Looks like the townhomes that were planned on South Street (the old ice market) that’s been a hole in the ground for awhile now is changing shape. Instead of the 40 or so townhomes it’ll be 87 condos. Here’s the latest site plan.
I live near here, and the last I heard is that they ran into some environmental issues (gee, what a surprise!) so the cost of the project suddenly became much greater than planned.
I mean, the first red flag should have been what was there before! They apparently unearthed entire vehicles buried underneath the auto repair place.
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Wow. That would have been amazing to watch. 
Jeez! That’s pretty crazy. I’m always amazed with what the construction debris I dig up in my yard when I plant things.
Interesting… 45’ wide open space between the buildings for “drainage easement/ greenway reservation”.
I wonder if this will be the desired greenway from an old plan, seen here:
I wrote more about this in this post:
https://dtraleigh.com/2017/06/the-rosengarten-greenway-and-connecting-downtown-to-dix/
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So, I think that 45’ drainage easement is just a drainage easement. There was a collapsed culvert in that area that was to be rebuilt as part of constructing this project. Maybe this became a problem when the site was determined to be a brownfield. The new site plan seems to move the greenway to the Saunders side (see 16’ sidewalk). It’s my understanding that the city is currently getting an appraisal to determine costs associated with using the land offered for this part of the greenway project. I think this may include the warehouse just north of the Western overpass, which would explain the recent “improvements” to that building.
Also, because the site is a brownfield, the living areas must be separated from the contaminated land, so that explains why the new site plan includes underground parking.
Surprised by no retail on the ground floor?
Icehouse looked like it was a gas station before it was an icehouse, so leaking underground gas tanks and the associated migrating plume seem like obvious environmental costs.
Nothing terribly new but I dropped a blog post on this project. Here’s the link as well as the map from the site plan.
https://dtraleigh.com/2018/06/south-street-townhome-plan-flips-to-condos-adds-more-units/
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The blog post says that these are 3 story buildings but these renders show 4. I actually like the contemporary elevations of these buildings. It appears that there may be a rooftop terrace on one of the buildings per the elevation. I hope that’s true.
This was a very big issue in my neighborhood (Boylan Heights) last year.
Here’s the N&O story on the greenway path change, and the neighborhood’s opposition to it.
We had discussed the issue with Councilwoman Crowder at our neighborhood’s May 2017 meeting. At that time she informed us that planning staff had approved the original plans accidently because the maps they referenced for the approval didn’t include the stream. She told us it was too late for them to require changes. My assumption is the had to add this easement since they’re redoing the plans and the neighborhood’s objections made sure planning realized the stream was there. That’s a big over simplification, but I’m sure we’ll get more details later on.
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That intersection is going to need some work. Turning left from South st onto Saunders st is almost impossible during rush hour.
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It’s going to be nice when they finally get these built along with the “brownstones”(2 five unit buildings) at the corner of Dorthea and South Saunders, the completion of the new Raleigh Architecture office, the renovations of Dusty’s and Vault beer and maybe some useful retail in the two open spots at the new storage building. Granted all of that could take years, but it will be nice when it’s finally done.
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I used to drive through there every day and am curious…is it people coming down the hill from Boylan and heading up to Lake Wheeler making the turn you described difficult? I take it there isn’t a left turn arrow?
Yes, you will sit there waiting to take the left onto Saunders and about the time it turns green (solid) the cars coming down from Boylan will arrive and thus one or maybe two cars will be able to turn left before the light turns.
I really thought my commute would be better once South street was done but it’s much worse now. Coming into downtown the single lane to cross over Dawson creates long backups so it takes at least two cycles during rush hour.
I feel bad for the folks on Saunders that live between Cabarrus and Lenoir since it’s a tight one way and that’s the fastest route to get to Lake Wheeler road. I though the South st. improvements would make it easier to turn right on South from Dawson.
I’m not sure how the traffic engineers made it worse and it’s going to get real bad once those condos are finished.
Same thing on the Citrix site. They were unearthing all kinds of junk.
