Rendering of the office tower at 301 Hillsborough.
301 Hillsborough should hold a special place in the hearts of longtime readers. Exactly 12 years ago, I had a blog post about plans for a 32-story tower at the site but the impending recession basically wrecked it.
The former buildings on this site were demolished in 2007 and when no development plans took place, the site was made into a surface parking lot years later. It’s remained ever since.
Surface parking at 301 Hillsborough in 2019.
Plans have come and gone and this time, the latest owners have submitted plans for a 20-story tower with 300,000 square feet of office space. The rendering, shown above, is of the first phase of the project as the owners own the majority of the block. (minus the southwest corner where The Flying Saucer runs out of)
Later phases could include a hotel and apartments but this first phase is planned to start later this year. With no rezoning needed, the process should move quicker especially with the developer planning to build on spec. (no tenants lined up)
With the DRA’s 2018 State of Downtown Raleigh report saying that the downtown office occupancy rate is at 94.7% that probably means we have a healthy office market and developers can take some risk here.
Great to see progress here on this block. It’s been a long-time coming.
Winter 2019 has been good to the Rogers house at its newest home along East Street. An extension, side project, something from the owners of nearby Guest House Raleigh, Rogers Cottage, as it will be called, may be incorporated into the boutique hotel’s offerings soon.
With lots of eyes looking at the future of Dorothea Dix Park, there is sure to be new development and plans to help connect it to downtown Raleigh. Between the two, one of the largest such projects announced so far is along Saunders Street so I thought it a great time to walk the area.
We’ve talked about a lot of new stuff taking place near the intersection of Saunders and South Streets but going away from downtown, there are buildings and land available for new projects.
A local development firm, Five Horizons, plans for something special in the mostly wooded area along the eastern side of Saunders. Residential towers with skyline and park views plus ground-floor restaurants may one day make up this area. See the map below to get an idea of where the group is making plans.
Planned development is shown in orange. Click for larger.
Roughly nine acres in size, the area is mostly undeveloped with some businesses facing Saunders and the Rocky Branch creek on the northern edge of the property.
From the intersection of Lake Wheeler to where McDowell Street begins, a series of auto-repair shops and light warehouses line the streets. Some are open, some empty.
For this area, the Five Horizons project will create a transformation.
When looking at the currently open rezoning request, the developers are planning for an appropriate zoning that allows buildings between 12 and 20 stories tall with the shortest being in front of the creek.
In addition to a new interior public street, the buildings will be laid out so that every floor has a great view by design. This was mentioned several times from the design team at the CAC meeting I attended.
Starting with the creek, the developers are looking in to ideas to create a public space, such as a boardwalk, here. Bridges from the new development over the creek to the existing greenway could happen as a way to make the downtown skyline view available to all.
Rendering with building massings. Click for larger.
The development could have a mix of residential, office, and retail to create activity throughout the day and night.
The new street will be planned narrower as a way to create more space for people and make it more walkable.
Street and block plan. Click for larger.
After presentations and conversations at the CAC over the last few months, the response has been pretty positive towards this project. This month, the CAC has voted in favor of the rezoning for this project.
Five Horizons say that they are still years away from starting on the first parcel so I imagine this area will certainly take time to be fully built out. I expect that change may also take place nearby so Saunders could become a new downtown district in the near future.
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!
Rendering of the Nash Square hotel. (AAD-4-19) Click for larger.
The hotel planned for the southeast corner of Martin and Dawson is working its way through the approval process. Posted to the city’s website is an Administrative Alternative Request, see AAD-4-19, which shows a nice rendering of the hotel.
The request shows off the setbacks planned above the third floor and suggests some outdoor terrace, possibly for a restaurant or lounge.
Last December, 2018, the Days Inn on West Lane Street closed. Later, construction fencing went up around the old motor lodge and next-door deli space. A lot of folks took notice and it turns out that local developers have bought the two properties with plans to renovate it all.
Loden Properties plans to create a boutique hotel called The Longleaf Hotel as well as overhauling the former NC Deli into Ish Delicatessen.
The buildings won’t be demolished but the renovation will be pretty deep so I imagine this year we’ll see the lot looking pretty bare. Reports say the job will take around 9 months so hopefully visitors can start booking towards the end of this year.
Google 3D image of West Lane Street. Click for larger.
Looking around the area of West Lane Street, the hotel is a few blocks away from some of downtown’s latest developments but nothing exciting is directly nearby. A great location either way and easy walk to Fayetteville Street and Glenwood South, the new hotel would offer a more authentic Raleigh experience compared to a corporate hotel such as the ones near the convention center.
It would almost be good to review some of the street paint on this block of West Lane Street. The street is incredibly wide for the amount of car traffic and a sidewalk is missing right in front of the hotel.
No sidewalks along West Lane Street. No reason on-street parking wouldn’t work here also.
The grassy, shrubby “arch” to the north of the hotel is owned by the state so I expect nothing to change there.
The cool thing to see with a boutique hotel like this is that it is going after a more local, unique experience, trying to attract travelers who want the “Raleigh experience”. That should present well with Ish Delicatessen next door as it’s being run by Matt Fern, a veteran of the Raleigh food scene.
I’m excited to see how this goes and see some new activity to this area on the weekends.
One Glenwood, the first tower of Bloc 83, is really starting to wrap up along Glenwood Avenue. The sidewalks are basically open and the lobbies are mostly finished. All that’s needed is some furniture.
Once the tenants have their spaces ready, the building should really start adding activity to the southern end of Glenwood South. Next to watch is the Origin Hotel right across Morgan Street.
In December 2018, it was announced that a developer had been selected to buy parts of Seaboard Station from the owner, William Peace University. Plans for new development are underway including apartments, hotel space, and more retail.
From the press release:
PN Hoffman, the developer of premier urban communities across the Washington Metropolitan Area including the $2.5 billion Washington, DC, waterfront neighborhood The Wharf, along with William Peace University and TradeMark Properties today announced PN Hoffman’s purchase of Seaboard Station in the north end of downtown Raleigh. The expansive $250 million project will be built in three phases and consist of approximately 800,000 square feet of mixed-use space at full build-out.
….
Additional details include: Approximately 650 Apartments Approximately 150 Hotel keys Approximately 90,000 square feet of new retail space and a total of 135,000 SF of retail space at full build-out
With this news, Seaboard Station has the potential to really break out from just a destination but into a district with its own personality. I thought this would be a good time to walk around and grab some photos of the area.
If you are not familiar, Seaboard Station consists of a hodge-podge of brick buildings from the 1950s and 1960s with Peace Street acting like the main “frontage” of the area. In addition to the former railroad station that now houses Logan‘s, a long-running garden shop, the businesses here make up Seaboard Station and are marketed as a destination.
Aerial shot of Seaboard Station from Bing Maps. Click for larger.
With the buildings built slowly over time, it’s doubtful that a master plan for the area ever existed so we have a frankenstein-esque retail area that represents the car-centric era that it was built. With a stagnating downtown in the 60s, you can see that no real urban feel exists in Seaboard Station with the development at that time.
Bolstered by downtown’s growth and surge of new residents in recent history, Seaboard Station has had a big increase in new tenants. Renovations have brought existing spaces to market but no new space has been built.
The one-story buildings dominate the landscape here with streets that are awkward to navigate and parking plentiful. There’s no real public space and even gravel parking lots sit empty giving the area a dull, uninteresting feel at times.
It’s best to just drive in, get what you want and leave.
Plenty of parking at Seaboard Station
The potential here though is that all this space can be used for wide sidewalks and plazas. Building upward is almost mandatory.
Indeed, the new owners have announced that the first phase of the development will include a hotel. Hotel visitors will want to be able to walk to places so anything nearby within Seaboard Station would be highly considered.
In the future, as Peace Street gets its road diet and Smokey Hollow continues to extend Glenwood South closer to Seaboard Station, Peace Street might become a destination street linking both areas together.
We’re following Seaboard Station in-depth over on the Community so come join the conversation.
