No no…
you bring up very valid suspicions.
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I wasn’t going to say this specifically, but I was certainly thinking it. I’ll add that insurance companies have gotten very good at identifying insurance fraud. It’s always possible that they have no intention of getting insurance from this and, if they were to want to get money out of this, put up a GoFundMe to capitalize one last time.
There’s no way I’d donate to the GoFundMe without specifics as to why they’d want to rebuild when it’s just going to get demolished in the next few years.
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249 people aren’t too concerned 
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Yeah those people are idiots lmao
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See ANY cranes in East Raleigh? Compare that to NH, West Side, IronWorks…don’t even have to look at cranes. Simply drive by these areas & see the construction. Ignoring issues like the bus stop, Moore Square homeless issues as a culprit is sticking your head in the sand.
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I think you severely underestimate the gross levels of capitalistic self indulgence we are all living in. If there’s money to be made, developers wouldn’t think twice about constructing a 20 story apartment building on a parking lot. Moving it a few thousand feat further down West Morgan Street wouldn’t make them move any faster. The lack of progress with this building has absolutely nothing to do with it’s location or your seemingly indisposition to homeless people.
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This is pretty naive. East Raleigh doesn’t have “cranes” projects. It has SF homes and townhomes like crazy, as you’d expect in residential areas.
No one is building a tower in five points. Apparently, you can’t build a townhome there without getting sued.
Let’s resist the temptation to paint with a wide brush please. Saying “zero projects” have broken ground means you’re out of touch. Do your homework before posting please. Also, it’s not a contest, it’s a city, it’s a region. We need to think of things that happen here, rather than infighting.
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What often goes unseen is the momentum behind a development. Large real estate projects are like a freight train, they require significant time and effort behind the scenes to get moving or come to a stop. The tower crane going up today isn’t the result of decisions made two or six months ago. It’s the culmination of over two years of groundwork involving investors, banks, and construction partners, all working together to bring a complex project to life.
When a project like VeLa stalls, it’s rarely due to a single issue. Instead, it reflects a combination of factors, such as early indicators of less favorable market conditions or underperformance of recently completed projects. For example, RIW’s The Forge offering concessions of $1,000 and two months of rent in suggests demand hasn’t even remotely met expectations.
The data underscores a broader trend that will be realized in about a year; construction starts are down across America, across all asset types! Of course, there are exceptions, projects with unique characteristics or backed by capital providers with different return profiles, but the overall landscape reflects a cautious market recalibrating to new realities.
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Why knock developers and capitalism? If they had their way in your example, we’d have a nice high rise and one fewer parking lot, more people would have homes, and the developers and their contractors and employees would have a nicer life for their families.
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I’m not knocking it, at least as they pertain to this project and ones like it. My point is that no developer would pass up achieving all those things you outlined, as long as it made them money obviously, and acknowledging that location is far down the list of factors when your talking about a downtown core as small as Raleigh.
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Shocking
It’s in the Moore Square thread
I put it here intentionally. Some folks seem to feel East downtown’s ongoing issues with the bus station, vagrants, etc are not an impediment to developers.
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Some of you owe your favorite Uncle an apology. I’m still confused by the need to run defense for the shit behavior that constantly happens around Moore Square and the bus station.
We can all agree it’s a problem without comparing ourselves to Detroit.
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nobody’s defending shit behavior, they’re saying it’s laughable that developers would clutch their pearls at every stabbing or fire that happens within a mile of their sites. if that were the case, nothing would ever be built ever, anywhere.
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Over the years my wife and I have witnessed our share of what appear to be drug deals taking place in literally this Marbles parking lot. Quite a bit more than anywhere else in DTR.
And yes, location does matter quite a lot, when it comes to real estate, even at scales of a mile, half mile, or less, when you’re talking about walkable areas. An experienced real estate investor, even from out of town, would absolutely not consider “Downtown Raleigh” to be a homogenous, monolithic market, where every potential development parcel is exactly as good as the next.
I don’t necessarily think this location is the only thing that is causing this project to stall. It’s always been a hugely ambitious project. Arguably the nicest resi tower ever approved in DTR, raising the bar - financing was always going to be tough.
But location probably is a factor. A super ambitious project on the eastern fringe of what feels like the lively part of downtown, with well publicized issues with either actual crime, or at least a reputation of crime - you can bet that investors pouring tens of millions of dollars into something like this will do their homework, and be aware of it.
This project, if it gets built, would be a huge deal for this part of town. I’m cheering for it! But developers aren’t doing this so they can bring neighborhoods to the next level, they are just trying to make money.
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I don’t think it has anything to do with crime, maybe the market isn’t strong enough here. Plus as one person has already mentioned there were restrictive zoning codes to hinder development which I highly doubt will be removed even with the new council.
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