Blount Street Commons Makes Moves On New Apartment Building

Blount Street Commons

This will be short as details are a bit light, as far as I know anyway, on this project. There’s movement on one of the apartment buildings planned for the Blount Street Commons project. The current parking lot near the NCAIA building and along Wilmington Street is being broken up.

I did some digging and this tract of land is referred to as “Block 2 Tract B” of the Blount Street Commons project. In early 2012, the Raleigh Planning Commission recommended the approval of a height amendment that was in place here. It was to go from 45′ to 62′. This was probably the beginning of plans for the upcoming apartment building.

By the way, the details are all in MP-3-11 on the city’s development approvals archive site.

I haven’t found much yet about it but the property owner, according to Wake County, is Elan Raleigh Property LLC. Their website, elanapts.com, shows some slides of some decent looking developments. The Elan Uptown project in Minneapolis looks pretty cool.

It’s taking a little more effort to find details here so I’ll post as facts come up. Please share if you have any insight to this potentially significant new residential project for the northern side of downtown Raleigh.

Townhomes Coming To Peace Street, Can Smell The Doughnuts

Corner of Peace and Person Street, August 2012

Little activity has been going on in the Blount Street Commons area of downtown over the past year until recently. Peace Street Townes is bringing 18 townhomes to the corner of Person and Peace. If all goes according to plan, we’ll see dirt moving this fall and owners can move in Spring of 2013.

Peace Street Townes is a scaled down version of what was originally planned for this plot along Peace Street. If you take a look at an older post in 2007, the plans called for “live/work over retail” development as well as a rendering of what it could look like. Things have changed since 2007 and while not as dense as planned five years ago, Peace Street Townes looks to deliver some new options to those interested in buying downtown.

Blount Street Commons Ground Breaking Ceremony Tomorrow

Please join Mayor Charles Meeker, Members of the Raleigh City Council and Other Dignitaries for History in the (re)making.

Groundbreaking Ceremony and Celebration for Blount Street Commons
Thursday, June 26
10:00 AM
540 N. Blount Street at the corner of East Peace and North Blount Streets in Downtown Raleigh

Sponsored by:
LNR Commercial Property
Vanguard Homes
Legacy Construction Group
YSU New Homes

Blount Street Commons is a unique revitalization project involving the complete re-development of 21 acres in historic downtown Raleigh. Once Raleigh’s most prestigious address, Blount Street is undergoing a renaissance that includes the construction of a wide variety of homes including row and carriage homes, urban residences over retail as well as 25 turn-of-the-century historic homes. A limited number of single family homesites are also available for the construction of custom homes.

Shifting Houses To Blount Street

There is some activity on the Blount Street Commons Project at the block across the street from Peace College. The Jordan, Watson, and Merrimon Wynn houses are being prepped to move to Blount St. The Jordan House is planned to be placed at the southwest corner of Peace and Blount St. The small building there is currently being demolished. The Merrimon Wynn house will move down Blount St. and will be on the northeast corner of Polk and Blount St. This is all shown on the site plan which interestingly enough shows a splitting Wilmington St. continuing straight right at Peace. I’m curious if that is the plan and maybe the curve will be rid of?

Building demolition

The Merrimon Wynn house waits to be jacked up

Blount Street Commons

Blount Street Commons Reservations

The first block of the Blount Street Commons project is slowly starting to sprout to life. The inner block, T-shaped road has been paved. From what it looks like there will be brick or stone placed on top of the recessed pavement. See the enlarged picture below. A point to note is that the fact that many trees along Person St have not been taken out, where townhouses are planned to be built.


Rendering of Person and Peace St.

Reservations for row homes and carriage homes will begin on April 19th. The details: