72 replies to this topic

[Jones133]

This is where it can be seen that huge modern buildings are inferior to old cities filled with small 30ft wide buildings one after the other. This project is essentially two massive buildings. Rather than getting a carefully crafted city of legos, you get a brick dropped in the mud. (does that analogy make sense to anyone besides me?) It is better than what was there because at least our bricks are end to end now instead of sitting separately  here and there. It will change the look and feel of Cameron Village considerably.

[Euphorius]

The corner of Clark and Oberlin is where the sign for Cameron Village sits now. If they can integrate a really nice new sign with maybe a water feature background as a part of the retaining wall it won't bother me so much. It would add some visual interest at the street level and would definitely be better than a big blank wall. I seriously doubt they will make any significant changes to their plan though.

[miamiblue]

The N&O is reporting that City Council unanimously approved this project. Crescent expects to start construction in May.

[orulz]

Is it a perfect project? No. But it's such a huge improvement from what's there now that I'd hate to let perfect be the enemy of good. In all I'm glad to see it got the green light. Also worthy of note is that ff Crowder supported it, they must have done something to appease the neighborhood. This neighborhood really is the core of his constituency and I can't imagine him turning his back on them.

[RaleighRob]

I just hope these apartments have some reasonable rents.  Just about every apartment built in or around downtown in the past dozen years has been extraordinarily expensive....Oberlin Court...Tucker....Hue.   Would be nice to finally find some nice urban apartments that cost less than a grand per month!  

Edited by RaleighRob, 03 February 2011 - 12:18 PM.

[RaleighRob]

And now there's news of Chick-fil-A going in near the Rite Aid:  http://blogs.newsobserver.com/business/plans-filed-for-cameron-village-chick-fil-a-in-raleigh

Frankly though, I say, no thanks.

[citiboi27610]

This Chick-fil-a will see lots of business. Can someone point me in the direction of the new site plan for this new location? Hopefully it will be a more pedestrian friendly design, as compared to the McDonalds'.

[DPK]

citiboi27610, on 11 February 2011 - 10:20 AM, said:

This Chick-fil-a will see lots of business. Can someone point me in the direction of the new site plan for this new location? Hopefully it will be a more pedestrian friendly design, as compared to the McDonalds'.

No idea.  All I could find were the old ones:
http://www.raleighnc...n/SP-096-08.pdf

Emailed Sue Stock and she replied:

Quote

No... I don't think they've been input yet. You can go to the city planning department and look at them... they are public record. But as far as I know, you can't view them online yet.

Sue

Edited by DPK, 11 February 2011 - 12:26 PM.

[DPK]

It appears to be on the topic of discussion at the Hillsborough CAC meeting on the 17th:
http://www.raleighnc...ough-agenda.pdf

[ChiefJoJo]

orulz, on 03 February 2011 - 09:19 AM, said:

Is it a perfect project? No. But it's such a huge improvement from what's there now that I'd hate to let perfect be the enemy of good. In all I'm glad to see it got the green light. Also worthy of note is that ff Crowder supported it, they must have done something to appease the neighborhood. This neighborhood really is the core of his constituency and I can't imagine him turning his back on them.

Yes.  I went back and looked at the thread to view the older proposal and I think they reduced the allowable building heights in the original zoning petition, so while it's still quite dense, it's a much better fit for the area IMO (6-7 stories as opposed to 10+).

Two issues on the development side in play here are building materials and parking costs.  Most of the recent urban apartments are stick-built on a concrete podium, which maxes out the allowable height by building code at (I think) 6 stories--1 concrete podium, often for retail, 5 floors wood framed, including Tucker St, Park & Market (N. Hills), Oberlin Court.  If you want to build any higher than that, you have to go to concrete or steel throughout.  Hue did all steel frame, but they were 7 stories: 1+6.  Look at the price point for Hue and some of these other apartments and you are talking $1000/month for ~700 sf, and that's for a mediocre quality building, with poor sound proofing, low quality exterior materials and finishing, uninspiring architecture and such.  Of course, as you build taller, builders can spread out the costs over a larger volume of product (# units), so you can economically justify a higher quality product.  Then there's parking.  Concrete and steel decks are very expensive (~$20k+/space), and although most modern zoning codes are now offering parking reductions for mixed use, we're still talking over a space per unit in most cases, so we're talking hundreds of deck spaces, not counting retail or office parking demand.  That all adds up.

My sense is there's probably a break point at which you either do stick built housing at 6 stories (probably what Crescent is doing), or you have to go up a few notches with steel/concrete and do 9+ stories to recover the higher materials costs (what Crescent may have been planning initially) to be able to make the numbers work for the marketplace.  Not unlike other eras, we'll probably end up with a bunch of 6-story stick-build urban apartments that are more or less uniform in their design sprinkled throughout the region.

[Jones133]

I was musing that point a while back too. The economics make it so that you either get 6 or 9, but stuff in between has this distorted point on the price curve. I had thought, based on observation, that the maximum stick height was 4 stories, with a concrete foundation being as much or little as you want, but I am not sure. I also was thinking that parking deck spaces were 30k a piece. That makes an otherwise 170k apartment or condo, suddenly cost 200k. You would think developers would want to things like mass transit and urban grocery stores....and buyers too....but Raleigh's center of mass is stuck on this need to have plenty of parking...even downtown.

[orulz]

Crescent will hold its groundbreaking this week.

[NCMike1990]

Webcam for the Cameron Village project.