Not trying to say we need a tower there, so I apologize if it came across that way, but we’re talking about a parcel bounded by two relatively high-volume streets, two blocks from the densest (jobs-wise) corridor of the city, one block from a potential mega-redevelopment of the Lincoln Theatre area, and two blocks from one of the city’s two major transit hubs. Townhomes aren’t gonna cut it for me. Way too exclusionary and not dense enough for such a desirable location. A seven story wood-frame building with ground floor retail would be absolutely fine.
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Do not slap me, but if you want a single family home with a yard, move to the burgs. Or be willing to accept apartment buildings around you. Do not try to choke off center city growth cause want to have best? of both worlds burg living and center city amenities.
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9 months later…
I guess i’ll change my tune slightly and say I’d rather see the parcels subdivided and built up with high density buildings on a smaller/more human scale. This big box crap like the Lincoln are painful to look at. Anyways, I already have a single family in Downtown (sort of but close enough). Would be nice though if more people decided to raise families in the city.
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Exactly, I’m not trying to be harsh but, move somewhere else if you have a problem with massive growth. Move to Rolesville or something. This plot is only two blocks away from Fayetteville St. and should not be limited to trashy or even fancy, extremely small mediocre buildings.
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Oh my - raise your hand if you didn’t grow up on a farm and lived your entire life in an urban setting. 
this guy. 90% of you “urbanists” here in Raleigh are just getting your feet wet so back up a few steps. Single family homes have a place in the city and no one wants to raise a family in a place like the Lincoln. I’m not saying they don’t have a reason for existence - I just hate them…a lot. Especially the ones with the faux balconies.
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Let’s keep it on topic.
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Those just getting their feet wet will shout ‘paradox’, but ‘low density urban’ and ‘high density suburban’ are concepts you should familiarize yourself with. Oakwood. North Hills. Prime exhibits. Everything with a square block ain’t gotta have a thousand story building. Most areas abutting the belt line are signing their death warrant when they get one. Medium density across an urban grid with urban land use planning is really what you want. Thats whats best on most every front. That’s what cities used to be. Cars changed all of that. Take away cars and think about what works. Walkable radii connected by high capacity modes, with undisturbed green in between.
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Just saw this pop up on the Raleigh Wire Service.
Nice bit of infill replacing a parking lot. Interesting that it’s midblock, which seems a little unusual for new construction in Raleigh…
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Interesting that leaving the 1/2 of parking lot on Wilmington St side undeveloped. Maybe for taller building in future on that part of site?? 
Nice that it’s 7 story on east side.
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Whatever their plans are for it, they definitely intend to keep that part of the lot separate. They proposed a new property line to divide that space off into it’s own parcel, and it states in the parking calculation section:
All provided parking for the residential building is proposed on lot 1, no parking on lot 2 is to be utilized to meet parking requirements.
(Not that they were in danger of needing that space to meet the parking requirements; the requirement was to provide 91 parking spaces, and they are planning to build 202 spaces in the deck.)
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More than double the number of parking spaces required by the city, and nearly double the number of parking spaces to living units. Thoughts?
Public parking maybe? Expecting very popular tenants with lots of visitors?
@John I was thinking the same as @GucciLittlePig. Or maybe to offset some of the parking requirements for future development on the western parcel along Wilmington Street.
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Not loving the parking size, but this is a vast improvement over the townhomes that were initially planned here. Very close to the bus station and BRT corridors so there’s no excuse not to go dense.
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It’s a 4 story building really.
I think that project is scrapped!!!
But I connected possibly with a transit corridor, so parking could be less of a significants!!!
Yeah the Edison was scrapped years ago
This development is 500ft from us, so I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about it.
It could be taller. It could have some kind of retail or much better cladding of the parking deck. There will actually be many more parking spaces on this lot (and maybe more resultant traffic) despite this replacing the existing surface parking. The parking deck will not add anything to the street-level/pedestrian experience here in the neighborhood (only the narrow end addresses the street, it won’t be as bad as it could be). This is certainly not the highest and best use possible for this lot, but the perfect is the enemy of the good (or the “better than nothing”). It’s infill development that brings some density and some housing. It adds momentum to the (re)development conversation moving southeastward. All in all, I think it’s probably a net positive, especially considering the possibility that it remains just a gravel parking lot for years longer.
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Anyone know if there is an avenue for public input on these kinds of “by right” developments?
The development plan shows they intend to build only the minimum requirement of 7 short-term bicycle parking spaces with no mention of any long-term parking/storage, despite the lot being inside the dedicated bike lane corridor on Person and Blount. I’d like to ask them to look into the cost-benefit of including more bike parking/storage.
They’re planning to build 220% of the required car parking (202 spaces planned vs 91 required), so it seems like they could trade a few of those for what could be a popular amenity. I’m thinking they could build a small bike storage area for cheap (something like below), in the same amount of space that would hold maybe 2-3 car parking spots.
Or they could even just throw something up on any unused wall space.
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