Just look up the proposed rezoning for New Bern Ave, that land will be “Neighborhood Mixed Use, 5 Stories with Neighborhood Conservation Overlay District & Transit Overlay District”.
So hopefully townhomes it is and not data center
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This was my idea years ago. Two mid-size apartment buildings, mostly townhomes, and some various sized SFH or duplexs or quads. ~225 residential units over the 6.24 acre site and some corner shop retail spaces. Trying to ease the transitions to the SFH areas.
I guess probably not dense enough? Especially for a $20 million land purchase?
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It would be wildly difficult to get the city to rezone this to build a data center. With the BRT stop being right at the corner of Swain, high density housing with affordable units etc. is 100% what the city is looking for, and needs to be there to support the BRT.
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Well, that’s a rather low bar to clear.
I’d like to aim higher than it being better than something really 
Okay, while CloudHQ is located at 1212 New York Ave NW Ste 1000, there are in fact many places listed at that address. Many of them are not directly involved in Cloud’s data center business. One such, just an as example, is Dalian Development, which is the developer for 501 Hillsborough.
These two Jubilee Ventures LLCs do both list Cloud personnel as their officers of record, but the same officer (Karen Donahoe) is also the accountant on file for the 501 Hillsborough LLC’s Delaware subsidiary. I’m pretty sure Dalian is an arm of Cloud, and I’m pretty sure these Jubilee Ventures LLCs (which are themselves subsidiaries/foreign operators of LLCs headquartered in $*@ing Delaware so they don’t have to report their leadership) are actually arms of Dalian. I wouldn’t worry in the slightest about the property being eyed for a data center even if the zoning and the city council would allow it.
That said I do think we’re dealing with the same group that gave us the 8-Story Wonder of 501 Hillsborough, so, can we expect maximum allowable density here? Tough to say.
Side note: I really really really really hate the way all these out of state developers hide themselves under three layers of Delaware-based LLCs so they never have to admit to who they actually are. Corporations are not people and don’t deserve the same presumption of privacy. Should not be legal. Just shouldn’t be.
/rant
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Hey all, if anyone is interested in opportunities to engage with Council and/or Plannning commission on the proposed rezoning along the New Bern corridor, please fill out this form. We’ll be in touch!
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Great work. As this gets closer to public hearing at the full council, might be a good idea to share this on Reddit as there’s generally a lot of interest for this stuff on r/raleigh or r/CarFreeRDU, but many are not closely engaged with the process. But could probably get some additional speakers to sign up in support if you just tell them when.
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Didn’t see anyone else post it - an INDY article about the DMV site with some comments from locals and Corey Branch
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The INDY’s house tone tends to be anti-development and anti-density, but the drumbeat of local leaders who want mixed-use density and a grocery store is wonderful to hear. Doesn’t sound like it’ll be another Heritage Park dead zone.
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This side of downtown Raleigh needs a grocery store yesterday. It’s been a food desert for way too long. Glad to hear that local leaders understand this as well.
A short walk away, at Martin Street Baptist Church, Dr. Shawn Singleton says he’d like to see a business in the area, like a Lowes Foods or Sheetz gas station. The Village District, for example, has stores that attract people and incentivize them to spend money locally, he says. Why not replicate that in Southeast Raleigh?
Hopefully they go for the Lowe’s Foods over the Sheetz gas station.
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Why can’t we have both?
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Great article. Honestly, I have to come to terms with being one of the folks Mr. White is referring to. This neighborhood was the only one we could really afford that was walkable to downtown, and I didn’t really think enough about the implications of that as we rushed to get a house back in 2020. I should be doing more to seek out the viewpoints of my neighbors and help amplify their perspectives.
I’m already pretty aligned with the general gist here, though. Mixed use, affordable grocery store (not sure if Lowe’s Foods counts though lol, but if that’s desired I wouldn’t complain), lots of affordable housing. My next door neighbor works at the Food Lion on Western, I wonder if he could find a job there and save a drive. One thing that comes to mind though, I think he probably also uses the laundromat in that shopping center, and I’ve noticed all the ones in this area are already derelict. Might be another good business to bring back here for local residents. IDK about the Sheetz, there’s already two adjacent stations right across the corner.
Speaking of the DMV site, went past today and they’ve got some kind of ventilation system hooked up through a wall they knocked out near the corner of Hargett and Tarboro. Some kind of work going on recently with it. Wasn’t sure if the plan was to knock it down or salvage and remove asbestos, just odd that they’re doing work on it without any formal plan.
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If I’m not mistaken, the item pointed out was the following:
“Everywhere, things are getting more expensive,” White says. “[It’s] the gentrification. How [people] come in where they wouldn’t used to come in. That’s fine, now you’re desiring to live here, but my taxes double and triple.”
There’s a lot to take in here, but I certainly don’t think you should feel bad for purchasing a home in a place you want to live. It’s a bit of a read, but this article from Strong Towns goes over a lot about gentrification. It was written back in 2015, and there are things it doesn’t discuss (specifically, renters being displaced), but it does make a lot of good points:
One of the underlying points is how backwards we made our society. In most European countries, the wealthy would live in the center and the less wealthy would live on the rim. In the US, we had the less wealthy live in the center, and the wealthy live on the rims. That’s changing now, and makes these situations a lot more noticeable.
However, the way it works in most european societies would be that, if you purchased a home on the edge, if a town was successful, more properties would grow around the city center. Then, you would get to choose if you wanted to “cash out” and move further (with more wealth than you originally had), or if you wanted to go for a generational wealth approach and fix up the property you had.
There’s a lot of things that would need to change, and the article mentions quite a few (how mortgages work, how property tax is handled, etc.). However, I certainly don’t think you should feel bad for wanting to live there. The final quote of this article sums it up nicely:
The only way I see of really dealing with this situation is to fill the enormous demand for decent, urban places by increasing the supply. Fears of gentrification shouldn’t slow quality urban development; they should accelerate it.
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Unfortunately, many of the people who have lived in this part of Raleigh were renters who won’t financially benefit from gentrification. The landlords benefit. Some are black, but most? I don’t know.
Affordable housing is certainly a just cause, but helping displaced renters earn wealth through affordable ownership options (even if further out of the city) would do more to help the generational and racially wealth inequity gap.
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I agree completely. The city of Raleigh did do something in this area with East College Park. Unfortunately, I don’t know to what extent people truly being displaced were preferred. Additionally, the focus was on SFH exclusively with no focus at all on mixed middle/condos.
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While this area is definitely a food desert, and thus a grocery store would be welcome, there is certainly no shortage of gas stations…
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From the Indy article about what to do with the old DMV site:
“A short walk away, at Martin Street Baptist Church, Dr. Shawn Singleton says he’d like to see a business in the area, like a Lowes Foods or Sheetz gas station.”
A Sheetz gas station? WTH is he thinking?
I definitely think that this is a good location for a grocer and there’s clearly enough land there to create one a la Publix-Smoky Hollow.
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Sheetz is not a regular gas station…And we have none of those downtown or anywhere remotely close to downtown. Also, it’s not like DTR is full of gas stations as it is other than the few on Peace St (which isn’t near the downtown core).
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