I just think it’s kind of folly/short-sighted from the Zimmer folks to continue to wait for some hypothetical ‘unicorn’ tenant to happen. I don’t think the corporate real estate market is ever going to be the same and I think they’d probably be better suited going forward with an all-residential building at this point. On their website they do have a history of multi-family and student apartments. Maybe they should try something they know instead of waiting for a ‘unicorn’ tenant? Look at what just happened with Charlotte and the Centene campus. Charlotte thought they had landed a big tenant in Centene and they recently walked away so
At this rate I would be surprised if anything happens within the next 5 or so years on this lot.
EDIT Unless their plan is to continue to hold out and eventually sell out to another developer and make a whole lot of $$$ in the process.
Given that office towers tend to have both a morning and afternoon rush of cars, having an office tower only at that location might create a traffic nightmare anyway. It can’t be accessed on approach from the east on Peace because of road medians, etc. The approach from the north involves that single lane square loop exit/approach. The approach from the west is mostly a 2 lane road until it gets to Smoky Hollow, and the approach from the south is essentially an exit from Capital to Peace. In short, the site doesn’t sit on a block that has access from all sides, and it forces all approaching the site to only 2 sides (north and west) at an overpass intersection, and the north side isn’t accessible on approach from the east. If the mythical rail stop was to the east of the site already, then there’d be an option to mitigate the rush hours, but I’m not holding my breath on that at this point.
IMO, SH3 is a much more desirable and accessible site by car, foot, bike and bus.
Do multi-family homes produce the same type of profits for developers as office space? I am assuming no bc, to your point, residential seems like a far safer investment than commercial at this point in time.
My bet - never. @John makes a lot of great points about the poor accessability for this lot, at least currently.
If we are getting a big whale that wants a building I hope it goes else where that his on higher land, for one, and closer to where we have a real activity going now. The N&O block is the prime location.
I’m no real estate leasing expert but would probably tend to agree. I was simply pointing out what they advertise as something they have experience with on their website. Any sort of residential activity on this highly-noticeable lot would be incrementally better than their current strategy of sitting/waiting/wishing/etc. With this location I’m sure they could charge a high premium to live there simply because it would be in the heart of the action IMO
Oh yea I was generally curious. Wasn’t disagreeing or anything. It seems like we can’t build housing fast enough in Raleigh and commercial office space seems at best unclear in the medium term, so was wondering why they wouldn’t just pivot in that direction.
