Well they do a lot of historic preservation and adaptive reuse work, so I understand why they were chosen. The issue is that most of the work they’ve done relies on the existing character of the building, whereas here, these are a literal shells with not much that exists to preserve. Additionally, these first two buildings are new builds, and the only examples of ground-up construction I see an Maurer’s website are these:
Hardly anything edgy or elegantly detailed. I really wish Merge had worked with a firm like Raleigh Architecture Company, In Situ, Weistein Friedlein,Tonic Design, etc. to do the new build portion.
Is it just me, or should we take a minute to stop being awed by prettier pictures (which could be inaccurate!?) like moths around a lamp?
You have a point here. To me, I think it’s about being clear about what stage of design the developer is at when a rendering is released, and how prone that rendering is to change. A lot of us judge projects at the concept or schematic stage, and a lot can happen after that. I actually distinctly remembering a disclaimer that accompanied these renderings that said something along the lines of “renderings are conceptual depictions of the potential of the site and may not reflect the final development’s design”
In this specific case, I got my hopes up because
Merge prioritizes distinctive design, and the people behind the company seem to have great taste judging by their instagram and connections with the local design community.
I have a hunch the concept renderings were done by LOHA, who they’re working with on Park City South and other studies for Raleigh.
These renderings are extremely detailed and well-thought out. It’s not typical for a developer to hire a designer to do such a thoughtfully executed design study, and then scrap that and hire someone else.
Of course, my venting here could be completely off-base, as it’s totally possible that LOHA (or whoever the original designer was) remains the design architect with Maurer as arch of record, and these site plan review elevations are just extremely preliminary and not indicative of an overall direction.
Yeah, might be a tight fit there, I know that at one point there was discussion of three locations and I felt one of them was the old Cargill site? But we’ll see if we even get a team.
Also can we please ditch the glass bar? Looks nifty but we live in Raleigh, not Duluth. I work in greenhouses. That place is either going to pay more for a/c than for beer, or be completely uninhabitable seven months of the year.
I’d actually like them to just keep it as a greenhouse, lol. Make it a community garden. Could also have seating that gets used in winter for the surrounding retail. Love the idea architecturally of contrasting the metal warehouses with a crystaline focal point.
That site is way, way, way too small for an MLB stadium. A modern MLB stadium requires at least ten acres of footprint; most are actually substantially larger than that. Ten acres is 435,600 square feet, which if you did it as a perfect square would be exactly 660 feet on each side. And if you look at modern ballparks that are built on street grids in urban cores, you pretty much uniformly see footprints that are at least 660 feet in both dimensions, and usually more than that. (That makes sense since a typical MLB stadium is about 330 feet from home plate to foul pole, and that’s before accounting for the backstop, the seats behind home plate, or seats in the outfield. And bear in mind, that’s before you account for a single parking space; that’s just the stadium itself.)
This block is a little more than 400 feet on each side, which is pretty typical for downtown Raleigh. The upshot is that the city blocks in Raleigh are way too small to accommodate an MLB stadium. That’s not a bad thing–many U.S. cities have street grids where the blocks are unhelpfully large, but Raleigh’s city blocks are actually a really good size that’s very well suited for walkability and day-to-day urban life. But putting a stadium on Raleigh’s street grid would require monopolizing most or all of four adjacent city blocks, not a single block, which just one of several reasons why putting a stadium on the street grid is not realistic.
Also, this is a residential neighborhood surrounded by single family detached housing, and you can’t expect to put a huge stadium in a residential neighborhood adjacent to lots of single family detached housing.
On the other hand, a four-story townhouse development on this block seems like a really good idea, both in terms of city-building and in terms of building stuff that people want to buy. It substantially increases the density of an area where there is great demand for housing, but on a scale that is coherent with the existing surrounding development. On the whole, then, the proposed development looks like a really great proposal as currently planned, and I wish these folks the best of luck and I think this is going to be very successful.
It’s pretty easy to go to iMAPS and check all this stuff out.
It is true that the city owns two parcels totaling 5.8 acres between City Farm Rd. and the Cargill site, and it has owned those parcels continuously since 1977. I’m not really sure I understand what logically follows from that, but it is indeed true, at least.
It wouldn’t be great as depicted, but would be cool if this were an extension of a nearby bar or restaurant, as additional flex indoor/outdoor space. I’m not sure if you can get the necessary tolerances without it being very expensive, but make the broad sides opaque and function like garage doors which can be rolled up under the roof when it’s too hot to have it enclosed (or just whenever the weather is nice, really), and leave the front, rear and roof as glass. With the sides rolled up you’d get the breeze and shade since the opaque side walls would then be up above. And with the sides down would still provide a great view any time of year.
But I guess they could probably just reach mostly the same functionality by having a normal building and just roping off a patio area outside.
Leaving aside the likelihood of a developer buying up these extremely valuable tracts and then just letting them lie fallow for some indefinite, but assuredly long, period of time in the hopes that maybe, maybe Raleigh gets an MLB team some day, you still couldn’t build an MLB stadium on just those two tracts (plus the White Oil tract) alone because they’re too skinny. You would need to build over what is now Blount St., and you’d need to acquire probably three different parcels to the east of where Blount St. is now, and possibly some of the ones to the south of City Farm. (And then you still have the issue where your only ingress/egress is Wilmington St., which doesn’t connect to I-40.)
Well before the point of time at which an MLB franchise would even be conceivable, some developer is going to buy up the Cargill property and build some really cool and awesome stuff on it, and that’ll be that for a stadium project–but on the other hand, we’ll at least have all that cool and awesome stuff they build, and I am excited about building some cool and awesome stuff here, and that seems like something we should all welcome. Once that happens, it probably makes sense for the city to sell off those 5.8 acres for more development, although some of it is in a floodplain, so there’s some limits to what you can do there in any circumstance.
Yup. Cargill is about 500’ wide as-is, so while Fenway would fit, even Wrigley wouldn’t. Figure 700x700 as an absolute minimum for a modern MLB park, 800x800 is probably preferred.
The railroad is unmovable, but maybe Wilmington Street could jog around a stadium, like how Mint St jogs around Bank of America Stadium, or 5th Street jogs around Spectrum Center (both in Charlotte).
I agree. I attached what I was referring to. I like this location as the best one for an MLB stadium. Which I think might be a stretch for the city of Raleigh, but I’m all for us getting one over Charlotte.
Yes, I am, shall we say, familiar with this plan. I mean, it’s true that you could fit an MLB stadium on the patch of land envisioned in this plan, but it presupposes: 1. Cobbling together a ton of different parcels, some of which are being eyed for other development on a much sooner timeline 2. Building on a floodplain! 3. Putting a large parking lot where Downtown South is going to be built, which is obviously now out of the question, and 4. While not absolutely essential, the plan does recommend demolishing two churches that predominantly serve African-American and Hispanic populations, respectively, in order to make room for mixed-use development and tailgating lots, which is some kind of mood, let me tell ya.
@evan.j.bost It wasn’t me! I wasn’t the one who brought it up, I swear! (I am never, ever the one who brings this idea up in other threads. Never.)
BTW, getting back to the Cargill site and floodplains, basically the Cargill site ends pretty much exactly where the floodplain begins, which is pretty typical; a lot of city-owned land is in floodplains. The eastern half or so of the city’s land is beyond the floodplain and quite suitable for development to complement whatever gets built on the Cargill site. The western half or so really ought to be set aside for green space, which could also nicely complement development there. The five parcels south of City Farm Rd. are also–again, precisely by design–basically the land that’s just beyond the floodplain. There’s about 14 acres down there in total, and if you redeveloped everything north of City Farm for denser development, it would become really attractive to rezone this area say maybe R-10 and build some townhomes that back up against the Walnut Creek Greenway. This would also significantly improve the greenway itself. Walnut Creek is absolutely beautiful in places, it’s a gorgeous ride, but this is one of the least pleasant stretches of the whole greenway, so there’s definitely an opportunity to make a ton of interconnected improvements in this area.
That’s a good question, I’m guessing they are waiting for someone to commit to the rental space, which makes it even more unlikely. 517 seems to get worse by the week too, so I wish they would start something
