I agree with others. All those options don’t look like a win for affordability.
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window dressing for the “make them put affordable housing in lux buildings” crowed. Make the affordable by making them small in less desirable locations in building.
Was there any mention of the possible building breakdown? Office space vs residential units in any of the filings or is it still too preliminary for that ?
And I have a feeling what the council think of when they hear “affordable housing” is very different from who will actually rent these units. At that AMI, is it affordable to your recent college grad, single, just got their first job in tech / biotech making about $50-70k range. then yes, this is affordable housing. However, I think when the council says affordable housing, they are thinking families with combined income of $50k working multiple jobs to make ends meet. Is it affordable by that definition, most likely not.
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A post was merged into an existing topic: Rezoning - Z-2019-16 - Hargett, Salisbury, Martin, Fayetteville block
I feel like this begs the question: why would a family making 50k need to live in a luxury highrise apartment downtown?
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Glad to see the project moving forward.
It really depends on how tied “affordable housing” is to gentrification. If the goal is options for gentrified neighborhoods, so folks priced out of their rentals can stay in the downtown area, this fails miserably. The city council really needs to define the term. To one person, affordable is $600/mo for a family of 4 while others, that might mean a 1 bed apt. for $1,500.
I know we talk about the 40 story/500’ limit a lot on here. Just looked at The Vue in Charlotte which is 50 stories at 560’ (11.2’ per floor). At 40 stories this would be 448’. So, there is a chance this actually could be 40 stories or 500’.
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Exactly they don’t need to.
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Totally agree. But I’d say that’s the demographic the city council, and probably vast majority of people, think of wanting to help when they say affordable housing.
Yeah, and for someone that’s a single service industry worker, it’s not just downtown Raleigh that’s not affordable, it’d be everywhere.
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@dtraleigh Do we know who voted for and who voted against?
No one was opposed. They liked that if the traffic study came back negative, it would be scaled back to less than 40.
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Smoky Hollow affordable housing, 1939…
1942…
1956…
1965…
The housing stock from the original Smoky Hollow was wiped away with the creation of Downtown (now Capital) Boulevard.
What came next was the mix of various businesses that we all knew. Uninspiring, but it filled the void that the city could support at that time.
Now, we are in Smoky Hollow Vers. 3. I’m happy that there will be room for a variety of residents and possibilities.
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I’d show a photo of the existing affordable housing (or any housing for that matter) at the SH site a few years ago, but I don’t know how to show a photo of nothing.
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To maximize usable floor space and efficiency I imagine this will probably be a basic square building probably similar to the Crabtree rendering.
So, what we have is a pre-approved ordinance for this one building to be (up to) 40 stories/500 feet. And now that all of this fuss has been made and hoops jumped through, now we have to submit the actual design plans and see if they can get approved???
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From this morning’s TBJ:
Following discussions with the city, the companies agreed to include affordable housing in the development. But a company official says doing so could throw a wrench in the project’s financing.
“It introduces a whole new level of financing risk that we’re honestly not sure how we’ll navigate,” says Bonner Gaylord, managing director of operations for Kane. “It could put the project in jeopardy, but we’re willing to take that risk to make the council and the community (comfortable) with the project.”
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So, after all of the hoop-jumping, the 40-story dream could still go south.
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