What was Urban Outfitters thinking when putting a shop in the Warehouse District? I’ve walked by that place multiple times and it’s a ghost town inside every time. I remember people years ago labeling the Warehouse District as Raleigh’s upcoming “fashion district”, but that’s never come to fruition in my opinion. Was Urban Outfitters expecting other retailers to join the neighborhood? Have a hard time imagining them keeping them that location much longer.
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If the Warehouse Dist. is the new Fashion District, it’s everything to do with Raleigh Denim and, to a degree, Father and Sons - and nothing to do with Urban Outfitters haha
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Also Flourish which moved to Martin Street from the Devon building. They have a large following if they survive the downturn.
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For sure, forgot to add them. Hell I’ll go ahead and say CAM and VAE are part of it too, since any Fashionable district is better off with a super modern contemporary art museum and gallery space.
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IMO, the fatal mistake for Urban Outfitters was going to the SE corner of The Dillon instead of the NW corner across from Weaver Street. I don’t know if it was Kane who insisted that they go on that corner or if it was their choice, but it was a mistake.
A nice hip restaurant/lounge on that corner would have been a better idea. I can imagine a partnership between such a place with CAM to create some really energetic evening events.
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Furthermore (and I totally agree with you, @John) I’ve heard from some that Hargett is supposed to be or could become a “clothing district” of sorts, though it seems there are more restaurants on Hargett at this point than clothing. In face, I’m only thinking of Art of Style that resides on Hargett in DTR. 
Change of subject, I noticed this on the Wire Service for 4315 Lead Mine Road, which is the old apartment complex across Glenwood from Crabtree Valley Mall.
https://community.dtraleigh.com/t/the-raleigh-wire-service/748/646
This is called “Clairmont at Crabtree” by Kotarides Development. It seems likely that this is going to be a large decrease in ambition for this site compared with past proposals that had lots of retail, mid- and high-rises, structured parking, a bridge over Glenwood to Crabtree, etc. If you go on the website of this developer and look up anything with the brand of “Clairmont”, it’s all extremely generic, two- and three-floor, stick-built, surface-parked, suburban-style garden apartments with no retail at all.
The actual site plan hasn’t been uploaded anywhere yet as far as I can tell, so this post is long on speculation and short on facts - but brace yourself for disappointment. I wonder if it’s possible that they will just renovate the existing buildings? That would actually be better, in my mind, then tearing it down and putting something that’s such a waste of space, in such a prominent location.
OK so a bit more, the rezoning request from last year mentioned:
-275 apartments
-45000 sf of office
-10000 sf of retail
With an 11 acre site in a highly visible location along Glenwood that is up a hill and therefore safe from flooding, This is a very disappoining 25 units per acre and a pitifully small amount of retail. The plans for a footbridge across Glenwood appear to be nixed.
This is probably not going to be urban in any sense. This is likely to be a lot less impressive even than the 55+ Overture Crabtree behind it (207 units on 3.3 acres - 63 units per acre). Think Allister North Hills.
So yeah, brace yourself for disappointment.
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We really need several more Skyhouse type high rise residential buildings downtown, then we can really expect the retail to take off. But! Developers will have to keep in mind that these new towers need small / flexible retail spaces to offer for lease.
Does anyone know roughly how much underutilized old/historic building stock we have downtown that could be converted to retail?
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It is my (nearly) lifelong dream to own a shop that would sell clothing (streetwear, limited ed. alt fashion type sh!t), books/magazines, and some other artsy stuff. A small space would be ideal. There are not many. Up until the outbreak, I had been thinking that 2020-2022 might be a good window for new retail to open downtown, as I had been noticing an uptick in new locally owned/independent shops opening up. Now, I’m not so sure. Part of me thinks that maybe after the pandemic ends there will be a slew of vacant retail space going for MUCH less than previous market value since property owners will still be hurting and thus more willing to work with smaller businesses just so they can fill their spaces and at least start rebuilding income, but then… will the people aka customers be ready to start liberally spending on non-essential products? I doubt it. So, I have no idea when the right time to try opening a new business will be after all of this…
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I’d tweak that to say that we need more housing downtown to support retail. It doesn’t have to be high rise; I think that it’s more about the total quantity of housing in a walkshed.
Mall redevelopment that’s come to pass like North Hills, and what’s starting to happen around Crabtree is a perfect example of understanding that creating a baked-in customer base into a project is advantageous. As a new development (rather than a mall redevelopment), it will be interesting to see how Smoky Hollow impacts its walkshed community, and how both the residents in phases 1 & 2 + the existing residents that are primarily to its south and west will affect its success. Once we’re passed Covid19, I think that it will be a stellar success.
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OK the ASR PDF is posted for Clairmont Crabtree. Exactly as I predicted. Suburban schlock that would fit in out in Holly Springs.
Contrast that with Vine 2 Apartments, also posted today, on St Albans, for the next lot east in the 2nd phase of North Hills East.
There is no unifying vision for Crabtree Valley. It was the shining star of Raleigh for decades, but in spite of a lot of development there lately, outside of the mall itself, there’s no “there” there, and it still feels like it’s going nowhere. It continues to just be a mall (OK, a fairly nice mall…) plus a pile of incoherent crap.
In contrast, for North Hills, the placemaking and overall vision was arguably there from day one, and certainly from the day NHE was proposed - and it has certainly stolen the limelight from Crabtree among suburban Raleigh locations.
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What happens to the Sears space will set the course for Crabtree this decade.
For the mall property itself, yes- some potential remains- but particularly with this latest “Clairmont” proposal, the last opportunity to create Crabtree’s equivalent of a North Hills East, and turn it into a district instead of a mall and some other crap, is being squandered to build just about the lamest pile of sticks imaginable.
What would “midtown” be if, instead of North Hills East, someone had put up a couple hundred units in a three story stick built complex, and then called it a day? Kane could still build on the parking lots and JC Penney of the original North Hills, but there are hundreds of thousands of sq ft of office and thousands of apartments built and planned on the other side of six forks.
When I think about Crabtree Valley and the development going on around it these days, the only thing that isn’t a big disappointment is Grubb’s Glenwood Place. (That’s only a small disappointment; it wouldn’t have been disappointing at all, except that it got NIMBY’d and scaled back.) But nothing else has seen much NIMBY pushback - the deficiencies are all self-inflicted. Some of the apartment complexes are dense, yes, but nothing relates to or connects with anything outside its own lot lines in any way at all.
I say we re-christen Crabtree Valley as Disappointment Gulch.
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OMG that’s funny. Similarly, a friend of mine who use to live in Philly labeled Reading Station there as “deep fried Amish disappointment”.
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With all of the cries of malls dying, I could actually be convinced that some malls might persist for the foreseeable future, and Crabtree just might need to be the one that’s positioned to support the entire city. Maybe it’s not a bad thing to keep it car oriented since it’s at the juncture of Glenwood and 440, and let’s face it, Glenwood in that corridor is a beast of a road that’s not going on a diet anytime soon. Across the creek & behind Crabtree was really this area’s opportunity, but I always saw it as an add-on, not a replacement of the mall. Instead of the North Hills type thing that was previously proposed, we ended up with pretty much high density suburban apartments. Crabtree might be a lost cause.
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I hate that I agree with this comment. I’ve been so hopeful for a more urban/walkable future for Crabtree Valley. Each new development has been as car-centric as everything else.
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Like it or not, this proposed apartment complex IS increasing density WITHIN the city. Though not in DTR, it is much closer into the the city center than Brier Creek or Wake Forest. Yes, the new design maybe not in an Urban form, but replacing old 2 story apartment buildings with 3 or 4 story apartment buildings IS increased density. And ultimately, increased density is what we are all in favor of, right? If you don’t like the suburbanness of it, then don’t live there.
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It’s just so frustrating because we already have seven bus lines converging there with more to come in the next five to ten years. They’ll have fifteen-minute frequencies to downtown within the next year, and the transit center there is scheduled to be completely remodeled. That’s an ideal setup for a walkable, urbanized district. There’s no need to relentlessly pave that area with parking spaces. Such a waste in my opinion.
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Big crane going up at the Walter in NH. Jogged by there this evening and big oversized load trucks line up with crane parts.
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