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Urban Apartment Boom (Raleigh)


orulz

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I'll just put this here...

 

As a Nashvillian who has been considering an opportunity to relocate to Raleigh, I have to say the LAST thing I would want is to move to Raleigh and it to immediately start emulating the urban boom trends that are happening here. While it is certainly fun to watch the skyline change so rapidly, most of these changes come at a cost to the average working class family. Virtually all of these cookie-cutter, urban apartment developments are there to serve no one but young, single, professionals/millenials with alot of expendable cash and no permanence. Within 3 years of living in East Nashville, my wife and I were priced out due to gentrification. The area is quickly losing it's identity; with afforadable bungalows being bought out, destroyed and/or picked apart for trendy, stick built houses/condos that will look dated in 5 years and have going rates nearing half a million dollars. This is a trend that is repeating itself in neighborhoods throughout the county. Meanwhile, schools in Davidson county as a whole are god awful and neighborhoods continue to exist with crumbling sidewalks, persistent crime and other problems. I could go on and on, but I guess my point is that Raleigh has a very accessible, quaint, family friendly downtown. The many times my family has visited it has felt like a naturally welcoming place to us. Here in Nashville, we virtually never go downtown. Why would we? PLEASE heed the warning in this article. As someone who is seeing it happen more and more in my city, its not worth losing identity, community, accessability and charm for the sake of predatory developers just trying to get something built quickly to cash in on a social trend, or the supposed glitz and glam that they promise.

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The perfect example of what this Op-Ed piece describes is the whole Edison development. We were all wowed with a spectacular proposal that included twin 38 story towers from a developer, who basically does not have the financial leverage to build such a development. In the end, we lost some historically significant structures in order to gain more wood framed cookie cutter apartments. And this was in the core of the business district.

 

It appears to me that certain developers have the city in their back pockets, and they are willing to rubber stamp just about anything proposed by those developers. I'm sure that this happens in many cities across the country, but for a city that is growing and changing as rapidly as Raleigh is, this sort of preferential treatment can negatively impact growth patterns, density, and the overall economic well being of a city, especially during downturns.

 

There have been signs recently that the Raleigh city council has since waken up to some of these realities, but the city has to be careful to make sure that they are making development decisions that focus primarily on long term objectives rather than short term gains.

Edited by RALNATIVE
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To add a further note regarding city council rubber stamping, there have been numerous failed or severely flawed proposals in recent years, similar to the Edison, where the failure resulted from the developers inability to properly finance the project:

 

  1. The Soleil Center
  2. The Reynolds Hillsborough St tower
  3. The Layfayette by Hatem
  4. The Hue

There may be others that I've missed, but each of these are clear examples where the city hastily moved forward to approve an ambitious project when the developer clearly did not have the means to fund the entire project.

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I wonder if there is some way to incentivize developers to build over the 6 floor limit.  I'm not saying every block should be a 15-story building, but especially downtown (I'm looking at you Edison Apts.) there should be some sort of push for developers to maximize land over profits.  While I love these 5-6 story apartments coming down the pipeline, I worry that that's where the homogenization comes from.  If they were given more impetus to build higher, maybe a tax break (?), wouldn't that open the door for more "adventurous" and "cutting-edge" design? 

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^^^ agreed, and with the growth rate Raleigh is experiencing, developers should have incentive to build larger with the future in mind. One or Two large, well designed and fully realized projects would be far superior to gobbling up every available block for bland, 4-5 story cookie cutter boxes. 

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So many factors in play that make these wishes hard to realize. Stick built is more profit per unit, yes. Land prices are low enough relative to renter's incomes to still arrive at a profitability per unit that allows the developers to fill them up and dump them off on REITs. We simply don't have enough renters to justify many residential high rises at the desired rental incomes developers need to 'make it work'. 

I personally think mid-rise is important for a City's pedestrian scale. But the ones we're getting….with single secure entries that eat up a whole block in many cases, are getting stale, and I agree, lacking in any creativeness. I think it's more of a function of the lame developers we have in our game than the height. I'd take 100 smaller buildings that look like Capital Apartments or the Creamery, or Grosvenor, or Wilmont over 10 Lincolns or Elans or even Skyhouses any day. 

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So many factors in play that make these wishes hard to realize. Stick built is more profit per unit, yes. Land prices are low enough relative to renter's incomes to still arrive at a profitability per unit that allows the developers to fill them up and dump them off on REITs. We simply don't have enough renters to justify many residential high rises at the desired rental incomes developers need to 'make it work'. 

I personally think mid-rise is important for a City's pedestrian scale. But the ones we're getting….with single secure entries that eat up a whole block in many cases, are getting stale, and I agree, lacking in any creativeness. I think it's more of a function of the lame developers we have in our game than the height. I'd take 100 smaller buildings that look like Capital Apartments or the Creamery, or Grosvenor, or Wilmont over 10 Lincolns or Elans or even Skyhouses any day. 

For your examples, you picked buildings that are all nearly or over 100 years old. But of course you won't get any new 100 year old buildings :) Not for 100 years, anyway. However I feel there is a modern equivalent to these small-scale structures: all the new, smaller apartment buildings going up on Hillsborough Street. 1301, 1912, 2304, 2504, 2604, and 2811 Hillsborough Street; also 105 Friendly (which just got its permits yesterday). Yes, they aren't 100 years old, and neither would anything e. But they are all mid-rises, much smaller than an entire block, and incorporate retail.

 

We haven't seen any such proposals downtown, though goodness knows there are plenty of small vacant or underutilized lots that they would look great on, and I hope we do someday. For now, maybe they're a special case that only works for student apartments. The parking exemption for the first 16 units, combined with the 3-4 bedroom units that are common in the student apartment market, and the fact that they need no amenities (since students all have access to a pool and a gym at Carmichael anyway) makes these buildings profitable near NC State but nowhere else.

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True, Hillsborough St is producing this sort of stuff. The look is all leaning in that same minimalist sort of style that ikea furniture would look good in. Not bad necessarily, but all sort of the same....perhaps that's just how eras work, as can be seen in my examples, classical revival, spanish revival, art deco, etc. 

 

Anyway, I was more just trying to get at the idea that height somehow will lead to varied architecture, of which there is no correlation at all. Variety is more likely with more buildings in play, and smaller buildings will equal more buildings....and to me, also better, more livable actual neighborhoods. 

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  • 1 month later...

I hadn't thought much about the area, but thanks for adding that in. There are very definite nodes of apartment development. If you know numbers of new buildings for Crabtree and North Hills I'd be interested. For downtown I mentally break it into three areas....downtown proper, cameron village (including the Morgan roundabout area) and NC State area. Downtown could be further split into Glenwood area and the CDB. Anyway all that just to recap the number of buildings in each area and construction updates in downtown proper.

Cameron Village has 2 up, 1 planned plus the Morgan roundabout has 1 up and 1 under construction. 5 total.

NC State has 1 up, 1 planned and 2 under construction. (Hillsborough St area that is)

Downtown as of today:

Devon: Apartments being leased. Ground floor still being completed. 

Skyhouse: Nearly complete. Tower crane is down. Connection to the parking deck being made.

Elan, Lincoln and El are all about neck and neck with exteriors being finished. El looks a lot better with the black trim now.

Edison, Link and Gramercy are all about neck and neck with 1st or 2nd story columns being poured. Edison is going vertical fastest though since its wood frame units on the concrete commercial pedestal like El is. 

If anyone is interested, the current status of these from my daily walks around town:

Devon: Leasing up. One commerical space being upfitted for Tutu School. 

Skyhouse: Leasing up as well, with one commercial space being upfitted for Provenance restaurant 

Lincoln: nearly complete. Exterior almost 100% and interiors finishing in phases. I have to say, it looks much better than I thought it would when it started

El: Taking leases though doesn't appear to have any COs yet. I know some dislike it's dorm look, but it at least looks different and the dark brown changes things from typical Raleigh style templates. Commercial space empty currently

Elan: Nearing completion with say 90% exterior and 50% interior completed. 

Link: Topped out along most of its length and windows going in. Should be a decent building. Has interesting sold log supports for the terraces that are anchored about 10 feet back into the building. Perhaps related to the LEED cert...?

Edison: Topped out along blount and windows going in east to west. 

Gramercy: Concrete pedestal complete and second story wood framing starting. The Glenwood face looks like it'll be a disappointing concrete wall at sidewalk level....the rendering sort of distorts how steep the grade is heading north. 

 

Hillsborough St is crazy go nuts. Tower crane at the old Two Guys/Brothers site is the most noteworty piece. 

The place up Oberlin has it's site fully cleared finally. Oberlin is also kind of crazy go nuts now too...

 

As an aside my current apartment building in the Brooklyn neighborhood (funny I advocated strongly to save this place a few years ago when some brownstones were proposed, and now I live in it) is up for sale. It is price fairly hi per unit for units that have not been updated in a good 20 years. As an infobite on the state of the downtown rental market, I'll report back on what my rent increase ends up being assuming I am not outright kicked out....anyway, the middle class priced places are indeed giving way rapidly all over downtown with only a handful of 1930's quads, a few large houses still serving as apartments, Raleigh Apts, Fincastle, Grosvenor, Shelton and perhaps Capital Apts and St Marys holding down the niche between rent controlled affordable and 'market' rate. Cameron Court, Wilmont an Boylan all got upgrades that forced their pricing up to the level of these new places. 

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Hillsborough St is crazy go nuts. Tower crane at the old Two Guys/Brothers site is the most noteworty piece.

I should also note that as of two days ago, Two Guys/Brothers is one floor above ground with columns just peeking out above the fence.

No construction underway at 105 Friendly or the Sylvia's/Hot Box Pizza (2304 Hillsborough) or Hillsborough Square (1912 Hillsborough).

I have to say that Stanhope looks excellent, especially for such a big monolithic project. The recently revealed designs for The Dillon take it up another notch. The design of his projects at North Hills seem to be following an upward trend as well. Kane really is turning out to be Raleigh's superstar developer.

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The center chunk of Stanhope looks ok with the larger windows and the slightly lighter colored brick which has some texture to it. The two end portions look too polished and perfect and have mostly those tiny windows we all hated on 222 Glenwood and Hue. It feels weird to me to have Hillsborough St going so vertical right off the sidewalk, though I admit this is just nostalgia getting me a little (a lot). I suppose it's sort of industrial look blends well with Lulu, Fincastle, Wilmont and Nehi, but I think this style would have looked even better edging in the warehouse district as say a transition to Boylan Heights somewhere...

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  • 3 weeks later...

Preliminary rendering released for 6-story apartment building at the old greyhound site, across the street from Link and Quorom.  Same developer as Lincoln.  http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/blog/real-estate/2015/07/old-greyhound-bus-terminal-downtown-raleigh-banner.html

15057sdgreyhound-rendering.jpg

Maybe one of the more interesting looking urban apartment buildings lately, but still the typical mega block 6 story variety that is being built everywhere.  I was kinda hoping for some variation, like a 10-15 floor condo building. 

Interesting note in the article that developer Ted Reynolds previously bought this land but passed on building here because he has something bigger in the works downtown.

 

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Ah, was about to post that. I actually find that structure completely depressing. No ground retail? Another wooden 6 floor apartment cube? That thing looks completely tacky, like it belongs outside the beltline. A huge step down from what R+R could've put there.

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It looks like they're going for a record combination of the most random construction materials possible.  Brick, siding, eifs, stucco, exposed timber, and plain concrete.  I wish there were more brick/stone things that commanded a feeling of "permanence" about themselves.

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It looks like they're going for a record combination of the most random construction materials possible.  Brick, siding, eifs, stucco, exposed timber, and plain concrete.  I wish there were more brick/stone things that commanded a feeling of "permanence" about themselves.

the j davis awful apartment plague has no bounds.

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  • 1 month later...

With the current set coming online rapidly, I was trying to remember what new apartment projects were in the pipeline in the downtown proper area. Kane's project, Charter Square 2 has some in it, and the Banner/Greyhound site. Anything else? I guess the Campbell parking lot would like have some in any grand proposal in this market....

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  • 1 month later...

Raleigh will still have a housing boom, as long as Raleigh gains an average as of 9,001 people a year since 2010 t0 2014.  If you take an average of 2 people per unit, that  4,500 units Raleigh will have to build or supply from present stock,  just to keep up.  From 2000 to 2014 Raleigh average 10,623 people a year.or 5,312 units a year.  Have fun watching apartments and housing being built.

Edited by RiverwoodCLT
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  • 3 months later...

Two things. First, I updated the projects list on the first page of this thread, let me know if I missed anything

Second, I noticed that 2600 Glenwood is well along in the permitting process so that should be getting going pretty soon. It is a very forgettable site plan, with a driveway between the road and the building, in a location without much "there" there, halfway between Five Points and Crabtree Valley at the intersection of Glenwood and Oberlin. But at least all parking is structured and it is more density in a central neighborhood. It's not the most walkable location given that sidewalks are spotty at best in this part of Glenwood, but then there is a Harris Teeter right across the street and it is located on one of the frequent bus routes in the proposed transit plan.

The me of 10 years ago would have been sorely disappointed by this project, but I'm coming to view this sort of infill, even though it's far from perfect, and mostly car oriented, as a necessary stepping stone towards a future denser, more walkable, more transit friendly Raleigh - and I kind of like it.

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7 hours ago, orulz said:

... sidewalks are spotty at best in this part of Glenwood... 

To the City's credit, they finally installed sidewalks on Creedmoor Road (both sides, I believe) between Strickland and Glenwood. That's still too often not the case in Raleigh, however. Doesn't make much sense to offer improved bus service when potential riders must slog through mud to reach bus stops.

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