This is all super helpful. As always, thank you @keita!
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Interesting. Thanks for finding and posting. I have been concerned about this project as the timeline we thought was required seemed to be getting awfully tight. It definitely makes more sense for the deadline to be to have a contract in place, not have construction start this summer.
Too bad this means the project is further out, but I’m glad that this (hopefully) means everything is on track. I look forward to seeing the designs. This will obviously have a huge impact on that part of town.
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I haven’t seen any renderings from Hoffman?
I just meant the renderings in the BUILD application that came out long before Hoffman was on the scene.
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I’m just hoping the aesthetic matches the rest of the warehouse district. Kane’s proposal had some flaws, but I really liked the look of it.
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I actually like the way that Kane’s proposed tower felt for that location. It kept the strong ties to the industrial brick nature of the existing buildings, addressed the plaza successfully at Union Station by opening up to it visually, and its overall materiality was properly contextual to the district and the other projects that surround it.
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Well stated.
I also like how the tower portion is offset away from the Dillon tower, so they both get maximum skyline potential.
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Nice. And agreed a good version of the other…
But it doesn’t look like it offers a whole lot of living units/apts/condos/etc.
Isn’t part of the idea to allow for more density for the the Union Station/RUSBUS?
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I’d be down with something like that design, but the tower portion should be nearly double the height (at least 50% taller), and the residential half should be nearly double the height as well, perhaps in two split residential towers on the southern half of this development. Could include luxury condos at the top of the glass office tower to help offset cost from the low-middle income affordable housing towers. Still wouldn’t completely eclipse the Dillon’s height, and the taller tower would still be offset and will fit in well once the CAM/HQ redevelopment is built out (which remember was rezoned to 40 stories max).
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Yep, that was the biggest problem. Really the only problem, in my opinion.
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Or, you can just increase the tower height and put more residential in it. I personally like the more human scale of that design nearer the RUS plaza.
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Yeah this design did not have room for non-luxury residential and barely any residential at all. The tower in this design was office only and the residential was the lower brick portion. Zero room for affordable housing. Barely any housing units at all.
A design that meets the requirements and stays under 22 floors will need at least two large towers.
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…which probably explains why Hoffman pulled through. I don’t know what was on their proposal, but it was probably a lot closer to what was on the RUSbus BUILD proposal:
Like I said, they just started the design process. Their portfolio has a modern, glassy, economical feel to it, so we’ll need to make sure the Historical and Appearances commissions will speak up where it matters.
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The fact that this concept has housing wrapped parking deck makes this design 100% better than any Kane project I’ve seen so far. Is this the tallest building that they’re designing so far as a company? If so Raleigh will feature prominently on their promo material and website once it’s built.
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Thanks for sending this back through the pipeline. This design may not scale up as elegantly as the Kane design highlighted by John above ( mostly because Hoffman owes little deference to the Dillon and Kane likely factored that) but if this is what we get, this certainly packs a TON of density into this corner and hell yes, wrap the entire damn parking deck!!!
Might not achieve the ‘be all end all’ but just think about this district’s evolution in the past few years and then, factor that the CAM block might just give this relatively small corner of town a cherry of a multi-level height combination that so many pine for… 
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I find it disappointing that it is 100% hotel/residential though. I would rather have the residential wrap for the parking deck, and then have the towers be office and hotel.
Employment density near transit seems to be a bigger driver of transit use than residential density is. Worldwide, people will readily accept a longer walk - or a ride on a bike or bus - to get from their home to a transit station, but less so from the transit station to where they work.
No studies to cite for this at the moment, Alon Levy wrote about it on their blog a few months back though.
I guess the idea is, if you put a residential tower at a transit station, people are more likely to use transit only if their job happens to be right at a transit station as well. Whereas, if you put a lot of employment at a station, a big chunk of people will use transit to get there, even if they have to walk a long ways, bike, take a bus, or even drive to get to the station from their home.
Correspondingly, an apartment building right on top of a train station won’t command much of a premium, if any at all (in terms of rents) over one built 1/4 -1/2 mile (3-6 Raleigh blocks) away. Whereas, an office tower will.
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But wasn’t this awarded a 40story max rezoning on the basis that they need to maximize height/use to justify designating a significant portion of affordable housing?
I think you’re right. I also think people are confused regarding all the various concepts… the Hoffman concept has not been publicly released. So there really aren’t any details or information to talk about.
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Right, I thought I remembered that initial concept came out before the rezoning, so it’s most definitely not going to reflect the updated designs.
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Y’all, as much as I liked the two-tower scheme, that image was not produced by Hoffman and is not necessarily reflective of their design. It’s from the city’s master-plan/initial feasibility study for the site and was in the RFP.
The study was completed before they hired a design/developer team, and the developer has no obligation to stick to it. From what I remember, none of the finalists for the project had more than one tower in the concept studies they included in their RFP response.
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