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Stanhope Village / Valentine Commons


orulz

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Cross-posted from the hillsborough street thread:

There are a number of news items relating to Hillsborough Street this week.

Looks like Valentine is positioning to build a 9 story 114 unit apartment and mixed use building (up to 110 feet tall) at the corner of Concord & Hillsborough, next to Lulu. This is a pretty big change as existing zoning calls for a 40 foot height limit there. Up until now, this part of the Stanhope Center/Valentine Commons development project was nothing more than a shaded box on a site plan, so this brings the plans a little more into focus. Recall also the parking deck wrapped with apartments to the south, and the retail/office building with Kerr Drug to the east.

http://www.raleighnc.gov/content/PlanLongRange/Documents/Zoning/RezoningCases/2012/Z-037-12.pdf

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Here is the Site/Master Plan. That is a really strange "roundabout" on Concord St. being mid-block between Cordial and Stanhope Aves.

[Edit: Copy and pasting site plan didn't work. Oh well, its in the zoning amendment dospriteent orulz posted.]

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Attached is the actual site plan for the next phase of Valentine Commons. What you're referring to is actually just the master plan drawn up by the city in 2002. Combine this with the terrible resolution site plan I posted on Jul 30 2011 to get an idea of what will actually be built.

The 9 story 114 unit building will be at the top left corner. Kerr Drug etc is at the top right.

post-823-0-54873100-1342471255_thumb.jpg

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The handful of parking spaces between Kerr Drug and the apartment building should be a bonafide bike corral. That would be practical and also help the street presence feel more continuous. This is in keeping with making all of Hillsborough and its accompanying developments a top-notch modern strip.

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It's my understanding that the surface parking lot along Hillsborough was demanded by Kerr Drug. I certainly can't claim to be a fan of it, but on the bright side, at least there's no new curb cuts to go with it. Since this place is going to have way more parking spaces than required by zoning anyway, let's just think of it as a "future development opportunity."

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It's my understanding that the surface parking lot along Hillsborough was demanded by Kerr Drug. I certainly can't claim to be a fan of it, but on the bright side, at least there's no new curb cuts to go with it. Since this place is going to have way more parking spaces than required by zoning anyway, let's just think of it as a "future development opportunity."

I remember actually catching this meeting on tv months ago and if memory serves, the actual "reason" there is no building in this space is due to a required storm water / sewer easement for the city. It was something weird like that, making it unbuildable.

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Well the student apartments will need a big new sewer line heading towards hillsborough street to tie into the trunk (heading towards campus would require a spritebersome RR easement) so that sounds right. I wonder if these structures are gong to pull the street width back and work on getting enough space for the bike lanes to make it all the way to Gorman (and the Meredith greenway)....? (so the UP system keeps putting in "sprite" when I write "cumber"...so its "cumbersome" RR easement)

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I walked around back there yesterday and agree that it turned out somewhat better than I thought.

There's definitely something other than parking going into the bottom two levels of the parking deck along Stanhope but I have no idea what. Doesn't look like retail, doesn't look like apartments - could it be the complex's fitness center or something?

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  • 4 months later...

This development has been in the news lately - specifically regarding the height of the building across from Cup A Joe at Hillsborough & Concord.  My very very brief summary is that the developer wants to do 7 floors total, neighbors want 5, developer says they can't do less than 7 - and now City Council must decide.  I would hope that an easy compromise would be to have 5 floors along the Hillsborough St and Concord St elevations and then jump up to 7 floors with something like a 15 foot stepback.  This would also give the opportunity for a resident's rooftop patio or even a restaurant with rooftop patio seating.  From the street it would still feel like a 5 story building, and still allow the developer to make more profit.

 

Somewhat related... what's the status of the Kerr Drug building?  Is this rendering still accurate??

 

This is what the building at the corner of Hillsborough & Friendly will look like (w/ Kerr Drug).
41922.jpg
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I call utter BS on the "can't do 5" part of this. This land has been owned and paid for by Valentine for decades. Only the building needs to pay for itself and some financing costs. I see several buildings 5 stories tall listed in the apartment thread that seem to be just fine on more expensive land. 

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I would rather a 7 story building, or even the initially proposed 9 story building, since that implies higher quality construction (rather than stick built.) I don't see why 7 stories, particularly with stepbacks as proposed, is somehow an insult to Hillsborough Street or the Stanhope neighborhood. So it's taller than anything else on the street. Big deal? I say max out the density on Hillsborough, traffic be damned.

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I think the neighborhood is upset about the bait and switch on the site plan approval (which I think had a smaller building here). One piece at a time the property is being crammed full, which is fine for an urban model but if I lived in Stanhope I'd be suggesting that say Western Blvd should have been developed densely in the first place, and satisfied the need (student housing, retail etc.) as opposed to overwriting Stanhope bit by bit which was low density but fine urban form from day 1. 7 stories is normally fine by me, and probably is here too but taller certainly does not mean better by definition and I already know Cup a Joe will be a colder place in the winter without the winter sun shining through (as it is while I am writing this)...

I will give this whole development credit for one thing...the quality of construction is indeed better than all the other apartments going up now so I would anticipate the building itself to be nice. I am a big fan of atmosphere and total experience so for me the jury is still out on this one...I am perplexed though...it would seem the neighbors would want the tallest part to be up on the street...as far from actual Stanhope houses, as possible...

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  • 7 months later...

From the N&O:

 

North Hills developer will lead Hillsborough Street’s Stanhope project

Published: July 19, 2013 
 
By Colin Campbell — [email protected]

RALEIGH — North Hills developer John Kane is taking over a controversial student apartment and retail project on a blighted stretch of Hillsborough Street.
 

Kane told a neighborhood group Thursday that he’ll take the reins from the original developer, Val Valentine. Kane’s already overhauling designs for the block west of N.C. State University, and the changes will require rezoning approval from the Raleigh City Council this fall.

 

It seems like Kerr Drug may be out if they continue to demand a drive through, which is partly a shame because that sort of retail is missing in this part of Hillsborough Street, but partly a relief because it means no drive through. It also says Kane plans to develop the entire block as a single building, which possibly means the parking lot along Hillsborough is out.

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And the implication that the business are "long gone" is inane...Valentine long ago kicked them out. I hope Kane gets it right though I am a bit leery of his stand-alone style urbanism...as opposed to things that integrate into the city fabric...to me North Hills fails to make itself feel like part of the city and instead tries to keep its identity presumably for branding purposes. His idea of one huge building seems to corroborate my gut feeling about how he eyes things. Maybe it'll be nice....we'll see...

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  • 2 months later...

RPR reports that Kane's rezoning for his Stanhope project was approved by the planning commission.

 

Of note they are requesting expedited review, and trying to get underway by December. There is some underground utility work to be done on Hillsborough, and they will have to close Hillsborough outright in order to do it. The developer wants to do this work when NC State is closed for winter break.

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  • 10 months later...

The website is up for Kane's stanhope student apartments development. A few renderings I haven't seen before. This place is going to be similar in scale to the other nearby private complexes: 822 beds (compare to 928 beds at Valentine Commons and 953 at University Towers.) Add in around 50 beds each at 2811 Hillsborough and 105 Friendly and that puts about 2800 students just on that one corner of Hillsborough Street. That's a whole pile of students. Wow.

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Lots of retail spaces to fill.  Any word on any of the tenants?  The originally planned drug store would be perfect for these 2800 students to pick up quick food items since the Harris Teeter in Cameron Village would be a solid 20 minute walk from here.

 

I was over there the other day, the first floor ceilings are extremely tall - maybe that is dictated by a certain retail use?

 

stanhope%20VIEW02%20north%20corner_sm.jp

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All I see here is the steady march of college only being for those who can afford it. Privatizing student housing is the wet dream of conservatives and is happening even as tuition outpaces inflation and wages and real dollars for colleges are rolled back annually. This sort of development is also designed to be nice and benign in the eyes of those who can afford to pay rent for their college age kiddies. Safe. Predictable. Its certainly nicer looking than say the Wade apartments but I can't get away from the bigger picture and my own personal distaste of the homogeneous. 

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All told, it is far better for private off campus student housing to be located in mid rises at the corner of Hillsborough and Dan Allen, with 2800 students in 10.5 acres, within easy walking distance of campus, and with fewer parking spaces than residents, than at the corner of Tryon and Trailwood. Even if it is homogeneous.

 

The cost of staying in a dorm, even double occupancy, is not much cheaper, if at all, than many private options. I don't think dorms are subsidized, beyond housing stipends given to scholarship students. Student loans can cover on campus housing just as well as off-campus. The affordability of these student loans is of course another matter...

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Yeah you're right on the location. So I got curious on rent vs dorm rates and it is quite comparable (700-800 ish a month, though its only 9 months for on-campus)). Which actually makes me mad...dorms can't cost as much to maintain as they are charging so it seems like colleges are indeed making money off of them to offset other costs. I feel like dorms should be cheaper...in line with O&M costs, treated like an enterprise fund. So now we have two settups where on campus housing pays for college ops with profit, and off campus pays investors with profit. Students can't win....but I digress. 

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Getting off subject, but building college housing vs academic buildings was actually discussed at a seminar I went to yesterday.  Universities are more inclined to build housing because of the cash flow that they create as opposed to academic buildings which do not generate any direct dollars.  Although, NC State and UNC Charlotte are experiencing large quantities of private student housing development adjacent to campus that is causing a rethink of planned dorm construction.

 

NC State has found a PPP (Public-Private Partnership) construction model that has worked well for new construction on Centennial Campus.  Renovation of existing buildings has been the hardest to find funding for (thanks to the General Assembly). 

 

My opinion is that the next project for NCSU should be a parking deck on the North Hall surface lot.  It should be a public deck and charge hourly rates and the ground floor should have retail spaces for lease.  Monthly parking passes could be sold for a certain percentage of the spaces for faculty I suppose.  I think it would be a win-win-win-win for faculty, students, University, and H St businesses.  Downside would be more traffic.

 

Finally, NCSU also mentioned that their updated master plan should be coming out in the next month or so.

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