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  • 2 months later...

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The Edison office building is on the Planning Commission agenda for next Tuesday (7/23).  Looks like the last hurdle is the parking requirement.  The developer included documentation to support their case that the existing parking garage on this block and the public garages within 3 blocks are adequate to handle parking for the office building, Skyhouse, and Edison Apts.  Part of the analysis was based on the 'shared' parking concept (office users park during the weekdays & residents park in evenings & weekends).

 

One interesting note included in the application was for an option to add 5 levels of parking within the office building structure to provide 284 spaces.  I would love to see this happen for two reasons 1) it would add more height to make it an 18-story building, and 2) it would keep it super easy to park in downtown.  However, I worry that if the city required this, then the project actually getting built would be more questionable since the developer would have quite a bit more expense.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 9 months later...
TBJ has an article about Edison. Sandreuter has an investor. Groundbreaking is speculated for some time this year. The rendering depicts 6 stories of apartments atop one story of retail, which makes for 7 stories in all. A 7 story building would be at the absolute upper limit of what could be built with wood frame construction, and even then, usually only with 5 stories of wood frame structure on top of 2 stories of concrete. The rendering doesn't seem to show a 2 story concrete base so I think it is likely that this project is going the Type I route. 425 Boylan which is 8 stories tall is built with reinforced concrete, for example.
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I am not familiar with type I vs type II but have only ever observed a maximum of 5 stories of stick construction here and at that only recently. For many years it was only 4 and before that I was convinced 3 was as high as Raleigh allowed. I am sure the architects worked it out, but the civil engineer in me is nervous about those first floor pine studs holding up 4 more floors above them and then in the case of Cameron Village, brick veneer to boot. I wouldn't live in that building. The building at 401 Oberlin had steel king studs on the lowest of four floors. I saw no such reinforcement at Crescent. Anyway my point is that I sure hope there is a pedestal of concrete if it goes to 7. 

 

Obviously I love old buildings, but since its going to be new stuff here, I think 7 stories the length of the block is a little hasty. I would have done like a 10 story apartment building across from Calavera and reserved the WIlmington/Davie corner for a tall office tower, perhaps designed to be joined together at some point with a nice commercial space in between. C'est la vie...

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I don't understand why this was even approved. Does the city council have no foresight? Are they so desperate to get something on this side of the block that they are willing to let any ole ticky tacky building go up? And why are developers so gung-ho on delivering subpar projects in high profile areas? I don't care how much ground floor retail this building will have. That doesn't negate the fact that this is not something that should be built adjacent to the main spine of the skyline. This is some Mayberry BS.

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Well, the nice thing is that it gives some ground level activity which is good. Architecture in Raleigh will always be an issue as the philosophy tends to favour the bland as to not offend anyone. Sandreuter is a bible thumping, bbq inhaling good ol boy so don't expect too much from him and his partner in crime J Davis.

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Sandreuter is a bible thumping, bbq inhaling good ol boy so don't expect too much from him and his partner in crime J Davis.

He also has a history of  presenting grand plans that get scaled back to something that looks like it should be in North Hills. I think bait and switch should be his nickname.

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I think that the original plans for the Edison was only a ploy to gain control of the land. As in most cases, developers are more focused on their margins rather than substance. If I can build something on the cheap that a city council is willing to rubber stamp and I can make a huge profit, I'm going to go that route rather than reduce my profits in order to build something aesthetically appealing.

 

The city council must have gotten some good incentives to rubber stamp this one...

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Good thing about all these wood frame apartment complexes (assuming this one is indeed going to be wood frame of course) is that they won't last forever. Give them 30 or 40 years and they'll be worn out and ready to replace with something else.

I'll allow that Council may have had some leverage to improve this project that they chose not to exercise, but there is a real danger when insisting that each and every project be earth shattering, even when this close to Fayetteville Street. Right now we are in the midst of a boom, and if there's anything I know about booms it is that they all eventually bust. Get too aggressive with demands, and nothing will get built at all this cycle and we instead wind up with a vacant lot for 10 more years. I for one would rather have a decent building now and an awesome building in 30 years, than a vacant lot and an awesome building 10 years from now.

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I feel that not building smart NOW, will actually set Raleigh's growth and urban development back decades. In order for Raleigh to attract big business, it has got to have a big city appearance and offer big city amenities. This is the main reason why we haven't seen very many major company relocations as of late. The city lucked out with Red Hat and Citrix, but I don't see those kinds of deals happening too often.

 

The future potential is there for Raleigh, but the city leaders have got to be smart about the decisions they make now in terms of developments in the CBD.

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But think, what looks more "big city" to you - a vacant lot or a seven story apartment building with shops lining the street and housing hundreds of residents. Urban apartments in the core of downtown are the very definition of big city amenities. Tall buildings are not nearly as important as many say.

Washington DC for example seems to get by just fine with nary a building over 11 stories tall.

The last time I can recall that council pushed for a bigger project was the Reynolds tower at Hillsborough and Dawson, and that project withered on the vine. Perhaps if Council hadn't meddled, sending the developer back to the drawing board, while the boom eventually ran its course and petered out, we would have something nice built on that lot right now.

Am I disappointed about the Edison apartments, sure a little bit. But mostly because I wish they would have kept the old buildings on the Wilmington Street corner and added a couple more floors to keep the same density. Not because I view this as a waste of space.

There are plenty - PLENTY - of spots left downtown for the next big tower. Probably hundreds. We are nowhere near close to the point where land is so scarce that we should demand and expect that every project is a high rise. In my opinion, the best thing we can do to help downtown to grow and improve is to stipulate proper urban form (things like zero lot lines, masked structured parking, and retail on the ground level) and then get the heck out of the way and let the market do what it wants as far as location, scope and uses are concerned. What turns developers off is not a City Council that fails to push for "BIGGER, BIGGER, BIGGER". It is a development process that withholds approvals for arbitrary and capricious reasons like "Sorry, it's not big city enough for us."

And FWIW, this building looks like it will be better than most from an urban form perspective. Also FWIW, I think that this mid rise will tie in nicely with City Market.

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I agree completly with orulz.  If the street scape and retail portions of this building are done correctly It will be a huge success.  It will create continuous retail on both sides of the street down the entire block of Davie and Blount.  Couple this in with the currently underutilized City Market and you now have a large human scaled retail cluster.  Success will ultimately be determined by the city and landlords ability to get a great mix of shops and restaurants to fill all of the spaces.  

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You guys are forgetting that it's not an empty block. Is it worth it to sacrifice a historic row of buildings in a city that already has very few for a generic 6 floor apartment box? I feel like if their project is going to be limited in size, it would be better to constrain it to the eastern quarter of the block and save the historic section for future proposals.

 

I am reluctant to replace any historic blocks downtown unless something that benefits the skyline is going there. That was one of the conditions under which the block was sold to begin with (maybe not officially but I think if the apartment building had been in the original proposal instead of a 38 floor building, the city council would not have rubber-stamped the approval process). Instead the new building will be neither historic nor beneficial to the city's image. It may benefit the urban environment in the short term but bear in mind that whatever goes there will do the same thing to the street level activity. And we can afford to be picky about what goes there. Wilmington Street is a bit of a hotspot now but there are many unused retail spots there, and filling those up will take some time.

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Sorry, I'm not buying any of these arguments for this building. We would be better off leaving the SW side of the block the way it is and adding a temporary park on the rest of that land until someone who can actually deliver what they proposed comes along. Say this is a wood frame building. Do you really think the city council is going to be ready to kick out nearly 20k sq ft. worth of retail tenants in this new building to tear it down and build something else? The only way I see that happening is if the building gets so structurally unsafe that it is near collapse. I agree, Orulz, we have tons of spots that are ripe for development. That is yet another reason we should not expect this building to only be there for 3 or 4 decades. Why would a developer want to tear down a building before they could start construction on a new one when they could just utilize one of the unused parcels? It's like Ralnative said, we need smart growth now, not in the future. This is in the CBD. It's not Glenwood South or Cameron Village. If this building had been proposed for either of those locations I would be fine with it. This is nothing more than growth for the sake of growth, aka business as usual in Raleigh.

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I agree that making it too difficult for developers to build here does more to chase away projects than it does to set the stage for companies to want to come here. Raleigh, especially downtown, is still very much in 'take it or leave it 'territory. RTP, Centennial, Durham, Weston, North Hills etc etc, all are direct competition to downtown. Seven stories along a whole block is a lot of space in the core that will bring needed life and help get downtown past its regional competitors. Perfect? No. Perfectly fine given the lay of land? Yes. My two primary caveats have been said by others already...I much prefer to keep the few old buildings we have (though the Reliable Loan block is much older and part of a critical historic intersection) and would rather see these kept and I also doubt the ability of the Sandreuter/J Davis bunch to bring in much of anything beyond vanilla, tried and true southern frat boy designs. Having said that, the renderings don't completely disappoint me and it will add to the residential mass in the area (Palladium, Founders Row, Skyhouse, Hudson, PNC) which is critical to support all that ground floor retail we all seem to agree is a missing piece to the fabric and livability of downtown still. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Sounds like the Edison office building has undergone a redesign and is now at 17 floors (~300 ft tall)!  Will be reviewed on Thursday by the Appearance Commission.  Looks like they added 6 floors of parking above the ground floor but they will be masked on the Wilmington & Martin street elevations with office space.

 

Here's a brief write up.

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