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Hillsborough & Morgan St


Beth Y

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"Land assemblers" give me the impression of having no regard for their project's surroundings or the interests of those affected by it. I am predisposed to be wary of companies with this approach to making a buck. The economy has certainly crippled FMW's preferred way of making a buck, so now they are doing smaller scale stuff like renovating our old ESSO station on Hillsborough St. Coming from Charlotte where the approach to development is both more gung-ho but more livable and mixed composition, I stay cautiously optimistic that they get this right.

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  • 4 months later...

The site plan and some architectural elevations are up here.

All-in-all there's nothing too surprising here. A coup but the result is fairly disappointing. For the first phase, they are doing 249 units, a density of 60 units per acre. 4 stories of apartments on top of parking. There's definitely several retail spaces facing Morgan Street, and it seems like there might be retail facing Tryon Hill and Wakefield as well, which would make sense because that will probably be facing towards the future light rail station, but the renderings show too few doors there for retail spaces as well.

The two biggest disappointments, I would say, are that (1) the project does not include the parking lot facing the roundabout (which is out of the developer's control) and (2) the treatment of Ashe Avenue. The plans show what looks like a 40 foot wide grassy area along Ashe with one row of surface parking behind. Looks like there's enough space to line Ashe with townhomes, why not do so?

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I'm trying to make sense of what's going on with the ground level of building 2.

building_2.jpg

I mean - it looks like it's got 20 foot ceilings, with floor to ceiling windows along almost the entire Tryon and Wakefield frontages (150'+ each). It seems that there will be some parking on the ground floor of building two as well, behind the retail spaces. But what has me puzzled is that there only appear to be three retail entrances, one on Tryon Hill, one on Wakefield, and one on the corner. That seems like an awful lot of frontage for just three retail spaces.

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Judging from the site plan, it looks like the building with Progress piercing, Phoenix tattoo, and Jade Garden will be torn down. Is this correct? I rather like that building, and would hate to see it go.

Jade Garden, Cycle Logic, Royal Food, etc. and the buildings they are in will all stay. These are not owned by FMW.

I really wish that the Jade Garden parking lot were incorporated, though. It sucks that the lot facing this roundabout - one of the most prominent lots in the city - will be a parking lot forever. I'm seriously thinking about writing the owner and the developer urging that they consider some sort of a deal that would allow the lot to be developed but still Jade Garden its parking spaces.

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Jade Garden, Cycle Logic, Royal Food, etc. and the buildings they are in will all stay. These are not owned by FMW.

I really wish that the Jade Garden parking lot were incorporated, though. It sucks that the lot facing this roundabout - one of the most prominent lots in the city - will be a parking lot forever. I'm seriously thinking about writing the owner and the developer urging that they consider some sort of a deal that would allow the lot to be developed but still Jade Garden its parking spaces.

Sanborn 1914 Sheet 73 (Cameron Park - Ashe Ave.).pdf

Even the 1914 Sanborn of the intersection shows the corner rounded off here (was Harrison Street then).

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  • 8 months later...

Fencing is up around the Bolton property and it appears that either hazardous material (asbestos) is being taken out or its just salvaging of useful scrap metal and such. Either way, the project is underway. The second of 7 planned apartment buildings in and near downtown.

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  • 3 months later...

Here's a 3d rendering of this project I've never seen before. This confirms the townhomes along Ashe. Plus, basically all the building's street frontage is active in some way, with retail along Tryon Hill, Wakefield, and Morgan, and townhouses along Ashe. All in all not a bad project. My only complaint is that the most prominent piece of land around here, the corner facing the roundabout, is (and will remain) a parking lot.

925WestMorganRender.jpg

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  • 2 months later...

Looks like construction on the apartments is well underway. However the block that had the old Jackpot looks like it's being used as just a lot for now.

Good news for that old West Morgan Center down the street---Mayor Meeker's son Charles just bought it and plans to spruce it up a bit.

The Burger Hut just closed but Meeker's got the owners of Busy Bee to put a restaurant in its place. http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/05/03/2039722/david-meeker-son-of-former-raleigh.html

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  • 1 month later...

As Ron White says, you can't fix stupid. But I think it's fair to say that the engineers made a mistake in squeezing a double-lane roundabout into a small footprint. I travel to the UK once a month, and double-lane roundabouts there are usually larger, or on streets where the prevailing speeds are lower, or are augmented by signals. Let's not hang this one entirely on Mayberry drivers. I think you'll see a dramatic decrease in accidents after the roundabout is simplified. Besides, given how slow traffic moves through the renovated section of Hillsborough to the west of the roundabout, there isn't much point in having a high-volume roundabout anyway. The N&O ran a story yesterday that traffic on Hillsborough has actually been falling... no surprise to me, given how slow the two-lane section has become.

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The two lane section doesn't really seem much slower to me than it was when it was four lanes honestly. I think traffic on Hillsborough has dropped becuase people hate that roundabout.

I place only 10% of the blame on "Mayberry" drivers. The roundabout was a bad design from the get go. It was a PARTIAL two lane roundabout with different rules and permitted movements depending on how you enter it. The problem is, it's approached by two lane roads from the west and north, and four lane roads from the east and south. A simple two lane roundabout with four lane roads from all sides is easy. The whole idea of a roundabout is that it should, and needs to be, intuitive. The complicated traffic patterns here are anything but: you have to pay very close attention to the signage and pavement markings not only to get where you want to go, but even to avoid getting into an accident.

Really, though, with the upcoming NCDOT and City of Raleigh resurfacing projects, Hillsborough will be restriped as a two lane road clear from Gorman to St Mary's, so in the end a single lane roundabout is the only configuration that makes sense anyway.

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The right-only lanes keep the intent of the round about as previously designed more or less intact. You're just not technical in the roundabout...the round-about taking past the first "exit" and up to the others....Not sure why there isn't going to a right-only lane for westbound Hillsborough to northbound Pullen...I guess Oberlin makes that not needed....

To me stupid is not just Mayberry but also frantic type A's who can't be bothered with figuring stuff out. Hence the need for an intuitive design. I am a tad Mayberry when it comes to things like Photoshop. It's a good thing my inability to follow what is not intuitive at all with that, does not result in filing an insurance claim....

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  • 3 months later...
  • 10 months later...

The site plan for FMW phase 2 is up. 160 units, 13800 sf retail. Supposedly IHOP will be one of the retail tenants.

 

It kind of peeves me that there will be a notch cut out of this building for the gravel parking lot belonging to the apartment building across the street. Why couldn't they sell the parking lot and gain some parking spaces in the FMW deck in return?

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That notch is even more frustrating because they seemed to have had no problem getting that last colonial revival house to give in and sell. FMW projects of course tend to land in the proper parts of town from a planning perspective, and have good apportionments but I will never be happy about the fact that three victorian/colonial revival era homes have been lost from this block in 15 years...2 by FMW in what will be just a couple of years. Raleigh is so freakin' short on character and functional as an FMW project is, they provide exactly zero character. 

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The next piece of the FMW puzzle is becoming clear too. The plans are posted for the small strip of grass along the south side of Ashe in front of the recently completed building.

 

The original rumor was that this strip was set aside for townhomes which would have been a fantastic complement to the single family homes just down the street. But plans have changed, now it seems there will be 15 apartments arranged in two three story buildings. My first reaction is that this is a significant step down, but I hope I'm reading the renderings wrong. 

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IIRC the plan under review that I saw a few years ago did indeed have town homes. I consider this a bait and switch of sorts. From what I hear Zanoni comes across as innocent and well intentioned in neighborhood meetings but the output continues to be that of a man who couldn't care less for the neighborhood he builds in...simply trying to gauge what the market will bear and make a buck. I get a clear sense that he wants to Charlottize us (my own word there), which means tear down everything in your way and build as much as a given corner will support. 

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  • 6 months later...

I missed this but at some point FMW decided to scale back their plans for their Phase 2 at Hillsborough & Ashe. They only developing 3/4 acre (out of the 2.5 that they own).

A 40 unit building will go up right on Hillsborough with 4,000sf of retail (link) that is similar to 2604 Hillsborough.

This doesn't seem like an overall drop in density or scale, more of a change in phasing. Presumably, then, at some point there will be a phase 3. If this gets the building along Hillsborough out of the ground quicker, I'm all for it.

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  • 1 month later...

The site plan for 1301 Hillsborough is up. 39 units, 29 surface parking spaces. This will take up only the Jackpot half of the block on Hillsborough Street; the IHOP will stay as-is (for now.) The elevations really do depict a building very similar to 2604.

site plan

I'm fine with this being a smaller project that only develops part of the FMW land for now, but I'd rather have a clear idea of what future phases will look like.

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Looking at the previously submitted site plans for FMW, it seems they've always planned on having a small, separate building at the corner of Hillsborough & Ashe. So this really isn't much of a reconfiguration of the project, just different phasing. Older site plans do show buildings going where the parking lot is planned for this development.

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