by Leo Suarez

Rendering of 301 Hillsborough Shows Double Tower Development

Rendering of 301 Hillsborough, provided by The Lundy Group.

Click for larger

Posted here is the latest rendering of 301 Hillsborough, which comes courtesy of The Lundy Group. It was released a few weeks ago so it may not be new to some readers but I’m putting it here for posterity.

For reference, in the foreground you’ll see a gray box of a building. That is where The Flying Saucer (and a plate with my name on it!) currently reside. Morgan Street is going from bottom center towards right center of the rendering.

To see more detail, check out this November 2016 post.

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66 Comments

  1. Looks like a giant hospital with little articulation. Although the development team could ask for more height, they capped it at the maximum UDO standard without asking for a variance. This results in a very flat roofline. Raleigh, meet South Florida architecture.

  2. I’m not going to complain about the lack of height. In this part of downtown the Holiday Inn is very prominent and getting essentially two more buildings at that height will add a lot, and I hope they differentiate them in the final design. Buildings with a lot of glass always end up looking different than renderings (including North Hills tower 2 and Charter Square South). I just hope the N&O site goes higher.

  3. I was in Miami last weekend, and I agree with the South Florida assessment. I’m glad this building is 20 stories. I hope between this and the Dillon, it will get very hard to claim that taller buildings don’t fit the “character” of the neighborhood in the future. I think the area between Salisbury and West could be home to Raleigh’s tallest building someday (I just want at least one 700’ building).

  4. I wish developers would release more than one rendering. 90% of the cost in commissioning these 3D renderings goes to extruding the digital model in a 3D program – once the model is built and textured, creating additional renderings is just a matter of spinning the model, taking a “snapshot”, and touching up/adding background if necessary.

  5. Hello All – Has anyone heard any updates on Kane’s Smokey Hollow Project? Has Publix actually confirmed they are going in, or this is still speculation?

  6. Right about the rendering/ model. Plus this is essentially the “backside” of the building. I would love to see a rendering of the north side, and especially the street level as Hillsborough is where all the street facing stuff is located.

  7. New Raleigh just posted latest renderings of Edison Office Tower coming to SE corner of Martin and Wilmington ‬

  8. I couldn’t be happier with the Edison rendering. Cantilevered design is a nice change. It looks to be about 400 ft. I hope this gets buit!

  9. TheNightHawk is was just going to comment that. I cannot determine where they received this information and it does not provide a link, nor have plans been submitted to the city website.

  10. Things are happening. 20 stories proposed at 400 Hillsborough:
    file:///C:/Users/Front%20Desk/Downloads/SR-009-17.pdf

  13. Ok, WOW. I am blown away by this Edison rendering from Highwoods. And a LOT more confident in their ability to actually make this a reality, given that they own PNC right next door. This would be the most architecturally interesting building in the entire city!!! And looks like it could possibly become the 2nd or 3rd tallest!!!

  15. It’s interesting that there is no site review case submitted for it yet. It’s zoned for 40 stories, so no need to submit for variance. It is unclear to me whether it’s 20 stories or 26, but I think it’s 26 based on 20 leasable floors atop 6 floors of parking deck.

  16. Overall, the rendering of 301 is pretty uninspiring and frankly, disappointing. Most of the condos face west – totally don’t understand that, but perhaps positioning the hotel with the best views of downtown is their hook to buttoning up a commitment from a potential partner. Something along the lines of a Westin or Kimpton would be a welcomed addition to current and planned options.

    For those that want to dream a little, check out the twin stunner opening soon in SoHo (565 Broome).

  17. It’s promising that 400H is being designed by Gensler. I’ve already pinged a friend there to tell them not to fuck it up.

    As for the Edison tower, I like the design and appreciate that the design game is being upped. That said, I don’t know where y’all are presuming its height. I’m not getting 400 ft by the rendering if I count the floors. I wouldn’t believe the rendering that shows it towering over Skyhouse next door either. I bet it doesn’t eclipse 300 ft. I hope that I’m wrong. Either way, it’s going to be nice edition but it will unfortunately not be visible in the money shot. Maybe the city will need a new money shot?

    As for the Miami reference, I split time between Miami Beach and Raleigh and I see some relationship between the 301 project and what’s happening in Miami. Specifically, the elevated recreation deck between the towers is totally a Miami thing and that’s not a bad thing. As for the towers themselves, they’d be considered suburban in design in the Miami market. I read the comments on thenextmiami.com about proposed Miami projects like 301 and they get hammered if the design is deemed ordinary. As for the platform of parking sandwiched between the retail on the ground floor and the towers above, that’s very typical Miami (because Miami really can’t go much below grade…) but it’s also going to be typical anywhere these days in cities that aren’t primarily served by more robust transit options.

  18. Well it’s 26 floors, because they’re advertising 20 floors of space to lease (if you scroll down). 15 ft * 26 is about 390 give or take. 400 probably is too high, but 350+ seems likely.

  19. @Steve, ok, so it could be more like our 3rd or 4th tallest. Still great in my book. (hello from New Raleigh facebook comments?? haha)

  20. The Highwood website says it’s a 20 story building “with’ 6 floors of parking. It doesn’t say 20 leasable floors plus 6 floors of parking. If the 6 floors are counted among the 20, then one might presume a first floor of 20 ft, 6 floors of parking that are 9 ft slab to slab and then 13 floors at 15 ft. That means 20Ft + 54Ft + 195Ft +. let’s say, 15ft for a rooftop cornice./crown. That tops it out around 284 ft.
    To validate, I have looked at each of the tower’s segments and the window arrangement that looks like 2 floors per each. This corroborates my presumptions.

  21. But John532…. it DOES state 20 leasable floors. Scroll down on the webpage, it states that there are 20 floors with 24,700 SF of space EACH. I would imagine that if the first 6 floors also included parking, the leasable space would be significantly less. Also doesn’t mention anything about ground floor retail space, which I am 100% certain they would include at an address like this. So I am thinking perhaps 6 stories of parking, with ground floor retail wrapped around the 1st story of that, and THEN 20 floors of leasable office space, all with 24,700 SF of space.

  22. I knew that was you! If it’s a 26 floor office building it’ll definitely be at least the 4th tallest downtown, though Kane’s 28 floor tower in NH may be 4th tallest in the city. It’ll definitely add bulk downtown, and hopefully we’ll see more Wilmington St towers. (There’s a great old proposal to build a tower over the Wilmington entrance to the Moore Square Deck). This is exactly what I was hoping for (something taller than Skyhouse, with a nice design) for this site.

  23. Well, it is a little confusing though. It says 20 leasable floors at 24,700 each, but it also says the whole building is 303,000 sq ft. Something doesn’t add up…

  24. 303,000 sf/24,700 = 12.27 floors. This further points toward it being 20 floors total including parking and a ground floor of lobby/retail. Seriously, zoom into one of those “sections” on the elevation and look at the window/storefront configuration. It totally reads as 2 floors per section. 2 x full height storefront + spandrel glass to cover the plenum above the ceiling. With six full sections and a half section at the top of the building would mean 13 floors.
    No matter how I look at it, all signs point to 20 floors total. Maybe someone made an editing mistake in the website language?
    Guys, I hope that I am wrong and that it’s actually taller but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

  27. 400 Hillsboro, 301 Hillsboro and the Edison…
    I sure hope that someone has lined up some tenets…:-)

  28. Well, 400H only has 7 office floors. The retail space will sell out fast, and 12 floors are apartments, which will probably go quickly too. They might actually be able to build that without a big office tenant lined up.

  29. Hello All – Has anyone heard any updates on Kane’s Smokey Hollow Project? Has Publix actually confirmed they are going in, or this is still speculation?

  30. The Publix rumor is just that. To the best of my knowledge, there is no hard confirmation of a public yet for Smoky Hollow. The rumor is so strong people are taking it as fact. I’m open to being proven wrong if someone can point me to a good source.

  31. @Steve, with the UDO’s stupid floor/height limits, expect more buildings to built like 400H. You can’t get 20 floors of office space in a building under 250 feet but you can do a mix of housing (no plenum) and office space (with a plenum).
    I will say that I appreciate that the 400H building will leverage parking across the street and not need to cram it all into the tower, further reducing its actually supply of usable space.

    @Leo, the Smokey Hollow rumor has taken on a life of its own like the IKEA rumor at Cary Town Center. I’d be surprised if they both weren’t true.

  32. Tremendously ugly building, the way it’s presented.

    I bet I could probably do a much better render, with the CAD knowledge I have.

  33. Smokey Hollow is in Concurrent review now (site & infrastructure drawings) and the coordination between NCDOT & Kane will be key as there is relocation and abandonment of right of way. FYI, Publix will not make a public announcement until the site or more is approved. If the parking wan’t in a deck you could always tell by the orientation of the parking spaces on the site plan which grocery store it was. They are at a certain angle. It’s a grocery store that starts with a “P” and it isn’t Piggly Wiggly.

  34. @James: “this is essentially the “backside” of the building”. The rendering is indeed from a southwest point of view, with the little gray box representing the “Flying Saucer, as Leo noted. A general question: so what does everyone make of that yellow-trim rectangle about 6 floors up in the middle of the south side? Is it maybe a big wall of windows for a flashy restaurant? Or maybe art something like the Shimmer Wall?

  35. @Jake: “WOW. I am blown away by this Edison rendering from Highwoods. And a LOT more confident in their ability to actually make this a reality, given that they own PNC right next door.” I totally agree! This Edison WILL please all you bloggers who want to see edgier design downtown!

  36. The Highwoods/Edison building would likely either fall at 2nd or 4th in height downtown given that Wells Forgo and BB&T are both 29 stories and almost exactly the same height (400 and 431respectively). @John (regular John) condos facing west for 301 is ideal IMO. I love southwest light, especially on winter weekends laying on the couch watching afternoon TV. I also think those east facing hotel windows let the sunrise help wake people up for their conference or whatever. From that spot people are *In the skyline anyway, so there isn’t much to actually see of it from there…anyway…

  37. It is 20 stories of leasable office space. Not 20 stories total with 6 floors of parking. If you scroll down on highwoods website it breaks down each floor and what is available for each floor. So if it truly has 6 floors of parking too it would be 26 total. Our first 300-400 ft building???

  38. Looks like 20 stories total to me. If you look at the photos on Highwood’s website or the PDF for the property, you can see a large blue “P” over the existing parking deck adjacent to it. Counting the floors of the building and the deck looks like 20 and 6. So, I assume the existing parking deck is the in-building parking. It would also explain why all 20 stories have the same leasable space.

  39. @Keith, I woke up thinking that exact same thing this morning! How dumb of me to forget the existing parking. Doh! I will say that I’ve always read that elevation as 20 floors.
    20 floors of commercial at 15ft slab to slab is ~300ft. That will likely put it a bit higher than the office element of the PNC Plaza but nowhere near 400.

  40. We currently don’t have ANY buildings in the 300-400 foot range (we have 3 buildings 400 ft or higher, the rest are all under 300 ft). I’d say if this was in that range, it’s definitely a step in the right direction!

  41. *it* meaning the new Edison render, not this 301 Hillsborough monstrosity. The 301 Hillsborough render is gd atrocious and should be thrown in the trash.

  42. As much as I would like to see some additional buildings push 400ft and maybe a nice 600ft proposal, I will take the 20 floor varieties all day long. I think density is better than height at this point. Filling in the skyline gap between Glenwood, Warehouse Dist. and Fayetteville Street will do more to enhance the skyline. The taller buildings will come with time. However, I don’t think the city should have limited the 40 floor heights to just Fayetteville Street. Why force the linear, north/south look? It is naturally growing to the west, just embrace it and run the 40 floor heights that direction somehow.

  43. I really like this site. Kudos to Leo for providing up to date news on developments in downtown. Does anyone know where I can find an updated listing of all the proposals? Gets difficult for me to keep track of and sort through the blog to find. Thanks!

  44. Unfortunately anything under 300 ft doesn’t really add to the skyline (though it certainly makes the streets feel more urban). Quorum, West at North, and the Holiday Inn are all between 200 and 300 ft, and they barely appear on the horizon from most shots. Middle 300s is probably the minimum for expanding the skyline west.

    Also, Keith, if you mean all the current downtown proposals, I’m not sure if that list exists. I know at one point one of the readers had a nice Google map they kept up. Currently there are over a dozen active proposals downtown. Here’s a short list.
    Working (roughly) from West to East:
    One and Two Glenwood
    Morgan St Food Hall
    Union Station
    The Dillon
    400H
    City Centre (309 Hillsborough)
    2 McDowell St Hotels
    Convention Center Hotel
    Several smaller townhouse and apartment projects on South St.
    Exploris School
    Metropolitan Apartments (Greyhound)
    Charter North
    Edison Office
    Hargett Place (Brownstones)

    I may have missed some.

  48. @Steve, Emporis only has the West@North Condo at 189.6 ft. and it sits somewhat in a valley. The Quorum is listed at 200 ft. on the nose and it has a minor impact on the skyline. I think that 250 ft. will make a bigger impact than most think but clearly 300 ft.+ would be stronger.
    That said, Red Hat Tower is 240 ft and is impactful at the experience level of the city but only mildly to the skyline because it’s east of Fayetteville St. I’m encouraged by the two projects on Hillsborough, The Dillon all being at that height or higher because they aren’t hidden behind the the tallest buildings when one enters the city from S.Saunders/McDowell.
    The Edison, on the other hand, is likely to get lost visually because of its position due east of PNC. You probably won’t see it until you are near it.

  50. Wow didn’t see that link. Highwoods Edison render looks FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC! I’m excited about that, if it happens. It would significantly elevate downtown Raleigh, in the quality department.

  51. I went on The highwoods website looking at the rendering of the Edison tower,it looks taller than skyhouse how many floors are there ? beautiful building.

  52. Thanks William. That’s my map actually. I know it sucks….I obviously don’t even know how to make a perfect square in google maps…now I have to figure out how to make it look better :) Anyway, I did it just to keep track of stuff in my own head….early 2000’s I had a list of all the projects in a spreadsheet that were beginning to transform downtown, and those that got built are on there too. Anyway, I know it kind of sucks, but I hope it at least helps visualize things. Also Orulz, the head moderator over at Urban Planet for the Triangle forum, has nice tabulations of ongoing apartment projects (find the apartment thread for Raleigh). He(?) is an occasional commenter here as well.
    Cheers

  53. @Mark. Thanks so much for that map! I wish I knew how to do that. Perhaps I should try and learn. I also want to figure out how to edit wikipedia. The Raleigh page and the Triangle pages are woefully out of date.

  54. The 61 year old president and broker in charge of the Lundy Group died suddenly last week. I wonder how this is going to affect this massive project?

  55. That’s a good question. Other than Kane, local developers haven’t had much luck building high rises downtown. It’s possible this site may pass to another developer. Among the proposed-but-not-started 20+ story projects, this is my least favorite. My preference would be Edison, Charter, 400H, and then this.

  56. Kane hasn’t built a high rise downtown yet. Reynolds has though (Quorom). Sandreuter partnered for Skyhouse. Technically, Highwoods is local (PNC Plaza).

  57. I may have used the term ‘high rise’ too loosely (I was talking about Dillon). And I meant post-Recession office buildings. Skyhouse is a cookie cutter (albeit a nice one), which makes it easier to build. My intention wasn’t to put down any developers, just to point out that Dillion is the only thing going up, while Edison, Charter, 301, etc have all stalled time and again.

  58. If Quorum center is a highrise, then The Dillon definitely will be. So, yes, Kane is building a highrise downtown.

  59. Just was correcting the semantics and misconception about local developers. And Dillon needs to finish before I consider it a success.

  60. Ah, I shouldn’t have used the word “local” in my first comment. All I meant was that local projects have a history of stalling. I didn’t mean to imply that it was because we had incompetent local developers or anything. I actually think Highwoods will get Edison done, and Sandreuter will get 400H done, and both projects will be great additions to the city.

  61. just because one guy died, you think the company wont complete a project they’ve invested millions in?

  62. I think that depends on how important to the development process he was and whether they can recoup their investment by selling the land.

  63. Surely Lundy has others who can step in. The company profile pic shows 14 people. They are a smallish operation, but thinking big-time (I feel like they are using other private investor’s money for all of these deals they are trying to do….just a feel). With so much money on the line, likely private investors involved and the obvious professionalism they project, surely a continuing operation plan was in place, which would/should cover things like loss of personnel and stuff. This is a related sad story, but I know of an engineering firm where the owner, ultimately took his own life, but established an ownership framework such that his employees would not suffer or be out of work when he was gone….they carry on to this day as the same firm. All that just to say, the project is not necessarily done with…I guess we’ll see…

  65. @Dwight: Promising! Did you see the article awhile back featuring Malik stating that the 22,000 seat stadium will potentially have a translucent roof?

  66. @ Jack , I did read it ! Also yesterday @ the library I was able to read a past issue in The TBJ on Mr. Malik’s Project . It stated that in their opinion , TBJ , Mr. Malik needs to get 2 strong foreign investors involved in this project because it will cost as we know the 150 million for the franchise , 150 for the stadium & 100 million for the players salaries !

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