Hillsborough Street - NCSU Area developments

[Green_man]

Apartment building replacing the Velvet Cloak Inn has a name... Theory.  ? 

And a rendering. 

Also they had a grand opening recently.  But the building is still under construction and to be finished fall 2018.  ??

[Jones_]

What's your theory for why they had a grand opening while still under construction?

[Green_man]

39 minutes ago, Jones_ said:

What's your theory for why they had a grand opening while still under construction?

show off model rooms to college kids wanting to reserve apartments for the next year.

[Jones_]

10 minutes ago, Green_man said:

show off model rooms to college kids wanting to reserve apartments for the next year.

I was sort of making a dad joke there.... (not a dad but can't get away from dad jokes for some reason...)

[Tenkai]

On 10/18/2017 at 11:08 AM, Jones_ said:

I was sort of making a dad joke there.... (not a dad but can't get away from dad jokes for some reason...)

It's almost like a zen koan. 

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

What is the color of wind?

How do you hold a grand opening for a building that hasn't been built?

[Jones_]

54 minutes ago, Tenkai said:

 

How do you hold a grand opening for a building that hasn't been built?

And the building is named Theory...what is your...theory...regarding this zen koan...

[JeffC]

Gad, agree that this stuff going up in Hillsborough corridor is total dreck. You'd think the Metropolitan going up like a torch would have turned potential residents off to the idea of living in a tinkertoy building...

[orulz]

There is a rezoning submittal for the corner of Hillsborough and Turner - the south side of Hillsborough between Arby's and the Duke Energy building. They are asking for an increase from three to five stories. I predict what they are planning here starts with the letter "F".

 

And ends with an "..ive story stick built student apartments". 

[DPK]

1 hour ago, orulz said:

There is a rezoning submittal for the corner of Hillsborough and Turner - the south side of Hillsborough between Arby's and the Duke Energy building. They are asking for an increase from three to five stories. I predict what they are planning here starts with the letter "F".

 

And ends with an "..ive story stick built student apartments". 

Ha interesting.  So that's why the Smoker Friendly closed there.  Guess they got a good offer to sell.

[Jones_]

4 hours ago, orulz said:

There is a rezoning submittal for the corner of Hillsborough and Turner - the south side of Hillsborough between Arby's and the Duke Energy building. They are asking for an increase from three to five stories. I predict what they are planning here starts with the letter "F".

 

And ends with an "..ive story stick built student apartments". 

Oh duh. I guess F...ing Ugly was a given...

These things must make a ton of money...they are going to be pulling gas tanks out of the ground, which ain't cheap...and if they happen to be leaking, it's even more expensive and pain in the a$$. 

Perhaps, this will be 5 stick on a concrete, commercial pedestal...? They already have the commercial zoning...

I hope nobody buys up and demolishes the houses behind there...it's kind of a cool, bohemian neighborhood. Hidden and quiet yet surrounded by City. 

[DPK]

47 minutes ago, Jones_ said:

I hope nobody buys up and demolishes the houses behind there...it's kind of a cool, bohemian neighborhood. Hidden and quiet yet surrounded by City. 

It would be nice if they left that neighborhood alone.  Between that small pocket neighborhood and the ever shrinking shell of the Stanhope Ave neighborhood, soon there won't be any homes left on that side of Hillsborough Street in that area.

[Richhamleigh, DC]

Love the mountains in the background of the theoretical apartment building.

[Jones_]

48 minutes ago, Phillydog said:

Love the mountains in the background of the theoretical apartment building.

"Artistic. License"

Edited March 15, 2018 by Jones_

[Green_man]

16 hours ago, orulz said:

There is a rezoning submittal for the corner of Hillsborough and Turner - the south side of Hillsborough between Arby's and the Duke Energy building. They are asking for an increase from three to five stories. I predict what they are planning here starts with the letter "F".

 

And ends with an "..ive story stick built student apartments". 

This actually includes the old gas station AND the four houses behind it on Turner St.   In fact, its a pretty large plot... about 210' frontage on Hillsborough.  And ~340' deep.  Maybe a comparable footprint would be the Hue.  Definitely changes/ruins that neighborhood.

[orulz]

There are some interesting things to note.

1. There is a power transmission line parallel to Hillsborough that splits the plot in half
2. One of the zoning conditions is that the  back of the property will be restricted to four stories as long as the houses not part of the rezoning are still there. 
3. The requested zoning is NX-5-UL. UL frontage means that the building has to be oriented to the street with primary entrances facing it, but it doesn't have to be mixed use with retail at street level (that would be -SH frontage). So it could have residential entries or a residential lobby facing Hillsborough and that would meet the requirement.

There are some cute houses in this little neighborhood. It seems like the nicest ones (the two brick ones closest to Hillsborough) will probably be the first to go.  Frankly I would mostly care about those two houses in the first place, and if they could build this apartment building with a master plan incorporating these two houses without dropping the density, then that would be the best possible outcome. But at the end of the day, if the owners are bought out and it's all knocked down I would proably be OK with it. The neighborhood was targeted for redevelopment when it was zoned NX-3 under the UDO in the first place. It was mangled pretty badly  when Gorman was punched through in the early 1990s, and that just left it feeling so disconnected from anything right now.  This spot was proposed for a light rail station back when light rail was the plan. There could still potentially be a station here, who knows what the future may hold. It's close to NCRR, close to Hillsborough Street, close to Western Blvd BRT, close to Meredith and NCSU, close to greenways, etc. This spot should be dense.  Maybe  building something else there could even allow Turner to be connected to Gorman, 

[Jones_]

Just another sad little state of affairs. Most of those are not special even by my low bar. I do like the duplex at 18 Turner which shows a deed at least back to 1936. Great Depression, tough as nails living next to the railroad. Everything on the road seems to about this era. My favorite house overall is probably 107 with the big carport...it recently sold for over $200,000. The most intriguing is the weird ass block house at 101...I'd love to see inside it...I suspect an old atari and piles of cigarette butts. 

[Green_man]

2812 Hillsborough.  Ground floor retail, 4 floors (16 apts) above.  I believe the house at 6 Bagwell is within this site plan.  Would like to see that house saved and moved.

[Jones_]

I like these smaller buildings much better than the huge stick ones. Hillsborough St (and most places) feel better with lots of variety. As an aside, in the late 90's I inquired about living in that house...it's 3br/1bath and at the time was $900/month.  I think the person on the phone wasn't too keen on my comments about how ungodly expensive that seemed at the time.  

A second aside...across Bagwell form that house is a huge diameter oak tree (willow oak I think but never did look closely). I am not an arborist, but spent a decade helping my dad cut trees to heat our house and I counted a lot of tree rings...me thinks this tree is a solid 100 years older than the houses on the street..which makes me wonder what was here before the area was platted. It's too far west to be on fairgrounds #2 or Camp Bryan Grimes. The nearby NC Agricultural Experiment was started in 1885...the tree is older than that too. The Wilmont antebellum plantation house was moved to behind Beansprout (torn down recently :/) but nobody knows from where exactly....probably near the Wilmont plat. Anywhere this is the weird type of rabbit hole I fall in sometimes...anyway here is the tree, if anyone else entertains similar curiosities...

[orulz]

I agree about the small buildings. The 16 unit parking exemption in the UDO is a stroke of genius that every city should copy.

[orulz]

To continue that thought, I would say this is sort of Raleigh's modern version of the Chicago 4+1. A loophole left in the development code that makes a particular type of building especially economical and lucrative. Except, in this case, the overall form of the mid-rise apartment building with ground floor retail and no parking is just fantastic from an urban standpoint.

[Jones_]

11 hours ago, orulz said:

To continue that thought, I would say this is sort of Raleigh's modern version of the Chicago 4+1. A loophole left in the development code that makes a particular type of building especially economical and lucrative. Except, in this case, the overall form of the mid-rise apartment building with ground floor retail and no parking is just fantastic from an urban standpoint.

Can you explain how the Chicago 4+1 works? Also, does our parking exemption only apply to the Hillsborough St area or greater downtown?

Edited March 23, 2018 by Jones_

[orulz]

My understanding of the 4+1 was that there was a large area on Chicago's north side that was zoned for four stories, but you could put parking underneath the building and not have it count as an extra floor if it was exposed parking (rather than an enclosed garage) and if the ceiling of the parking area was less than seven feet above ground.

The actual form of a 4+1 is not the same at all as what we see here in Raleigh but the concept is the same; developers finding a way to build things as economically as possible while still adhering to the zoning laws.

In Raleigh's case there is an exemption from parking requirements for the first 16 units of a building if it meets one of the three criteria below:

1. is in a DX- (Downtown Mixed Use) district
2. Is in a -TOD (Transit Oriented Development) overlay district
3. Is in a mixed use district and has an urban frontage (-GR (green), -UL (urban limited), -UG (urban general), or -SH (shopfront))

This doesn't cover a large portion of the city, but notably a few corridors (Blue Ridge Road south of Duraleigh, New Bern Avenue west of the country club, and Capital Blvd between Atlantic and Crabtree) have -UL or -UG frontage (map) and thus qualify for the exemption as of right. Plus, developers can request rezonings if they want.

[JeffC]

orulz, you have just solved a mystery to me...my partner is working in St. Louis now and is renting in a neighborhood in Clayton, Missouri that has tons of these little three story 8-unit apartment buildings built in about the 1930s or 1940s that all have these underground parking areas under the buildings.  Didn't occur to me this design could have been inspired by a zoning code...

[Merthecat]

Site plans submitted to the City for Clark Avenue Condos, a 5-story, 51-unit development on three parcels bounded by Clark Ave., Enterprise St., and Garden Pl.

I'm glad to see more condo developments in Raleigh, but the elevations included leave me quite unimpressed . . . particularly from the Enterprise St. side.

[Jones_]

Seeing new posts in this thread, even prior to opening them, now causes me great anxiety...