Rockway (formerly Park City South) - Saunders/Lake Wheeler Apartments and Retail

I totally agree with everyone that has suggested making the intersection of Saunders and Western/MLK at-grade to increase north-south connectivity. But one thing that I am really jazzed about is the possibility of creating some really strong east-west connectivity running from Caraleigh, Five Horizons, and Dix Park in the west, through Penmarc, and all the way to, and hopefully even beyond, the Cargill site in the east. (The existing Walnut Creek Greenway would be a really important connective tissue for this stretch.) Thereā€™s a lot of work that would need to occur to make this happen, but the potential to transform the city of Raleigh in this area is massive, and thatā€™s kind of exhilarating,

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The guys from Five Horizons were back at the SW CAC last night. The CAC voted to support the rezoning request for the project at S. Saunders.

They noted that theyā€™re probably 36 months out from starting construction - and thatā€™s if all goes according to plan. Overall itā€™s probably a 10 year project.

Theyā€™re hoping to be able to somehow activate the space before any construction begins. Not a lot of details there but an interesting idea.

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Not sure that I understand this part??? :blush:

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Not sure I do either.

They want their own Boulted Bread like stores to generate buzz before they bulldoze the area for high end development with very high rents.

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They could always clear a lot or two and set up electricity and water for a food truck rodeo location. That would activate the area before construction. I can imagine some ā€œpermanentā€ tents erected, picnic benches installed, and strings of lights like at the Raleigh Beer Garden.

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This exactly. They want some cache first to get people talking, then kick out the people who made it cool and make bank from the people with no imagination. The full gentrification cycle being envisioned by one company!

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An intro to the project with some photos of Saunders is up on the blog.

https://dtraleigh.com/2019/02/a-walk-down-south-saunders-street/

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The idea of having an entire district/project that provides its residents variations of the money shot skyline view is just brilliant. Even better is that the width and angle of the McDowell corridor assures that this project will retain these views as the city grows.

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Iā€™ll be very interested to see how fast this project actually develops. Iā€™ve gotten a bit jaded by the foot-dragging over at the Exploris project, to say nothing of the other buildings. This is a lot of new square feet. Like @dtraleigh said in his post, this will probably take a long time (at best).

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In Raleigh, if Kane is not involved, it will be slow.

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Except in the project with Steve Malik. :thinking:(Downtown Arena and State government complex redo)

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Five Horizons seems to be doing better that a lot of the others, but those are all much smaller projects.

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This project really makes me want to the see the freeway from Maywood to South street ripped out and re-gridded. That little stretch of old South Saunders wonā€™t handle all this traffic very well on its own.

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It is a big leap from single family and townhomes to multi million square foot skyscraper complexes. There are dozens of local contractors, maybe hundreds who can execute on the former but only a few who have the expertise, equipment, and manpower to go big. The partnerships a developer has built while working on single family infill does them little good when they are looking for somebody to drill caissons for a skyscraper.

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I donā€™t know that Iā€™d call it a freeway. South Saunders is more a boulevard since itā€™s not exclusively limited access. The intersection of MLK/Western and McDowell needs to be re-envisioned though, since itā€™s a completely suburban freeway type interchange.

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Sorry for straying off topic for a minute, but this got me thinking about the suburbanization of our city and how the effects of 1960s/70s urban renewal projects created hard barriers that just seem impossible to undo today. Thereā€™s plenty of info about this in Durham, but does anyone know if thereā€™s anywhere thatā€™s cataloged this history in one place more specifically for Raleigh?

Out of curiosity, I made a quick comparison of this interchange. It looks like that entire chunk of the city grid was demolished in the 1970s, but the interchange was not constructed until fairly recently. It doesnā€™t show up in the photo from the 1980s. The red X is the railroad crossing at South Street.

I imagine that not so long ago, the Five Horizons development couldā€™ve had the potential to properly feel like a part of downtown.

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Too speed things up, 5 Horizons could sale to JKšŸ˜Š

When I was in college at State in the 80s, Western and MLK didnā€™t connect. I believe that it was when they did that the horrible interchange was built. To make matters worse, thereā€™s now a suburban style apartment complex on the SW corner and a giant suburban townhouse development on the SE corner next to the elementary school.
Iā€™m sure that someone here will know the exact date of that bridge and interchange. Unfortunately, itā€™s decades away from the end of its useful life.

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I believe Dawson and McDowell were connected to South Saunders in 1993 and Western was connected to MLK in 1997.

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