South Park Neighborhood - Warehouses, Old Greyhound, and Cargill Site

[mike]

Toulon Place: 7 garden-style apartment buildings at the block bounded by Bragg/Garner/Mcmakin

20200810PLANBOA-0046-2020.pdf

[niko]

Good news. Passage home will build affordable units on the derelict apartment lot

Hopefully this will start improving Bragg St between Bloodworth and Garner as well

[JetsJessie]

The city knocked these old apartments earlier this year and transferring the land to Passage/Solstice and funding with tax credits I believe. Looking forward to this.

[John]

Good news for affordable housing, but why does it have to come together in such a suburban form? I get that there needs to be parking, but this may as well be in Garner.

[daviddonovan]

Looks like 200 apartment units on 6.5 acres.

I like it.
I love it.
I want some more of it!

[JetsJessie]

I’m not sure what more you can get out of this site that isn’t right in downtown. And I’ll say it again (and again), the state’s tax credit program discourages denser development so you may want to lobby NCHFA along with the City. For them, the per unit cost has to be lower to score higher and win an allocation, so you’re not going to see structured parking and other infrastructure that could make it more dense until NCHFA changes their Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP).

[John]

Wanting a better urban form is not the same thing as asking for more density. BTW, I never asked for more density in my reply. I’m fine with whatever number units that the HCHFA requires; I’d just prefer for them to not be delivered in a garden style suburban land use form. Is that too much to ask?

[evan.j.bost]

I see your point, and understand that there could have been a more Urban form. The buildings could have addressed Garner Rd. with ground floor units entering from a bike/ped multi use path, with potentially on street parking as a protected divider for pedestrians, and traffic calming measure.

[Francisco]

If you want to see a good example of urban affordable housing look at the third building of Carlton Place apartments.

Lower floor is parking. The complex is still very suburban but this type of apartment building maintains the appearance of density (mostly non-parking frontage) while limiting open parking surface.

[John]

If the buildings addressed the streets in a different form, the extra consolidated land could have been used for more amenity and recreation space for the residents. Also, an urban townhouse “look” would have worked better in an edge city neighborhood among a mix of single family homes, small business/commercial and services/church uses.

[JetsJessie]

Thanks for clarifying. I haven’t looked the site plan over yet.

[GoBlue87]

It’s great the land is being utilized instead of being left as is. How “affordable” will the Toulon Place apartments actually be though is my question and will it suffer the same fate?

[R-Dub]

Welcome to the forum @GoBlue87. Is that light blue or dark blue?

[Will]

Could also be Michigan

[GoBlue87]

Indeed it could be.

[JetsJessie]

Welcome, Blue! From the TBJ (paywall)

[thehappysmith]

Possibly relevant here, although I haven’t seen anything about it, but Passage Home still owns a large chunk of land (and a building) at the southwest corner of Hoke and Garner (surrounding, but not including, the corner store/auto shop there). The intent at one time was to develop that property to support their charitable activities. I wonder if they will be moving forward with that–or selling off the land–once this project is underway?

Incidentally, across Garner Rd from where Toulon Place will be is a lot that sold last year, has been subdivided into six or seven pieces, and last time I drove up there they had demo’d the old house and were grading the property, so, I’m thinking some more new hipster huts are going to go up there. It’s going to really change that part of Garner Rd with new buildings on both sides, even if Toulon Place doesn’t address the street directly.

[UncleJesse]

we can only hope they will sell the parcel and allow a nice development to be placed there

[Drew]

It looks like the reason for the rezoning request was for 10 new townhomes coming to the area.
TBJ is reporting 501 S. Bloodworth will be 10 upscale townhomes up to three stories.
https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2020/09/29/raleigh-attorney-dives-into-real-estate.html?iana=hpmvp_trig_news_headline

“Plans currently call for about 10 three-story townhomes, each complete with a garage and rooftop deck space. Lawson said he expects the homes to be priced in the $700,000 to $800,000 range. Unit sizes are expected to be in the 1,600- to 1,800-square-foot range.”

Also it appears the neighborhood meeting and rezoning request had an impact on their decision as well:

“Pre-submittal filings with the town had called for development up to five stories, but at a neighborhood meeting, residents asked about potential impacts that height could have on the neighborhood. After consulting his architect, Lawson decided to change the request to ask for the 3-story limit instead”

[Francisco]

It’s basically downtown. Would love to see the NIMBY crisis when the first 12 story or 20 story tower is proposed in this general area–you know downtown Raleigh…19 story Red Hat tower is only two blocks away.