This week, the buildings along the 400 block of Hillsborough Street are being demolished to make way for the 400H development. This mixed-use project has been years in the making and you can check out former posts about it here. The new development will include a mix of uses with over 200 apartments, 144,000 square feet of office space, and ground-floor retail.
The building is expected to finish in Fall 2023.
In recent memory, I don’t recall that many occupants for the spaces on this block. There was a small gym and perhaps some offices but the larger space on the northeast corner of Hillsborough and West Street has been empty ever since I’ve started blogging. (since 2007 by the way)
If you like Raleigh history, you may be following Olde Raleigh, and have seen the post of the A&P Supermarket at the same site. From their post:
Pictured is the A&P Supermarket located at the northeast corner of Hillsborough and West Streets c. 1946. This building was constructed around 1929 and later burned in 1952, but the stout stone walls remained intact. Although the building has changed considerably since 1946, you can still see some of the original stonework on the western side.
See the post on Facebook
Photo by Albert Barden. From the Albert Barden Collection, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, NC. N.53.15.2412
The photo is from the Albert Barden Collection courtesy of the State Archives of North Carolina. You can browse the collection on Flickr.
South Street seems to come in waves here on the blog. This time around, we have a few items to mention as the Western portion of the street has new activity worth mentioning.
First, plans have popped up on the city’s website for a new apartment development. Named 320 West South, 296 apartments are planned for the corner of Dawson and South in a 20-story tower. The new development would be situated right next to the storage building.
I propose we rename the warehouse district to the rezoning district. I’m kidding of course but with a pair of approved rezonings earlier in July of this year plus plenty of cases in the recent past, you can’t deny the potential for multiple new projects adding a lot of new space to the area. It’ll be quite a change!
Approved recently were two cases around the intersection of Hargett and Harrington. Mentioned earlier this year, the “Legends block” was approved for a max-height of 40 stories. Across the street, now a parking lot owned by Highwoods Properties, is another piece of property with a similar 40 story max zoning.
There’s not much else to add about the Legends parcel in that it includes the entire building, front and back bar, and the small parking lot along Harrington. No details as to what is planned have been released. The owners of the property is CityPlat, a local commercial development company.
The owner of Legends was quoted in the News & Observer that the deal here was a positive thing for the business.
“The deal with CityPlat ensures the long-term survival of Legends as an on-going business and an opportunity to collaborate for future development,” said Tim Bivens, one of the club’s owners, in an email. “We are coming up on our 30 year anniversary and plan to be around for another 30.”
Downtown Raleigh LGBTQ club Legends sells property for $4.3 million – link
The Highwoods Property on the other corner was mostly surface parking. The surface parking expanded with some buildings being demolished in February 2020. It’s not even fully paved, a move Highwoods seems to be fond of like their property on the corner of Wilmington and Martin. Similar to Legends, no details on future plans have been announced.
What gets me excited about this potential is the possible future for a nice two-block street of retail and restaurants. 300 and 400 West Hargett could have retail facing each other on both sides of the street on their ground floors. That’s actually quite rare in downtown outside of the Fayetteville Street core and Glenwood South.
Long term, we have planned bus-rapid transit and an already running train station nearby with plans for commuter rail. Office, residential, or even hotel uses could be nicely served by these alternative transit options.
Things have come together and over on the Community, we’re talking t-shirts. We have a slick design from the 919 Collective and I want to thank them for the contribution. Think MLB Raleigh for an already underway initiative to compare these shirts to. More on them in the future.
Deadline for t-shirt orders is this Friday, July 16 at midnight. Want one? Keep reading.
To get a shirt, simply make a donation here and include a comment with what you need. We’re looking for:
Quantity of shirts if you’re ordering more than one
Shipping info if needed. Please add $5 to your donation to cover shipping costs.
I’d prefer to hand over the shirts in person at a meetup if possible to keep this as simple as possible but I’ll make every effort that I can to get you your t-shirt once they are in.
Of course, feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Donations are going towards covering the t-shirt order as well as supporting this site and the Community.
The city held a virtual open house in May, 2021 about a future urban park at the Devereux Meadow site. The site sits just north of Peace Street directly west of Capital Boulevard. It’s currently being used to store city vehicles but that will all be moved soon. Jump into the video above for the full 2-hour details, or 1 hour and 20 min if you watch it at 1.5x speed, the preferred watching speed here at DTRaleigh HQ.
You can also check out the project page on the city’s website for the slides and contact information: Devereux Meadow Project
Devereux Meadow has popped in and out of the blog over the years as the site has been mentioned for future plans going back all the way to a 2011 Capital Boulevard Corridor study. That street is well documented on this site and I even have a post up about the baseball field that was built in 1938 right next to Capital. Finally, the Devereux Meadow site has been planned to become a park as part of the 2015 Downtown Plan which I covered here.
The session and presentation is quite nice and in addition contains some history. Even more history can be watched in an additional video.
Getting back to the present, the plans for the urban park are starting to materialize as the city is in the process of finalizing the schematic design. The construction of the park itself is still unfunded but could be on a future, this year even, parks bond.
The team is presenting three concepts for your review and I’d like to share each one below. The main points of each plan address the Pigeon House Branch creek in different ways and I think everything else kind of reacts around it.
Line Drive
The Line Drive concept is the first one in the list and does the least, relatively, to the creek compared to the other two plans. The creek “is stabilized in place, with stream shelf and instream structures to promote floodplain connectivity and bedform diversity.” A portion of the creek that is currently covered in concrete would remain.
This plans comes in as the cheapest and the report sums up how it stacks up against the rest with:
“Stabilization in place of the current stream. Aqueduct, site access road and Dortch Street culverts remain, leaving no room for stream alignment or grade manipulation. Incorporation of a stream shelf promotes floodplain connectivity, and instream structures develop bedform diversity. Lowest cost, lowest ecological uplift.”
Sculpt
The Sculpt concept is the “middle” option, for lack of a better word, as this one has some work being done to the stream and the cost is in-between the other two. This plan opens up the creek a bit as that concrete cap on the southern end is removed. The creek “is restored in place, with increased stream bench and instream structures for greater habitat and flood capacity and bedform diversity.”
The high-level states:
“Removal of the concrete cap over the aqueduct and limited manipulation of the stream alignment and profile. Increased extent of stream bench for greater habitat and flood capacity. Instream structures develop bedform diversity. Moderate cost, moderate ecological uplift.”
Meander
Meander would offer the most significant transformation. As you can see, the stream is practically reconfigured on the site and would offer flowing walking paths alongside. In this plan, “Pigeon House Branch is realigned, with stream and floodplain designed to maximize floodplain connection, habitat health and visitor interaction.”
There’s also the most opportunities for programming and public uses of the space. As the report states:
“Total relocation of the stream alignment and profile. Stream and floodplain design are based on bankfull hydrology and maximize floodplain connection and function. Greatest potential for visitor interaction, diverse habitat communities, and incorporation of stormwater treatment. Highest cost, highest ecological uplift.”
Which one do you like? Make sure and take the survey and give the city your thoughts.
For me, I go back and forth between Sculpt and Meander but I think Sculpt gets my vote. There’s a line of oak trees, referred to as the Oak Allée, on the western side where new oaks would be planted as part of Sculpt. The other two plans don’t have that. In addition to opening up the stream on both plans, this just seems like a nice element to have in the future, once the new oaks mature.
Finally, I have to share some old photos I took when I lurked around the area in 2012. You can see the concrete cap over the creek and some of the oak trees. These are around the southwestern side of the site.
What positives or negatives do you see? Come over to the Community and discuss it with us.
Plans for more apartments popped up on the city’s website, this time on the 800 block of West Morgan Street. The sites are mostly empty now, parking lots really, except for the building that the Goodnights Comedy Club currently occupies. The plans would lead to the demolition of that existing building.
In the future, around 400 apartments and ground-floor retail would be built. You can see an artist’s rendering of the project above. The site is a little more interesting with it being along that “curve” where Morgan shortly travels North/South and then changes to East/West.
Articles are stating that Goodnights is looking for a new home which is good to hear. Let’s hope they stick to downtown Raleigh.
It’s unfortunate that a building in downtown with a more interesting facade couldn’t be saved or incorporated into the new development. Even just saving the front doesn’t seem to be in the plans but we’ll have to wait and see. Raleigh doesn’t seem to have a track record of doing that kind of thing too much, although there are some examples. See the Lumsden Bros. Building as well as the nearby Raleigh Industrial Bank Renovation.
I still see a lot of positives here with a future with 400 apartments and more retail spaces along a walkable, urban street. The development is still in the early phases at this time and I’m not aware of a zoning request either. The Goodnight’s property is zoned for seven stories max while the adjacent lot along the Morgan Street “curve” is capped at four.
Some real fun plans were announced for the land at 504 Hillsborough Street. A dog park with outdoor bar was announced by those behind CityPlat, the new owners of the property.
Used as a parking lot for years, probably decades, the triangle-shaped lot where Edenton merges with Hillsborough will soon have drinks served out of shipping containers around a dog-friendly outdoor space.
Coming soon to the intersection of West Street and Edenton in downtown Raleigh is a DOG PARK & BAR complete with concession (think coffee, beer), retail, and a large play area for dogs to roam around. Picture an open and welcoming, community-focused space for dog owners and dog lovers alike to connect and play fetch, right in the heart of the city.
I’ve been watching that site for years and finally, someone comes in with a very unique, very cool idea for it. The trees are mature enough to make the space feel cozy but open enough that you’re able to people watch as if you’re in a park.
At a GoTriangle Board meeting this week, there were updates related to RUS Bus that show off some high level updates including a 30% schematic design. For those new to the project, RUS Bus is an extension for Raleigh Union Station (RUS) including a mixed-use development with a bus station on the ground floor.
Located right next to Raleigh Union Station, serving train passengers today and possibly commuter rail passengers in the future, the bus component would be the more local transit connection. It’ll most likely have a bus rapid transit stop as well.
Finally, being in the warehouse district, the location would bring a hub of activity to the west side of downtown. I’ve got lots of love for a project like this, which should come as no surprise to long-time readers.
There are more renderings on the architect’s website, showing preliminary designs which look fantastic, but for me, I’m most interested at this time in the preliminary site plan shown below.
The ground-floor of developments typically interest me because that’s probably what most people are going to use anyway. Some interesting elements I see include:
A bridge directly connecting RUS bus to RUS.
Lots of ground floor mixed-use spaces.
A big connection directly into the current civic plaza.
There’s a lot of function shown here along with elements that could elevate the entire transit station into a destination. If you look at the rendering with towers on top, this could be a pretty nice hub of activity at all times of the day, on weekdays and weekends also.
From the GoTriangle board meeting agenda, we also have some dates.
Planned Construction start date: April 30, 2022
Substantial Completion Date: June 30, 2025
Grant funds must be fully drawn: September 30, 2025
The 2020s will be a big year for transit investments in Raleigh.
