Totally agree with you @ADUsSomeday. In fact, my wife and I walked by here last night and I brought this up to her yet again.
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So it is owned by J.T. Hobby & Son Inc.
and sold $3.5 Million a little over a year ago
The property is listed for rent by Hobby Properties (same people?) at $22.50/sqft so 272,610 per year. They could build three stories, but do not seem interested.
The city council is looking to remove parking requirements for mixed use properties. This would be a good candidate.
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Yeah, but there’s lots of free parking there! 
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How shitty. Capitalism strikes again! 
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That’s the trouble with downtown parking in general. We have tons of capacity that we can’t use. The enormous garages for state employees is the biggest example of this.
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With property tax somewhere around 1%. I’d say around $17K annually
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The current tax bill for this property is $20,849.75.
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How did you find that? I have always assumed .09%, but want to be better educated.
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Is the just the Wake County tax? There is also a city of Raleigh tax to be paid…
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You can go to Real Estate Search, search by address, real estate ID, etc. and it will give you the property info:
Then click on the Tax Bill tab. From there you can click on any of the bills listed to get the breakdown.
@TedF it’s city and county.
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This is the dumbest kind of capitalism, though.
They own the property across the street, too. They’re keeping people from going to the businesses in the other property they own.
At least put in parking meters or something
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I agree with you. Most of capitalism is dumb when you really think about it. It’s a completely vacant square of pavement that is contributing absolutely nothing to the neighborhood nor society at large, but if I park my car there for a few minutes to patronize a local business across the street, some random a-hole can legally steal it and extort upwards of $150-200 from me as ransom because… why? I can’t stand it!
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Well to be fair the same thing can basically happen to you with government controlled parking meters if you don’t pay your meters and ignore your tickets.
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That sounds like mismanagement to me. If there is demand for a resource, it should be priced accordingly. Drop a remote pay station on that lot and let it bring in $2/hr for parking until the lot can be developed. Jeez. 
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That would be capitalism.
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They probably get a kick-back from whoever they contract the towing out to.
Yea, right. I’m just saying it sounds like not the best use of the space. Or maybe they aren’t paying some insurance or something driving the desire to keep cars off the lot. (just guessing)
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The reality is that, sometimes, people just sit on assets as part of a deliberate strategy. The intention might be to sit and wait for that land value to escalate to a certain point before the owner releases it to development.
I’m not saying that this is what’s happening for this particular parcel; I’m just saying that this is a strategy can be deployed.
Since this is previously developed land, I suppose that the city can demand that it be maintained to a certain standard, or return the property to raw land.
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