Cameron Village Developments

[serapis]

I saw signs today against the Cameron Village "Towers". puhleeez.

Exactly...

[cthayes75]

I saw signs today against the Cameron Village "Towers". puhleeez.

The thing that surprised me the most about these signs were they were primarily in the yards of the older African-American households on Oberlin.

I know there is some concern about increased traffic on Oberlin near Wade (I know firsthand that you can sometimes have a quite long wait turning left off Craig or Hillcrest onto Oberlin), but I can take more traffic if I have more places I can walk to and it increases my property value.

To steal the GOP's mantra from last month instead of "Drill Baby Drill" I say "Build Baby Build."

[raleighNC]

The thing that surprised me the most about these signs were they were primarily in the yards of the older African-American households on Oberlin.

I know there is some concern about increased traffic on Oberlin near Wade (I know firsthand that you can sometimes have a quite long wait turning left off Craig or Hillcrest onto Oberlin), but I can take more traffic if I have more places I can walk to and it increases my property value.

To steal the GOP's mantra from last month instead of "Drill Baby Drill" I say "Build Baby Build."

I live on Oberlin Road and someone put signs in front of my house. I think that most of the signs that stayed up were people who took their time to take them down. From talking with neighbors I think that most people don't mind this project.

[Jones_]

funny how people who are seemingly campaigning against having something imposed on them against their will (this project) try to drum up support by imposing these signs on people's front yards.....

[ChiefJoJo]

Crescent Resources has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, so that leaves this project in doubt, though I suppose another developer could take it over at some point.

[Jones_]

Couldn't find a plain old cameron village topic, so thought I'd post here.....a friend of mine who has worked in the bridal industry noticed Pricillas of Boston in the old Blockbuster space. She said to bridal shops this was like having a Saks or Nordstroms. Seems like a good fit given the demographic and all the m.r.s. degrees handed out to local families.

[orulz]

The site plan for this one was recently submitted. It's light-years better than what's there, but I'm not all that impressed. First, like most projects around here, it tries to fill an irregularly shaped parcel with a rectangular building, leaving odd spaces around it rather than addressing the street consistently. Presumably, this is because rectangular buildings are cheaper to construct.

In addition, in spite of the hilly lot and streets, the building will essentially be built as if it were on flat land rather than adjusting to the terrain. For an extreme idea of what this will look like, look on Lake Boone Trail at that new retail development near Rex. Whereas, for example, West at North is on a hilly site and properly adapts to the terrain. See it here for comparison. For the Cameron Village project, the back half of the property will be one full story lower than the front half, but there's no transition with retail spaces built to the level of the existing street; instead they try to make up for it by setting the building back from the street and putting a courtyard there. Presumably the reason they are doing this is because it's cheaper to build something where everything is on the same level, rather than having different floor levels for every retail space around the building to match the terrain, particularly when there is to be underground parking.

See the site plan here.

[orulz]

To demonstrate what I mean: Take the Clark Avenue elevation. There is a drop of roughly 20 feet from 416 feet at the corner of Clark and Oberlin, to 396 feet at the corner of the lot along Clark. The grade is approximately uniform. The green line is the approximate elevation of Clark Avenue. That means that the area in blue on the below illustration will be below grade and the area in red will be above grade. This indicates that there will be a retaining wall perhaps up to 10 feet high at one point along Clark Avenue.

Oberlin Road is much flatter so it's not as bad, but nonetheless the site plan still indicates some grade disparity between the base of the building and the sidewalk. This hinders window shopping, and makes the retail seem less inviting.

So what is your thinking on this? Good enough, since this makes it easier to build underground parking? Or does the design need work?

[orulz]

2nd self-reply!!

On closer examination it seems that there is some requirement for a "Street yard" with a maximum of 15% impervious surface facing the street. I guess that is an artifact of the zoning for this parcel. However, having a street yard does not necessarily mean that there must be 10 foot high retaining walls.

Anyway, maybe my first reaction was a bit too harsh, and of course this is a big improvement over what's there now. But still, I see room for improvement.

[citiboi27610]

I did not realize that there was such a large height difference. I can agree with you ORULZ, after looking at the site plan that the distance from the street (Daniels St. and Clark St.) and the height difference (Oberlin Rd. to Daniels St.) would not be ideal to encourage foot traffic and window shopping. I think the plan should be tweaked some. The lower level could come up to the street, while the rest of the building can be rectangular. That being said, the plaza at the corner of Daniels and Clark will make the height disparity not so great for pedestrians. Personally I'd rather take a flight of stairs rather than to walk up a long hill. (Many of those on campus.)

[Jones_]

This is where it can be seen that huge modern buildings are inferior to old cities filled with small 30ft wide buildings one after the other. This project is essentially two massive buildings. Rather than getting a carefully crafted city of legos, you get a brick dropped in the mud. (does that analogy make sense to anyone besides me?) It is better than what was there because at least our bricks are end to end now instead of sitting separately here and there. It will change the look and feel of Cameron Village considerably.

[Euphorius]

The corner of Clark and Oberlin is where the sign for Cameron Village sits now. If they can integrate a really nice new sign with maybe a water feature background as a part of the retaining wall it won't bother me so much. It would add some visual interest at the street level and would definitely be better than a big blank wall. I seriously doubt they will make any significant changes to their plan though.

[miamiblue]

The N&O is reporting that City Council unanimously approved this project. Crescent expects to start construction in May.

[orulz]

Is it a perfect project? No. But it's such a huge improvement from what's there now that I'd hate to let perfect be the enemy of good. In all I'm glad to see it got the green light. Also worthy of note is that ff Crowder supported it, they must have done something to appease the neighborhood. This neighborhood really is the core of his constituency and I can't imagine him turning his back on them.

[RaleighRob]

I just hope these apartments have some reasonable rents. Just about every apartment built in or around downtown in the past dozen years has been extraordinarily expensive....Oberlin Court...Tucker....Hue. Would be nice to finally find some nice urban apartments that cost less than a grand per month!

Edited February 3, 2011 by RaleighRob

[RaleighRob]

And now there's news of Chick-fil-A going in near the Rite Aid: http://blogs.newsobserver.com/business/plans-filed-for-cameron-village-chick-fil-a-in-raleigh

Frankly though, I say, no thanks.

[citiboi27610]

This Chick-fil-a will see lots of business. Can someone point me in the direction of the new site plan for this new location? Hopefully it will be a more pedestrian friendly design, as compared to the McDonalds'.

[DPK]

This Chick-fil-a will see lots of business. Can someone point me in the direction of the new site plan for this new location? Hopefully it will be a more pedestrian friendly design, as compared to the McDonalds'.

No idea. All I could find were the old ones:

http://www.raleighnc.gov/content/PlanCurrent/Documents/DevelopmentPlansReview/PlansInReview/2008/PlanSubmittalMapsByType/SitePlan/SP-096-08.pdf

Emailed Sue Stock and she replied:

No... I don't think they've been input yet. You can go to the city planning department and look at them... they are public record. But as far as I know, you can't view them online yet.

Sue

Edited February 11, 2011 by DPK

[DPK]

It appears to be on the topic of discussion at the Hillsborough CAC meeting on the 17th:

http://www.raleighnc.gov/content/CommServices/Documents/CAC%20newlsetters/CAC-hillsborough-agenda.pdf

[ChiefJoJo]

Is it a perfect project? No. But it's such a huge improvement from what's there now that I'd hate to let perfect be the enemy of good. In all I'm glad to see it got the green light. Also worthy of note is that ff Crowder supported it, they must have done something to appease the neighborhood. This neighborhood really is the core of his constituency and I can't imagine him turning his back on them.

Yes. I went back and looked at the thread to view the older proposal and I think they reduced the allowable building heights in the original zoning petition, so while it's still quite dense, it's a much better fit for the area IMO (6-7 stories as opposed to 10+).

Two issues on the development side in play here are building materials and parking costs. Most of the recent urban apartments are stick-built on a concrete podium, which maxes out the allowable height by building code at (I think) 6 stories--1 concrete podium, often for retail, 5 floors wood framed, including Tucker St, Park & Market (N. Hills), Oberlin Court. If you want to build any higher than that, you have to go to concrete or steel throughout. Hue did all steel frame, but they were 7 stories: 1+6. Look at the price point for Hue and some of these other apartments and you are talking $1000/month for ~700 sf, and that's for a mediocre quality building, with poor sound proofing, low quality exterior materials and finishing, uninspiring architecture and such. Of course, as you build taller, builders can spread out the costs over a larger volume of product (# units), so you can economically justify a higher quality product. Then there's parking. Concrete and steel decks are very expensive (~$20k+/space), and although most modern zoning codes are now offering parking reductions for mixed use, we're still talking over a space per unit in most cases, so we're talking hundreds of deck spaces, not counting retail or office parking demand. That all adds up.

My sense is there's probably a break point at which you either do stick built housing at 6 stories (probably what Crescent is doing), or you have to go up a few notches with steel/concrete and do 9+ stories to recover the higher materials costs (what Crescent may have been planning initially) to be able to make the numbers work for the marketplace. Not unlike other eras, we'll probably end up with a bunch of 6-story stick-build urban apartments that are more or less uniform in their design sprinkled throughout the region.

[Jones_]

I was musing that point a while back too. The economics make it so that you either get 6 or 9, but stuff in between has this distorted point on the price curve. I had thought, based on observation, that the maximum stick height was 4 stories, with a concrete foundation being as much or little as you want, but I am not sure. I also was thinking that parking deck spaces were 30k a piece. That makes an otherwise 170k apartment or condo, suddenly cost 200k. You would think developers would want to things like mass transit and urban grocery stores....and buyers too....but Raleigh's center of mass is stuck on this need to have plenty of parking...even downtown.

[orulz]

Crescent will hold its groundbreaking this week.

[NCMike1990]

Webcam for the Cameron Village project.

[Euphorius]

5 of the retail spaces now have signed leases. I'm not sure how many retail spaces are in this building, but we can count on 2 restaurants, a coffee shop, a workout studio, and a massage/spa place. http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/09/12/3189596/niall-hanley-readies-three-restaurants.html More info near the bottom of the article.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Euphorius

[Jones_]

I was talking to the owner of Benelux the other day and he was telling me all about the new Benelux. It's a gutsy location for him for sure. Sandwiched between two Starbucks and close to NC State but not close to the other student coffee shops like Global Village, Cup a Joe and Royal Bean, I think he may have found a nice niche there if they can run it well.