FNB Tower has now topped out and the glass siding is about 3/4 the way up the new Fayetteville Street tower. As the street presence gets cleaned up, I can’t help but look forward to seeing the construction fencing come down and the return of the plaza space between One City Plaza and FNB Tower.
Also, I hope to hear about new ground-floor retail announcements.
The FNB Tower continues to rise along Fayetteville Street. The Wilmington Street side has a nice dramatic view from the southeast as seen above.
The mixed-use tower will bring over 200 apartments to an area that’s more dominated by 9-to-5ers than anything else so it’s nice to see that mix.
FNB Tower is also the last new development to take place on Fayetteville Street without demolition. I’m hoping this brings eyes to the southern end of Fayetteville where two lonely surface parking lots, zoned for a maximum of 40-story buildings, sit completely under-valued.
Let’s get Fayetteville Street extended one more block!
The last time we checked in on FNB Tower, the crane had just showed up and things were getting started. Now, almost three months later it looks like the tower is making some real upward momentum with a floor being produced almost once per two weeks.
Next, we’ll have to take a look at how City Plaza looks and feels with all the properties around it being filled in. It’s exciting to see what will be Raleigh’s fourth tallest tower take shape.
For more frequent updates, the community is all over FNB Tower sharing photos from all different angles. Join us!
In case you missed it, FNB Tower is officially under construction. The tower crane has shown up at the site and crews have been pounding away.
For me, it’ll be enjoyable to watch this mixed-use project go up and I think it’ll make a dramatic impact on City Plaza as it fills in the “360 effect.”
Over on Vimeo, there is a new video showing renderings of FNB Tower. This video is pretty cool and I can’t wait to see work start on this project. This will make a dramatic change to City Plaza when finished.
It hit me recently during a conversation in a downtown coffee shop that The Metropolitan apartments would have seen residents moving in this month. If you don’t know the history, the project, while under construction, met an unfortunate fate and went up in flames in March of this year.
The developers plan to rebuild and the site is currently being cleared.
If it wasn’t for the fire delaying the delivery of The Metropolitan, we could easily see the end to the multi-unit, mid-rise apartment product line in downtown Raleigh. At least for the foreseeable future.
Site of The Metropolitan Apartments fire site
Barring any new project announcements, the apartment pipeline would have ended with The Dillon opening in 2018. Taking a look at the latest list of projects released by the Downtown Raleigh Alliance, we can see that there are no planned projects similar to these.
To be clear, I’m referring to the 5-7 story, wood-construction buildings with a larger footprint. Typically to make these work, developers have had to acquire multiple properties and combine them.
That’s not to say the residential projects aren’t flowing. The product is just changing.
Smokey Hollow plans to bring 445 residential units in a 12-story building on Peace Street. FNB Tower will mix up office and 247 residential units across 22 stories. 400H will also mix office and 220 units in a 20-story building. Details are still light on 301 Hillsborough but with a similar style to the other projects there’s no reason to guess that more residential units could be included.
That’s 900 units across three projects right there.
Most recent rendering of 400H
The other side of the picture is the rise in townhome projects. These are adding infill to the periphery of downtown. Currently under construction, we have:
115 townhomes are in the works and more are in the planning stages.
Perhaps we’re at a point where combining multiple parcels for large footprint developments isn’t economically feasible for mid-rise buildings. There could be other changes in the market that are affecting this. Downtown could also be much more livable than before, enticing buyers to purchase units than rent.
Maybe there is a hold on projects as plans for a downtown soccer stadium and big infrastructure changes to Capital Boulevard need to pan out for developers to pitch new projects.
You could look at it from a lot of angles. It’s certainly a great topic to discuss.
Announced on Tuesday May 23, First National Bank will be the anchor tenant of FNB Tower, the former Charter Square north project that we have been tracking here on the blog. Jump straight to the press release for full details.
The key points to pull out from the release are:
The Charter Square projects have gone through numerous changes but this feels like a solid enough update to instill confidence in seeing a crane set up on that site later this year.
This will be a good one to watch as this view from will drastically change. City Plaza is going to be one heck of an urban space in a few years!
Click for larger, wider view.