Hillsborough Street - NCSU Area developments

[Justin6882]

Real Deals: Developers eager to build more apartments along Hillsborough Street

 

Edited March 20, 2014 by Justin6882

[orulz]

There's a zoning change request on the City's website for the buildings between the bowling alley and the Chinese & Korean restaurant building.  (The buildings in question have Two Guys, the Keg, and what used to be Melvins --- unless these have changed again recently.)

 

The zoning change would be to "Neighborhood Mixed Use" (NX)... which would allow for residential above retail at the street level!

 

Seems like a great idea to me!  Does anybody have any insight for the proposed project?

The article linked to by Justin6882 above mentions that this would be a 7-story, 24-unit, 96-bed development with ground floor retail and no parking. City staff is recommending that the building be cut down to 5 stories as well as some other changes.

In other news, I somehow missed that Kane had started construction on the Stanhope Village project. I've yet to see a site plan since he took over the project from Valentine. This article contains the only rendering I've seen. Yet, construction is underway and the complex will open in July 2015.

Lastly, the construction fence is up and demolition is underway for the Aloft at the belltower. As of a couple days ago, no buildings had come down yet; it seems like they're doing some sort of environmental mitigation or salvage before tearing everything down.

[Green_man]

Sounds to me like Joshi specifically mentioned that he would hold the height to 75 feet, rather than say he would hold the height to 5 floors.  I wouldn't be surprised if he attempted to compromise with a 6 floor structure at 75 feet.  Then it would be a 20-unit, and up to 80-bed building.  Although, I'm surprised at the 4 bedroom units proposed - considering the shift in the market toward smaller units.

[orulz]

I am not clear on how they are proposing to have 24 units but no parking. Not that I am complaining, but I thought the UDO only exempted the first 16 units from the onsite parking requirements.

5 stories is generally the max for Type III (wood frame) construction. You can possibly get up to 6 if the ground floor retail is concrete. But 7 basically requires a heavy duty (Type I) concrete or steel structure which is drastically more expensive to build per square foot.

Simply cutting the top two floors yeilding a 16 units, 5 story building with ground level retail and no parking built with Type III construction seems like it would probably be the most economical and most likely result.

[Jones_]

All these university area projects are rapidly destroying the 1920's era homes in the area. Some are quite large such as Cedar Fork's proposed project taking down two more. 

Edited March 21, 2014 by Jones_

[Green_man]

Joshi's project is adding 5 (?) residential floors above Two Guys.

 

But yes, the project between Montgomery and Furches Streets (Cedar Fork Investment) worries me some because of the big old houses and trees that will be lost, but mainly because its a 2.18 acre site.  I much prefer the smaller developments (2604 Hillsborough) to the huge, block-long monoliths (Stanhope).

[orulz]

The latest proposal is for 30 apartments atop what seems like two ground floor retail spaces at the corner of Hillsborough and Dan Allen, in the former Sakura Express building. The address is 2811 Hillsborough Street. The parking will be behind and apparently partly beneath the building.

It will be good to see the end of a fairly hideous building.

Oh, and this is being developed by FMW. I guess their experience with 2604 was good enough to make them want to do it again. Their next project after this may be for a lot they own directly across from the Velvet Cloak Inn. It is quite interesting how the Hillsborough Street area is developing. There are the huge projects like Valentine Commons and Stanhope Center, and the big FMW at Hillsborough/Morgan, but then there are also the smaller ones like 105 Friendly, 2604 Hillsborough, the Two Guys apartments, and now this.

I hope this trend continues; there are dozens of underutilized lots all along Hillsborough Street. I woudl say that the buildings that are worth keeping along Hillsborough west of Gardner are far outnumbered by the ones where almost anything else would be an improvement. Hillsborough Street is finally getting its day in the sun.

[Jones_]

It is interesting. I never expected to see so many small projects. I'll go ahead and list my keepers though (west of Gardner, capping it at Gorman/Faricloth), some being quite obvious. Wilmont, Fincastle, Nehi Bottling, Cup a Joe frontage, Lulu and all the five 1910's and 20's residences including the two just west of Readers Corner and the three just east of Crown gas station. Everything else that remains front Hillsorough, can, and in many cases, should, get rebuilt to a modern urban spec in my eyes.

[orulz]

I think Lulu, Wilmont, and Nehi are probably safe, given the recent renovations, and Fincastle probably is too, but I agree the residences and Cup A Joe are at risk.

I might also keep the Alsco building. Even if its current industrial use is abandoned, I'd like to think the building could be kept and converted into something useful and modern, similar to the Royal Bakery up the street.

[Spatula]

If it were up to me the university parking lot, the strip mall at 2712, and the Baptist Campus Ministry near the SECU ought to go before any other functioning retail gets replaced. Those create a dead zone along the street that lasts an entire block and separates the activity from the 2500 and 3000 blocks.

 

After that I'd like to see the 2810 and 2900 strips replaced before any other retail is. Those contribute heavily to the visual dissonance of the street, and they create an area where pedestrians have to worry about parking cars on the way to the stuff around Cup A Joe. Needless to say the sidewalks, when they exist, are terrible there.

 

Great news that that Sakura Express building is getting dozed though. Big improvement there.

[orulz]

Here is a recent rendering of the 2nd phase of the Hillsborough Street streetscape.

A few comments:

Looks like the Packbackers/Marco's parking strip as well as the one in front of Pantana Bob's will be closed and converted to sidewalk space, but the ones at College Beverage and Wolf Mart will not. These are the parking areas where you have to back out across the sidewalk into traffic in order to leave.

The bike lanes look dumb. They start 50 feet after one roundabout and end 50 feet before the next one. What the hell is the point of a discontinuous bike lane? I would rather have parallel parking on one or both sides of the street, and no bike lane at all, than a pointless and dangerous piece of crap like this.

A westbound climbing lane for bikes between Daisy and Furches would make perfect sense, though.

And of course the baptist student union keeps right on being the ugliest building in town.

[Jones_]

^I don't really follow why some parking lots are highlighted and others not. Is this saying East Village gets a repaved parking lot because its highlighted? 

[Green_man]

Completely agree about the bike lanes.  What's the point?

 

The highlighted parking areas are likely the ones that need to be altered as part of the project.  Although, then the State parking lot at Brooks should be highlighted.  Hmmm.

 

Also, the two curb cuts shown at Sakura Express can go away since there will be a mixed-use building fronting the street for that entire site.  (All vehicle access to parking behind the building will be provided via the "Private Drive".)

 

And I also thought for sure that the curb cuts for the diagonal parking at PizzAmerica would be eliminated.  Strange those are kept.

[orulz]

A few driveways here or there are OK, but I wish College Beverage could share a parking lot with Digitz. The big long curb cut there really ruins the block.

[Spatula]

http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/06/17/3943971/raleigh-city-council-oks-seven.html

 

The Council approved the 7-story building proposed where Two Guys currently sits, "The Hillsborough Lofts". What stood out to me was this:

 

Opponents of the development – including Mayor Nancy McFarlane and councilmen Thomas Crowder and Russ Stephenson – say they’d support a five-story apartment building on the site.

 

“All of those (benefits) are achieved at five stories,” McFarlane said.

 

Crowder said he doesn’t buy the argument that taller apartments will bring better transit.

 

“We already have density to support transit with N.C. State University,” he said. “We are setting up a bad precedent on the edge of neighborhoods.”

 

Very disappointing to see McFarlane toss her hat in with the NIMBYs. It's very interesting how urbanism is an issue that crosses traditional political lines. We have progressive candidates like Mary-Ann Baldwin approving dense infill projects alongside conservative Maiorano. And then progressive Stephenson up to his usual NIMBY shenanigans, but alongside conservative Odom who couldn't decide which he liked less--voting against a private developer or voting to approve anything dense inside the beltline.

[Green_man]

Futuristic transit system coming to Hillsborough Street  (still in concept phase)

 

[Spatula]

If the cars are single-passenger, what benefits does the system really offer? The whole point of 'mass transit' is that it can move a bunch of people.

 

I would think a gondola line from NCSU to Centennial would be a more logical low-cost system.

[Green_man]

If the cars are single-passenger, what benefits does the system really offer? The whole point of 'mass transit' is that it can move a bunch of people.

 

There would be hundreds / thousands of cars.

New rendering for the 2811 Hillsborough St mixed-use building (30 apartments above ground retail) at the corner of Dan Allen Dr.

[Green_man]

I guess while we're updating renderings, here's the one for 1301 Hillsborough (next to IHOP) which I think will have 40 apartments above retail.  (from New City Design's "On the Boards" section)

[Green_man]

And I don't think I've seen it posted on here... 2508 Hillsborough St.  24 units, up to 96 students, 7 floors, ground floor retail.  Approved by City Council on July 1 (previously approved by the Planning Commission back in April).

 

 

All these residential projects should be great for the Hillsborough Street businesses!  Will be interesting to see what fills all of these retail spots as well!

 

One downside that I see is that the district is becoming very one dimensional with students.  Its too bad there isn't more of any effort to integrate tech companies and businesses for recent grads.  I guess there's still hope with the Nehi renovation and maybe the office component of Stanhope?

Edited July 3, 2014 by Green_man

[Euphorius]

If the cars are single-passenger, what benefits does the system really offer? The whole point of 'mass transit' is that it can move a bunch of people.

They will be two passenger cars, not that that's much better. The idea is that you can supposedly go straight to your destination point without the car stopping at every station along the route. I say give it a go. At a cost of only $1 million per mile it's worth a shot, especially since it isn't going to come from taxpayer money. The system is going on NCSU campus as a trial. Other areas can link up to it if it is as successful as the developers think it will be. 

Edited July 3, 2014 by Euphorius

[orulz]

I am quite dubious of the $1 million per mile number. $1 million per mile, perhaps for the cost of the steel to build the guideways and concrete to build the supports - I could possibly believe that. But anybody can tell you that the cost of building light rail is not all tied up in the cost of the rails, crossties, and ballast.

Control systems, securing right-of-way, designing and engineering the whole project, building a test track, all the testing that will be required before it is certified to carry passengers, not to mention the presumably dozens or hundreds of stations.

This may be really awesome and it might even work. I would love to see something like this between D.H. Hill and Hunt Library, but I won't take them seriously until they give a realistic cost estimate.

[Jones_]

So its a giant one-way loop in essence (the out and back parts are just flattened pieces of the loop) it looks like. Seems like that would make it hard to add new lines without having intersections where cars *would* have to stop to avoid collisions eventually. If the traffic all goes clockwise and the loop gets huge, then it seems like you'd be stuck doing some sort of long return trip each time if it would actually be a no-stop system....am I missing something?

Edited July 3, 2014 by Jones_

[Euphorius]

I'm sure several of you know more than I do about rail systems. I'm just going off the info that is on their website. There is an image in the gallery that seems to show the routes it would take through campus. http://ecoprt.com/the-big-idea-behind-ecoprt/

[orulz]

Green_Man, thanks for posting all those renderings last week by the way.

FMW's buildings all have a certain look to them. Generic, but in a distinctive way. Not a bad thing, necessarily. I think 2604 is quite nice.

They will easily find retail tenants for 2811 at the corner of Hillsborough & Dan Allen. They do however seem to be having trouble filling the retail spaces in their Hillsborough/Morgan apartment complex. They may be targeting IHOP for the retail space at 1301, but if not, they might have similar difficulty finding a tenant there as well. Hillsborough/Morgan is a great location but not really a hub of pedestrian activity - not yet at least.