incredibly different than today. Prices in general increased 44% or whatever over two years, which is a windfall for everyone who owns land - whether a developer or a homeowner. Yet nobody ever seems to vilify a homeowner who sells for a tremendous profit.

I don’t know the specifics of this micro-unit building, but many include more deluxe amenities and shorter / more flexible lease terms - making a direct comparison more problematic.

One of the confounding problems is that single-family zoning means that micro-units are functionally banned (or rendered economically infeasible) in the areas with lower land prices and lower construction costs so (besides mobile home parks) their potential for actually demonstrating moderate-income affordability will remain unrealized.

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I read @elevatoroperator’s scenario as more of a hypothetical one to suit his question: is the relationship between rent increases and construction costs singularly causal? That probably means we should assume both buildings are targeting the same market (equal quality of deluxe amenities, similar lease terms etc.).

…though I guess that’s another interesting point: because the two years since lockdowns have changed the multifamily real estate market so much, developers are playing catchup to address new demand from transplants/investors for fancier homes and existing demand to make up for housing supply shortages. Both of those needs are separate (but interconnected).

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This would be a huge undertaking, but I think worth discussing…

For six forks at NH: A road diet and induced lower speeds by narrowing lanes and grade separating bike paths, eliminate left turns and cross-traffic at Dartmouth, and put an elongated roundabout at Lassiter Mill to eliminate all Red Lights except for a pedestrian crosswalk signal. Encourage drivers to walk while visiting NH, but keeping N-S traffic moving. Let the chips fall where they may

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Six Forks with narrower lanes! That’s a choice I suppose.

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I can’t say I’ve ever driven from the 440 interchange through Lassiter Mill Rd. in less than 3 minutes because of red lights. Narrow lanes, slow speeds, and take out the red lights. Cars will move through in the same amount of time and pedestrians will be able to navigate the environment.

This is a classic stroad conundrum-- too complex to be a road, but too high-speed and wide to be a street. I think we would all agree that Six Forks at NH should be a street.

You can’t fix a single stroad in isolation. Gotta look at the whole network. Narrow lanes in this location are safer and more effective than wide lanes.

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The Six Forks study of old was trying to do this while also trying to navigate some of the sticking points around the way things have been developed. I’m all for it - median, lane / road diet, expanded (…and expensive! right of way acquisition for multi-use path…) although, I can envision plenty of folx struggling with a multi-lane roundabout at Lassiter–Oh the horror— to drop off younglings at St Timothy’s!!!
However, to your point about narrow lanes — certainly not on its own — some of the narrowest lanes in town are along the stretch of Wake Forest northbound from the Beltline to Old Wake Forest and man, if you haven’t in a while, you should roll up north to investigate…Let’s just say, the chips fall often…
I’m not sure we can ā€˜limit’ Six Forks and Falls / Wake Forest and Atlantic in the midst of all the development growth in these areas and still functionally move people through…and that’s the rub to get to where we want to go and to get to how we wish it would feel…

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Well before the Six Forks Plan even gestated, Kane approached the city of Raleigh in 2007 for a tax increment financing plan for the planned parking structures at North Hills East. He was going to sweeten the deal with a pedestrian sky bridge over Six Forks. But, that idea has disappeared over time.