Without a doubt any action here is better than the current status. I’m in the camp that believes the developers that would be willing to lean into this RFI will likely right-size these properties.
IF we did get these outcomes near what’s rendered, who would really complain? IF this much height ends up here, it will alter the axis of expectation of height for the city. Maybe this becomes the midpoint of the evolving ‘DTR’ from Penmarc to the south and, heck, let’s stretch this this all the way up to Wade at Capital…? I wager that planting a couple ‘tall flags’ outside the expectation - SmoHo3 on the north and here for the south side might not be a bad thing. It could be worse than ‘bookends’.
Good on the city for leaning into this and hopefully it’s a harbinger for more of their owned real estate being coverted to more active uses and the decades long benefit of that fills the coffers for some of these other next-level projects that the clock is ticking on…
I thought the same too initially – that our skyline’s gonna look super lop-sided for the next decade. But when you look at two towers in context of the city gateway project, it’s already balanced out imo… no idea if this is accurate or not, but:
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Recognizable in a bad way, imo. It’s clearly plopped on as an afterthought and looked dated even at completion. I’d much rather see design and $$ distributed throughout a tower’s entire silhouette, rather than a generic building with a little sparkle thrown on top for a crown/spire. Charlotte’s got it all wrong 
The height of your rectangles are much more likely, too. The heights in those conceptual renders seem wayyyyyyy overblown haha. Far as I know, that Gateway project concept is dead, but apparently they’re still planning something. In those first draft plans, they had a few more towers planned than just that 10story zig-zag roof that you included. So eventually the two Mem. Aud. lot towers will have plenty of neighbors. Not to mention there’s the Lincoln lot to the East that will no doubt be filled with towers one day, and then the big gravel parking lot south of Red Hat Amphitheater that will also likely house a tower someday. As stated, the city will grow around these buildings in time.
The south end of Fayetteville is hardly the south edge of downtown and if you consider we’ll have a rather tall tower (who knows how tall) at SmoHo 3, that’ll extend the skyline north (and south with this). I think it’s great to extend the skyline vs keep the buildings all clustered within a few blocks of each other.
Rest assured that any proposal will not look as lopsided as the video indicates. That’s WAY off from reality. Expect the hotel to be as visually tall as BB&T and the office building to lurk above it in the background.
Now, envision towers expanding to the west: Nexus, Raleigh Crossing, RUSbus, CAM Block and possibly 400H. Then, think about the background towers of SH3 and Zimmer.
Also envision some density coming from the left side of this frame as well.
More and more I think the Lincoln parcel could be the true long term gem (unicorn?) and like all gems, many will covet and few will respect fully…
I have never thought of the top hat as anything less than an after thought.
Interesting take, Jake…
No 40 is good especially for the office building.
Gateway project is dead I forgot about it already.
The ‘lopsided’ view will simply morf yet again as the new towers go up in other parts.
Like Charlotte, where the two tallest are actually on opposite sides of town.
But soon they’ll have new towers and the center of gravity moves yet again.
Photo credit: urbanplanet.
Nice not sure if 40 stories is that tall but it’s good.
There’s also going to be maybe a couple of 20 story towers on the left edge of that picture for the S Saunders project. (I’m not calling it the South Park name PaCiSo or whatever)
Nope there bettet we need these buildings
Thought I read that it’s not dead, but is being redesigned? Just pointing out that there will (hopefully) be something there in the near future. Also, their leasing website is still up lol
I’m with you, but I’ll go further; I don’t like PNC at all. The hat and spire look trite, and the tower is awkward with all of those little lifeboat balconies hanging off of it. …and the balconies don’t even have glass railings. What a fail.
the tower renderings look awesome, would be great for Raleigh to have these two towers. IF built, maybe. kinda. 
Nothing lopsided about it. Those renders fumbled the perspective a bit. The only issue I have is Raleigh having all its 400+ foot buildings on one street. I’d rather see buildings that tall go up in the Pope House block or the N&O block first, to spread things out a bit. But I’ll still take that over two more 20-floor buildings going on the municipal lots, easily.
The scale on some of those renderings is only off by, I don’t know, about 33% in every direction 
Not that the potential buildings will look anything like those concepts, but I find it kind of embarrassing that the scaling is so bad in an official city release.