How many living units are in this building now?
Nothing we can do about this one.
In the future the council should add a design requirement for tall buildings - they should be at least 50% taller than they are wide on their widest axis for at least 2/3rds the building’s height.
Raleigh has a fat box problem and it will clearly never go away until it is regulated away. Developers will max their footprint usage and because these buildings always have a parking deck it is always a thick podium.
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Yeah… I don’t think you’re understanding what I was saying. The entire point was that this is a HUGE prime lot that DOESN’T house an old building that adds character to the street experience. The more of these lots that get taken by shortsighted developments, the less availability for future towers that will need a lot more space. THAT’S when they’ll start going for older buildings that actually add to the current street-experience. I’m glad they’ve saved some of this facade, simply because it is old and has history, but my point, again, was that this was a giant, empty lot essentially that’s going to get another of the same building we’ve been getting over and over and over and…
One rendering has been on the Union West website since February and it appears to match the “new” plans. So this has been it the whole time, as expected:
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That rendering is actually of this older plan. You can see the “connector” between the two towers is the glassy portion in the rendering, and the screening for the parking deck is vertical fins, as opposed to the panels in the latest design.
It has changed a lot since then.
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I know this is not the outcome anyone wanted but this is better than a 10 story box and it’s a little taller than the usual 20 story towers that we’ve been seeing built 
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I present my masterpiece, “The Fall of RUSBus”
In all seriousness, even though we aren’t getting what could have been a truly stunning tower, or even a pretty bland but still impressively tall tower, I’m glad that we are getting a bunch of apartments over the new transit hub. I thought for a while that we might not get even that much.
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This diagram is literally Raleigh in a nutshell.
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What a depressing graphic. Thank you? 
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Hopefully they don’t forget to install the balconies like on the Mira building.
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To me, the biggest loss isn’t the height, but the overall blandness and loss of the interesting texture from previous designs (like the separate forms of the towers, the variation in materials/scale, and especially unique features like the 2nd floor sawtooth roof area). Its just basically turned into Valentine Commons.
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The Appearance Commission comes through again. Way to set the standard with not pushing developers for better design in their scale backs.
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To be fair, the idea of a government Appearance Commission micromanaging architects’ decisions is pretty distasteful.
It does seem like we’ve restricted developments’ freedom so much that “box on bigger box” is the only option. Plus we’ve incentivized those 5-over-1s to take up a full block and have 20 different kinds of mismatched siding to “break up the mass.”
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Hold up… you’re saying that the hideous exterior cladding of most of these 5-over-1s are the direct result of our own gov’t incentives and mandates??
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Many city building codes require “modulated facades” in buildings over a certain size. When you combine that with the pressure to cut costs, you end up with several different kinds of cheap cladding.
According to Black, variation is costly. Many units get made to a standard size, say 12-foot-wide bedrooms. Repeat that a few times per floor, maximized to create rentable space, and you start a domino effect toward generic architecture, because the floor plates end up very similar. Once the interior is laid out, there are ways to make the exterior look more interesting using setbacks, materials, and massing. But giving up space for units and creating more complicated construction plans cuts into profitability.
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Sort-of, maybe indirectly. It’s not that UDOs specify that 5-over-1s have to use six different materials or change plane every ten feet. City guidelines are there to prevent someone from dropping a massive building that looks like a jail on Fayetteville Street, and regulating design aims to create better experiences for pedestrians. But in the hands of less capable designers, these guidelines can also be the driving force behind over-articulation.
Here’s Durham’s UDO that regulates facade articulation, for example. There are a ton of really tedious requirements in there, but the high-level summary is that you need:
- a distinct base expression, either via a change of plane or material
- a building length less than 400 feet
- a minimum percent of transparency at the ground level
- podium/setback requirements at specified heights if you’re a high-rise
- a facade that maintains the rhythm established by historic commercial structures
That last requirement is very very subjective, and you’ll see people meeting it quite literally:
or through more subtle interpretations, like this building where the facade is divided into slanted bays that create a shadow line every three units.
(this building also uses the sawtooth roofs at the top level to meet setback/articulation requirements at the top, compared to the usual 5-over-1 approach of a material change or cornice). Some developers are not willing to risk their plans being considered non-compliant/requiring changes during plan review. And some developers work with shitty architects that take the easiest/most literal path to compliance.
In my experience most UDOs allow a reasonable level of freedom if you’re able to make the case that you are complying with the intent in some way.
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Why is the crane being taken down? Are they moving it to the second base?
Or are they really cutting this project and just stopping at a bus station?
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, I believe that the tower is being built as a phase 2. I remember seeing two different timelines, with the station being completed 1-2 years prior to the tower.
the idea of a government Appearance Commission micromanaging architects’ decisions is pretty distasteful.
I agree with this for the most part. Regulations should be balanced and prevent the worst, but also allow enough freedom for good design.
It does seem like we’ve restricted developments’ freedom so much that “box on bigger box” is the only option.
I don’t know what the city’s role is in this. What’s driving the “box on bigger box” is the developer’s profits, not much else.
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It would be nice to another developer steal and buildout this design nearby and replace the “Union Station” signage with “Warehouse District.”