35 replies to this topic

[urbanesq]

I would develop as much as possible in Durham if I had the funding!!  Buy low, sell high.  With American Tobacco and West Village/Brightleaf, Durham is quickly turning around.  

Hopefully an experienced partner/backer will emerge because I really like the look, feel and fine-grain of the Greenfire plan.  
The City is taking a cautious stance, which is to be applauded given that they've been burned before.  But one hopes that their lack of enthusiasm won't douse the inspiration

[ChiefJoJo]

The durham council received some assurances that Greenfire has the ability to pull this off.  Particularly noteworthy is the inclusion that the Integral Group out of Atlanta is on the development team.

One the one hand, Evil Developer makes a good point.  This is risky, and one would think a competetive RFP process would be better approach and yield a positive outcome for the city.  On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be a tremendous amount of interest in doing something on the scale that Greenfire is proposing, especially early in a recession, and in an area that hasn't seen much investment in a few decades.  I think the saying "a bird in hand is worth two in the bush" fits well here.

[DanRNC]

Dewayne Washington said it best when saying that the city is just as dark as it was 20 years ago. At the pace Durham moves maybe we will see a new building downtown in the next 20 years. I do think the DT area would be great place to film a horror/sci-fi movie kind of like Omega Man or the new Will Smith movie where the only signs of life are the humanoids living in the white windowless tower.

[EvilDeveloper]

urbanesq, on Mar 6 2008, 02:30 PM, said:

I would develop as much as possible in Durham if I had the funding!!  Buy low, sell high.  With American Tobacco and West Village/Brightleaf, Durham is quickly turning around.  

Hopefully an experienced partner/backer will emerge because I really like the look, feel and fine-grain of the Greenfire plan.  
The City is taking a cautious stance, which is to be applauded given that they've been burned before.  But one hopes that their lack of enthusiasm won't douse the inspiration

I completely agree with the need for a backer, in the industry, we call that a "sponsor" i.e. the party that takes the entrepreneurial risk, but who supposedly knows what he are doing, and thus reaps the lion's share of the rewards.  

But, chicken and egg--it is easier to bring a sponsor if the city is already on the hook.

"Burned before" is also a great observation.  There are no quick fixes in urban revitalization.  As we speak, Motricity has left American Tobacco, and West Village II is about to bring close to a million square feet online, very little of which is leased.

It is one thing to have empty old buildings.  Even worse to have empty new buildings.  That would really set the progress back.

[bullcity76]

Wow...some of you guys are following your stocks too closely.  Even in a down market there are gems to be bought.  Downtown Durham is a gem.  Like the DDI leader said, it will not be what it was in the past (where everybody shopped downtown) but it will transform into one of the important centers in the city.

I would say that Greenfire's development will be a rising tide but a tide recedes.  I guess I'll call "Bull City" Warming due to the "Greenfire" Effect...the melting of the ice cold market will cause the water levels to rise.  BTW, who was hanging out on Glenwood South 15 years ago???  If it wasn't for Glenwood South, would there be anybody in downtown Raleigh after dark???  The point is...it will take a while for people to consider downtown a destination after 5pm in Raleigh (yes Raleigh still has a way to go...a downtown arena would have helped tremendously) and Durham.

It helps by adding residences and shops in order to build somewhat of critical mass.  Greenfire's development will be a boost for all of downtown.

[ChiefJoJo]

Forgot to post this earlier this week... the Durham City Council is taking a look at deal points that would precede a final MOU (I guess) with Greenfire for their redevelopment plan.

[ChiefJoJo]

The county commissioners approved $7.54M for a new parking deck that would complement Greenfire's plans to spend about $300M over 17 years to revitalize the DT core.  The county has some guarantees that Greenfire will build on some of it's many properties by a certain time:

Greenfire has to put money of its own into bricks and mortar before the county's obligation begins. By the fall of 2012, the company must have completed a 264,000-square-foot commercial building at 119 W. Parrish St. and a 22,450-square-foot "wrapper" building around a new city-built parking garage on Chapel Hill Street. The minimum tax value for those is set at almost $75 million.

It will be interesting to see if Greenfire can pull off what they are attempting here.  I do think the market for all the downtowns long term will be good, but depending on how bad things get in 2009, particularly with the credit markets, it could cause problems for them.  In any case, I would love to see them make it happen.  Their plans will go a long way towards connecting the core with West Village, Brightleaf and Am Tobacco.

[ChiefJoJo]

Greenfire is moving forward on plans for a 9-story office building at Parrish, Corcoran, and Main St, opposite the old Hill Building (SunTrust).  Their plans originally called for a larger office building on this site, but were scaled back in light of the economy.  Nevertheless, it's great to see this project move ahead, one block & project at a time.

Herald Sun & BCR also have extensive coverage.

[RaleighRob]

^Interesting.
While I was hoping the new building would help bring more height to Durham's skyline, I understand that they didn't want to block the view of the Hill building, which makes sense.  
I am intrigued by how it looks like it will be "hugging" those older storefront buildings.

[Jones133]

^ I really like it. This was not the space for a mega tall building. Like BCR said, its modern but does not disrupt the historic fabric and most importantly figures in to the pedestrian experience and streetscape very well. Important piece in Durham's continued downtown revival.

[ChiefJoJo]

Greenfire's plan for an office building just across from the old Sun Trust (Hill) Bldg, was approved by the Durham Historic Preservation Commission.

[DanRNC]

Greenfire seems to be making some movement.

http://www.newsobser...for-durham.html

[orulz]

Still waiting for any kind of new construction at all to happen inside the loop... or north of the railroad tracks at all, for that matter... Maybe the loop itself needs to meet its end before that can happen.

88 apartments does not seem like an especially ambitious project. Greenfire owns 2 acres at that corner. ~40 units per acre is certainly not a suburban density but it's not really impressive either. Not sure how much the "local educational institution" will take up, but if this were just apartments, at 1000 square feet per unit, (which is on the large side) that would be a FAR of 1.

[DanRNC]

Looks like most of the loop activity is renovation of existing space but not much in the way of new construction from scratch. The educational institution is the Art Institute-this is supposed to be some kind of housing for them. Considering DT Durham has become a tech/startup powerhouse, its amazing housing is still so limited.

[NCMike1981]

I love Open Durham (and the former Endangered Durham) but frankly this particular feature made my heart ache a bit:

http://www.opendurha...t-building?full

it's amazing seeing some of the shots from 50/60ish years ago which reflect how densely developed downtown used to be. I used to think that the demolition of the Washington Duke (http://www.opendurha...duke-hotel?full) in itself was one of Durham's biggest blunders but it appears as if folks got a little surface parking lot crazy over the years.....Imagine if downtown still had all of the buildings from the aerials in the 1st link.....and what bugs me the most is that most of the buildings demolished were torn down to become empty lots, "plazas" or surface parking!

*ends rant* :-)

Edited by NCMike1981, 03 February 2012 - 07:47 PM.

[Jones133]

^ Couldn't agree more. That knowledge drives my slightly angry response anytime any old structure is proposed to be torn down now.