nah, BoringRaleigh is the authority on class. And “real architecture” lol.
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I’ll be curious how this really plays out if in fact this site will be filled with high end townhouses. I doubt that this rendering is anywhere near finalized; at least I hope not. My initial take is that these are referencing traditional row houses while being stripped of their detail in a way that Hugh Newell Jacobsen used to do with his “traditional” buildings. Personally, I’d like to see just a bit of variety in the palette, materials, and fenestration to distinguish units from each other while emphasizing that these are townhouses and not an office building. I think that the sameness of each unit works when you lean more into the modern, but in the land of the transitional, the complete sameness comes off as lazy and uninteresting to me. I just hope that they give the project a bit more personality.
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Yeah I don’t find these very interesting or inspired either… I just think they’re clean and simple and preferable to the clunky developer mod we often get in Raleigh, other than the townhomes Raleigh Architecture co has done.
Fwiw these are being designed by the (relentlessly ungoogleable) Architecture Firm out of Richmond, which is one of the best firms in our region so I feel optimistic they’ll be detailed elegantly even if they end up looking different. AF does a lot of this kind of soft contemporary stuff that’s still contextual. They also did (and recently won an AIA award for) The Maeve’s interiors!
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Well, that’s a bit more encouraging. Thanks for sharing.
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Who is stealing from whom?
There hasn’t been a lot of townhomes selling for $1.5M, even the $1.0-$1.5M don’t fly off the shelves:
Oberlin Heights (mostly unsold) - $1.3M [$530/SF]
Idyle (mostly unsold) - $1.25M [$465/SF]
Sunrise Ave TH (mostly unsold) - $1.05M [$564/SF]
The Oberry (partially sold) - $1.1M [360/SF]
418 St Marys (built in 2020) - $1.36M [$460/SF]
The Saint (built in 2019) - $1.63M [$470/SF]
Hargett Place Brownstones (built in 2017) - $1.33M [$566/SF]
Clark Street Townhomes (built in 2019) - $1.15M [$430/SF]
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Where are the gables? 
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Do we ever figure out what the mysterious NCDOT project in the area of Automotive was? There was tree protection area along the Capital Blvd frontage road by R&D today, no clue what that was or if it’s related
I think there’s a roundabout planned for Wake Forest/Automotive/Brookside. Maybe related to that?
The roundabout is a city project. Whatever the NCDOT project is must be small enough that there is little/no public information about it.
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The roundabout for the Automotive intersection has been dropped from the Blount/Person St improvement project as of last year, much to my chagrin. They are only updating both streets south of MLK now.
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Disappointing. This is just a weird intersection. It has a lot of potential but I’m honestly not sure how you bring something together. I also think the gas station, industrial building, old retail strip and apartments are ripe for redevelopment. The combo of those two things happening would be great for this part of town
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Speaking of potential in this area, I’m curious what might take over the space that Unlikely Professionals used to occupy now that they’ve moved to North Hills. It’s definitely a unique spot, but they made great use of it with the retail + bar concept. An ideal scenario could be a retro dive bar that leans into the old-school “auto” theme. It would have some competition from places like PSB, Standard, and Wilco, but I think this area could easily support another spot like that.
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So, the unlikely professionals spot in North Hills was actually supposed to be an expansion, but the original spot’s landlord did not renew their lease. According to someone who works there, it was because they complained a lot about all the terrible problems in the building itself. I’m not saying another tenant couldn’t go there, but it seems like that building may need some serious renovation to attract a quality new tenant.
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That’s fair! The place is pretty cavernous which probably comes with its share of problems.
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Just saw the Station is closing March 9th to make way for a new concept.
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sad it’s necessary but i rarely saw many people there.
hey - would love to see them throw in a bodega element, while the need for groceries is fresh in our mind.
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Great vibe but food and service was always below avg. Won’t take much effort to get it to work IMO
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