Keep in mind that they’re starting south of Hammel. That’s not the block in question. Hopefully that block will activate with the new residents and then they might not feel so motivated to tear them down. BUT, at 4.6MM an acre, those building in that form will not be there forever.
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WRAL just posted an article about this development as well. Something that stood out to me in the article is this :
“The developers still need to go through Raleigh’s site review process, which typically takes a year and includes design approvals, before anything breaks ground.”
That’s too long in my opinion, now granted if the developer is asking for something ridiculous the city doesn’t initially agree with requiring numerous back and forth discussions, sure. But the majority are fairly straight forward, is this typical in similar sized cities? or are we running behind in terms of time frame?
Imagine the amount of development or even proposals that would increase if developers knew that time frame was say 6 months?
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Seems like a lot of the long timeframe coordination issues lately deal with curb cut and drive way locations. And with this odd shaped site(s) I could see similar challenges.
I spent like 10-15min trying to look that up, but it’s really hard to tell. Turns out, every city defines and tracks “the time it takes for a commercial development plan to be reviewed” in different ways.
Raleigh, for example, has this list of typical number of days it takes for staff to actually go through a development review. Checking a Tier 2/3 commercial administrative site review takes an estimated 20 days, and it takes about 132 business days to complete all steps for all first-review steps for non-residential buildings that don’t need zoning changes. Add to that 92 days for each additional review in case the city asks for changes.
Notice that Raleigh breaks down those times by process, though. That’s helpful for knowing why a project may be taking so long, but I had a hard time getting a bird’s-eye view of the big picture. Some cities like Denver (192 days for major commercial projects) measured the time to sending an approval, but others like Arlington, TX (100 days) only show the time until developers get initial comments from city staff.
Basically, I kept having to compare apples to oranges, so I’m not sure. I’d love to see the evidence for it taking a year just so we know what we’re comparing, though. There’s 261 business days this year, so at least it sounds like Denver and Raleigh are roughly in the same ballpark.
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Not to keep bringing up Durham in this thread, but that kinda sounds like what they’re proposing with Motorco and this development. They’re going to keep Motorco and build up and around it. Don’t know if something like that would work with these new developments they’re proposing.
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Even keeping it here in Raleigh - I think Raleigh Iron Works is a good example of how you can build up while keeping bones.
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The Dillon is also a great example of this.
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And SLI capital is behind the East End Ironworks adaptive reuse, so I think it’s safe to remain hopeful that they will incorporate at least some part of the 20th century building stock in the redevelopment.
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Interesting that this just popped up on TBJ about the long review processes in the Triangle municipalities…
" But it looks like we have a logjam when it comes to towns and cities keeping up the pace of approvals and denials of these site plans, building permits and rezoning requests.
Increasingly, just like they do every time, developers and investors are saying Triangle towns and cities are taking months before approving development projects, specifically to add to our housing inventory. It’s costing the whole system thousands of additional dollars that can be prevented through streamlining.
Town and city officials, in turn, say they are overwhelmed by the volume and shortage of labor in many cases.
What all parties involved in the process need to realize is that both points are valid. But the current situation is beginning to kill the Triangle’s vibe."
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You beat me! Haha I was just about to post that and say kind of ironic timing.
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If there is a re-zoning then it will take about 6 months due to public meetings and notifications. Then they are scheduled for council. If you go to I-maps there are different zonings for this area. Very hard for tier 3 site review to get approved in less than six months. I have seen single family homes plans and the applications are blank in sections. Imagine turning down plans just because you were too lazy to fill out the application. I see it every day.
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It’s crazy how slow cities can be when it comes to permitting. I’m building an investment house out in a small town in California, getting close to finishing permitting. In total it will have taken 8-9 months of permitting just to get this 1100sq ft home built.
Always thought why can’t these cities hire more to speed up this process? It would be a huge boost for the economy of these towns to get these projects pushed out faster.
I assume it’s because hiring people is expensive and it’s politically not popular.
For reference, I looked up the names of the three commercial plan reviewers working for the City on this database. If the city wanted to hire two more people to lighten the load, we’d need to come up with an additional $200,000 a year including benefits -a 2% uptick from this year’s budget on planning personnel.
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That seems like a drop in the bucket for the potential fast pacing of development for this city. Developers look at potential turnaround times to develop properties, getting a project going 2-4 months faster could be huge for them. Getting projects reviewed quicker also in theory frees up capital quicker for these. The quicker an investor gets their return on investment, the more likely they drop money right back into a new project in the city. I think a small change like adding a few more workers into this department could be a great little move to help stimulate this city’s economy & help the city grow faster.
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If you just rubberstamp the applications you’ll cut review time and budget. That is my promise to you, the voter
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There’s a crew pulling down trees along the project side of Lake Wheeler. I’ll try to get pic later but this looks like site prep even if it’s well before actual work begins.
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I’m really excited to see downtown extend south of the MLK/Western axis.
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What happened to the first images are this going to get built i hope so
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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: South Saunders Street south of Downtown
BTW, heavy machinery (1) is onsite now. Not sure if it’s related, but if this and the Park City South development on the other side of Saunders kick off around the same time, this area is about to get a major facelift. I’ll get some aerial shots of this property here soon.
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