I hold the exact same position. I suspect/speculate that Kane likes developing in North Hills because he controls it all. Developing in downtown requires him to play well with others, and maybe he just doesn’t want to do that? Again, I’m just speculating.
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i had a horse behind me on possum track
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Here is a 50 story building in Charlotte 576 feet tall the Vue an apartment tower about 5 or 530 in afternoon in mid September. The shadow it casts obviously moves and the towers proposed in North Hills are NO where near this height plus they are along Six Forks Rd where other towers across the street will block their shadows.
I love North Hills but do wish your downtown was stronger and had more new office development. I think the height restrictions downtown are ridiculous you should have a fairly large part of downtown from Glenwood to Moore Square with unlimited height and let the market decide. All this 20 and 40 story zoning is stifling. One could build a new Burj Khalifa in uptown Charlotte if they wanted to due to our UMUD zoning which has no height restrictions.
As for Kane I think he likes developing larger projects and the parcels are smaller downtown and he likes to do multiple building projects. Even the Rockway is like that. Of course Smoky Hollow is but I think that is the main reason he is not more active in downtown Raleigh.
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Oh, the horror of that shadow! you can hardly see the houses and buildings!
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I agree with @Vatnos that North Hills unfortunately siphons off many tenants that would otherwise be located in DTR.
Hard for me to get excited about anything happening there.
Why does he do it? Land acquisition costs are lower and yield multiple projects. More profit, less hassle.
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He’s more passionate about North Hills. It’s his pet neighborhood and it must be completed. I don’t think the difficulties downtown are enough greater to warrant the different level of attention.
Btw if it sounds like I don’t support the rezoning I do. Obviously. North Hills looks incomplete without some height on the other side of Six Forks. I can hold out hope that the capital Kane raises from these projects could make it easier for him to take on taller projects downtown some day.
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I don’t doubt that NH has siphoned some development from downtown. The question is, how much. There’s no way to know, of course, but my hunch is that most of the NH development either would not have happened at all or would have gone somewhere else along 440. Reality is that NH is in the middle of the city, whether you look at the city limits or the ETJ boundary.
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That, and in another 15-20 years… the skyline should hopefully (somewhat) connect between downtown and “midtown” (north Hills) down Wake forest Rd, Atlantic Blvd, Six Forks, and even some of Capital Blvd.
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I have a difficult time imagining the skyline connecting in the next 15-20 years. While I can imagine some height at Midtown East (as it’s called) and The Iron District, there’s simply too much SFH and low/midrise rental neighborhood between Midtown and Downtown to imagine a connected skyline.
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I think you’re right and I expect Raleigh to resemble Atlanta very closely in a few decades. The distance from downtown Atlanta to Buckhead is about the same as the distance from downtown Raleigh to North Hills, and it is an unbroken chain the whole way out.
Raleigh will be one of the last growing American cities in a time when most of the country’s population is declining, I predict. It’s in a great location to be resiliant against climate change. High enough to escape rising seas that will reclaim other cities in the southeast, and wet enough to escape water shortage facing much of the west. Where will those people move to? Some will come here.
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I’ve come to terms that people will argue no matter what. Here’s a photo from the development where the Lead mine tower was supposed to happen. The development was moved from 7 stories to 4. Here we can see how tall this 4 story building is 
. Even with this change, people were still fighting about it.
Here’s one of the meetings where they still talked against it: https://www.youtube.com/live/Gw9i0xOIO0M?si=YMaUli8O4xUctMl6&t=3623
Previous posts:
7 floors is a tower? what is this, the 19th Century?
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Just look at those shadows
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The kicker is that there’s really nothing around this building that’s even visible from Lead Mine… other than the apartment building across the street that is still even taller than this.
I wish City Council would just come out and say “we are a growing city and we will no longer even bother entertaining these types of arguments going forward” - might piss these people off, but then… what doesn’t?
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The hypocrisy of the livable Raleigh crowd that always cries about affordable housing, while at the same time vehemently opposing every new dense housing development that gets proposed with lawsuits and going off about shadows.
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Oh, they’ll throw around affordable housing as a weapon at every chance they get. In fact, they tried to use that issue in opposition of the rezoning at Smoky Hollow. That said, just IMAGINE if that entire project was also affordable housing. They’d lose their minds!
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Belting out “Don’t cry for me…” for the exactly three “longtime homeowners” (i.e., purchased before 2002) left on this one block. Everyone here has become a millionaire thanks to North Hills.
Kane prefers North Hills because his company can control most of the upside – though obviously not all, i.e., the houses above. Retail tenants prefer North Hills because they prefer the retail neighbors there, which Kane can tightly control – no vape shops need apply.
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I just can’t believe that the neighborhood I went to elementary school in, trick or treated, did summer bbq at Quail Hollow Swim club, and hung out with friends in now has homes valued in the millions. Like…it is mind boggling.
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You made me want to look. My childhood street, in the middle of suburban North Raleigh far away from the glitz and glamour of NH, has a home valued over a million (it sold last year for $975k).
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acre lot, built in 64, Longview…zillowed at 553k