Greenfire's revitalization plan for Downtown Durham

[ChiefJoJo]

Forgot to post this earlier this week... the Durham City Council is taking a look at deal points that would precede a final MOU (I guess) with Greenfire for their redevelopment plan.

[ChiefJoJo]

The county commissioners approved $7.54M for a new parking deck that would complement Greenfire's plans to spend about $300M over 17 years to revitalize the DT core. The county has some guarantees that Greenfire will build on some of it's many properties by a certain time:

Greenfire has to put money of its own into bricks and mortar before the county's obligation begins. By the fall of 2012, the company must have completed a 264,000-square-foot commercial building at 119 W. Parrish St. and a 22,450-square-foot "wrapper" building around a new city-built parking garage on Chapel Hill Street. The minimum tax value for those is set at almost $75 million.

It will be interesting to see if Greenfire can pull off what they are attempting here. I do think the market for all the downtowns long term will be good, but depending on how bad things get in 2009, particularly with the credit markets, it could cause problems for them. In any case, I would love to see them make it happen. Their plans will go a long way towards connecting the core with West Village, Brightleaf and Am Tobacco.

[ChiefJoJo]

Greenfire is moving forward on plans for a 9-story office building at Parrish, Corcoran, and Main St, opposite the old Hill Building (SunTrust). Their plans originally called for a larger office building on this site, but were scaled back in light of the economy. Nevertheless, it's great to see this project move ahead, one block & project at a time.

Herald Sun & BCR also have extensive coverage.

[RaleighRob]

^Interesting.

While I was hoping the new building would help bring more height to Durham's skyline, I understand that they didn't want to block the view of the Hill building, which makes sense.

I am intrigued by how it looks like it will be "hugging" those older storefront buildings.

[Jones_]

^ I really like it. This was not the space for a mega tall building. Like BCR said, its modern but does not disrupt the historic fabric and most importantly figures in to the pedestrian experience and streetscape very well. Important piece in Durham's continued downtown revival.

[ChiefJoJo]

Greenfire's plan for an office building just across from the old Sun Trust (Hill) Bldg, was approved by the Durham Historic Preservation Commission.

[DanRNC]

Greenfire seems to be making some movement.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/02/02/1823976/88-unit-complex-set-for-durham.html

[orulz]

Still waiting for any kind of new construction at all to happen inside the loop... or north of the railroad tracks at all, for that matter... Maybe the loop itself needs to meet its end before that can happen.

88 apartments does not seem like an especially ambitious project. Greenfire owns 2 acres at that corner. ~40 units per acre is certainly not a suburban density but it's not really impressive either. Not sure how much the "local educational institution" will take up, but if this were just apartments, at 1000 square feet per unit, (which is on the large side) that would be a FAR of 1.

[DanRNC]

Looks like most of the loop activity is renovation of existing space but not much in the way of new construction from scratch. The educational institution is the Art Institute-this is supposed to be some kind of housing for them. Considering DT Durham has become a tech/startup powerhouse, its amazing housing is still so limited.

[NCMike1981]

I love Open Durham (and the former Endangered Durham) but frankly this particular feature made my heart ache a bit:

http://www.opendurha...t-building?full

it's amazing seeing some of the shots from 50/60ish years ago which reflect how densely developed downtown used to be. I used to think that the demolition of the Washington Duke (http://www.opendurha...duke-hotel?full) in itself was one of Durham's biggest blunders but it appears as if folks got a little surface parking lot crazy over the years.....Imagine if downtown still had all of the buildings from the aerials in the 1st link.....and what bugs me the most is that most of the buildings demolished were torn down to become empty lots, "plazas" or surface parking!

*ends rant* :-)

[Jones_]

^ Couldn't agree more. That knowledge drives my slightly angry response anytime any old structure is proposed to be torn down now.

[orulz]

A new developer, 21c Museum hotels, is interested in developing the Hill Building (Suntrust) as a 125-room hotel and art museum. They will buy a majority stake in the building from Greenfire, and invest $40 million of their own money in the conversion. The deal is contingent on a total incentives package of $7 million, about $5 million of which would come from the city and $2 million from the county.

I'm really not that fond of incentives but if any project were deserving this would probably be it. Sounds like they have an interesting and unusual (unique, even) concept.

This goes up for a vote at with Durham's City Council meeting on August 6th.

Read these two articles from the N&O for more background. (1) (2)

[DanRNC]

Durham needs another decent hotel. The WaDuke is the only one worth staying in.

[orulz]

Greenfire has sold the lot across the street from the Hill Building to a developer from Aspen Colorado. The developer envisions a building of roughly 25 stories. Looking at there website and at google, it seems they have little experience with anything like this.

[DanRNC]

Whenever you see a parent of a Duke student trying to make a splash, expect the worst (ie the Courtyard in Chapel Hill).

[orulz]

The Hill Building was sold a couple weeks ago to the folks from 21c.Read the article here. It sounds like this is happening for real. It's awesome to see something like this moving inside the Durham Loop. The incentives agreement states that construction must begin by July.

 

The Woolworth's across the street is still slated for a 26 story mixed use building. According to this article There would be a 5 story base occupying the entire lot, and a tower filling out the rest of the height taking up about 1/3 of it.

[Rufus]

It's a bit distressing to hear such a clamor over a 26 story building overshadowing a 16 story building. It sounds like the Hills have done their homework, and continues to do so. It's also encouraging to see that some Nimbys are aware that times do change, and not everything is going to be preserved.

Can't wait to see what happens with this building and future projects.

[NCMike1981]

There have been so many proposed skyscrapers in Durham over the last 25 years, none of which have ever materialized so I'm a bit pessimistic about the 26 story building being built. I suppose I shall believe it once they start building it, but I foresee the building either not getting built or being downsized to like 5-10 floors.