Tbf it’s just planning commission and the actual council may still approve
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ASR submitted for Pleasant Valley Promenade. 372 apartments wrapped around parking garage on the back (Pleasant Valley) side, replacing the parking lot and one big box (once a gym, now used for the Van Gogh pop-up). 23 studio, 191 1-BR, 143 2-BR, 15 3-BR, 5 stories apartment, 6 level garage with 512 spaces.
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That appears to be quite a bit of surface parking being replaced. Nice!
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And nearly 1:1 parking space per bedroom.
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Glad to see this happen. Building was built as the Pleasant Valley Theaters before it became a gym. In the 80’s I liked this shopping center as it had a variety of restaurants and shops which have closed or moved to other locations.
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RIP Phar Mor video rentals in the back of the store.
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The rental at Phar Mor was in the front of the store to the right side I thought. Pleasant Valley was the main North Raleigh movie theatre for me as a kid. The Grande stole almost all it’s thunder. Schiano’s moved to Pleasant Valley from Crabtree at some point, largest slices in the city. Besides Best Buy, there was also an education toy store (and maybe a Gateway Computers my dad liked). Pretty big deal in the 90s.
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Lechmere was first in the large building that I think is now Dick’s. It was like a Best buy but better, in my opinion. Wasn’t a chain but had the largest selection of music CDs around. My understanding is that it was created by 4 investors who got tired of it and couldn’t sell it, so it closed. It became Phar-mor after that. (This was in the early 80’s). Schiano’s pizza was one of my favs but moved near the Harris Teeter in the Shopping Ctr. at Leesville and 540 several years ago. I think this apartment complex will help breathe new life into this shopping center and the surrounding area.
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There was a Lechmere down here??? Omg this blows my mind. So many terrible but slightly mysterious memories of that store buried in my subconscious from random neverending trips there in the 80s as a little kid while my parents argued over appliances or whatever.
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Ahh, was trying to remember what was in that back spot - and thus why it existed in the first place. A cinema would make sense, since it’s something that doesn’t have to be seen from the main road. That spot with the rug store (ex-Bed Bath) once had a semi-enclosed food court in the early days.
Lechmere was a small Massachusetts-based chain. They were primarily based in New England but expanded in the 1980’s before eventually retrenching on the way to bankruptcy and closure. I had no idea that they made it this far south, though!
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Thanks for that information. I never knew they were a chain. I wonder if the investors I heard rumors about bought a franchise for here, like the Goodberries frozen custard store in Australia.
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Speaking of being late (Industrial Drive connection to Greenway), Aventon Nora (apartment complex) looks like it’s kind of opened. It’s a 372 Unit complex. I remember taking a photo on January 2nd where it says they were going to be open 2022.
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Google tells me Pleasant Valley was Lechmere’s last store in the South when it closed in March 1990. Phar-Mor opened later that year. Also there was a tux rental place in the corner between Phar-Mor and Schiano’s I used in high school.
As for Schiano’s, the son did open a restaurant down on Leesville. The original owners (or at least the wife) have a new place in Wake Forest on 98 at the Lowe’s Food shopping center.
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The roads in its development being named The Lakes Dr, Lakecrest Dr, and Lake Hill Dr when all it’s got is a tiny half-empty retaining pond is some prime deep suburbs nomenclature.
Rough pics, but the Midtown Exchange (if that’s still what it’s still called?) first building is starting to peek out above the trees from the Wegmans parking deck!
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Per TBJ, the hotel in the middle of HUB RTP will be a Marriott Renaissance, developed by Alamo Manhattan. I guess the brand has done well enough at North Hills to merit another location.
Part of the HUB site was once the Governor’s Inn Hotel, one of the few buildings open to the public in the original RTP. It had low-rise wings radiating from an octagonal (?) core; you can still see the odd parking lot footprint on aerial views of the site.
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Talk about a vintage look!
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I remember that being closed and sitting there. The Bank of America was briefly my bank, and I worked a bit further down 54, so I was there a lot. I remember thinking how weird and abandoned that whole area seemed. I did see the article on TBJ about the Renaissance. The rendering looks nice. Excited about the whole HubRTP thing in general, as someone who often works nearby.
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They used to have a pretty good lunch buffet in that hotel. Probably been 10 years since I have been there. And it’s long torn down.
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