Email readers: This blog post has a virtual reality image. Read the post on the blog to see it.
If you haven’t been by in awhile, there is a lot of activity taking place around The Dillon site. The parking deck is starting to rise up and both apartment buildings are in the beginning phases of their work. I’m referring to the ones on both sides of Hargett Street.
Enjoy the VR view, taken on February 21 as I get back into my blog rhythm.
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.
These Administrative Alternates for Design basically write the blog post themselves.
Looking at two AADs submitted on the city’s development website, one for the Hilton Dual-Brand on Davie Street and the other for the Courtyard Marriott on McDowell Street, it looks like the building design is asking for an exception to the standards defined in the UDO. It also comes with more renderings which I’ve posted here.
I may take some time to understand the requests and get into them in the comments but for now, I want to share the information being presented as well as the included renderings.
From AAD-005-17:
The proposed Hilton Dual Brand Hotel at the corner of West Davies and South McDowell streets is a dual branded hotel with shared lobby and facilities. The hotel has a total of 259 guest rooms (Garden in has 136 rooms, Homewood Suites has 123 rooms). The parking garage provides 139 spaces (including 4 regular H/C and 1 H/C van spaces) The building has 260,890 gross square feet over 13 floors.
The lobby and public functions are at the ground floor and much of the second floor. The front of the second floor interfaces with the Lobby, with the support spaces internal to the building mass. The garage entrance is at the west, upper portion of Davie Street, leads to the back of the second floor and feeds the garage floors on the 3rd and 4th levels. The 5th-14th floors are the guestroom floors that are split between the brands; Hilton Garden Inn and Hilton Homewood Suites. The 14th floor also has a restaurant with two large patio areas open to the public. The north patio area terminates at an unoccupiable vegetative roof.
Through material use and detailing, the building’s base is articulated in stone and extends the base in brick to the 5 th floor cornice. This lower base section uses larger scale geometry to express solidity of the building. Above the 5 th floor cornice, the middle of the building expresses fenestrated massing in EIFS with varied depth planes and molding profiles. The building corners continue in brick to the 10 th floor, visually framing and anchoring the EIFS body of the building. The corner of the building over the main entrance also steps back at this point giving deference to the street. The upper three floors over the brick corners terminate lower that the EIFS body of the building. The 14 th floor at the street corner and McDowell Street steps back into a patio, giving depth and articulates the roof line so it does not appear as a monolithic mass.
The two story entrance lobby insets at the corner on both street elevations for a significant width, offering an unobstructed view through curtainwall glazing into the lobby, bar and restaurant. The second floor public functions are open to the two story lobby. The areas west (on Davies Street) and north (on McDowell Street) also have two story windows that partially screen the interior from exterior at the restaurant (Davies St) and the pool deck (McDowell).
Corner of McDowell and Davie Streets. Click for larger
View from Davie Street. Click for larger
View from McDowell Street. Click for larger
Back of the building. Click for larger
Sad to see the more glassy version of this project, shown here in this May 2015 post, go away.
IF you want to get in to the details including floor plans, take a look at the AAD document.
Next, let’s take a look at AAD-003-17, referring to the Courtyard Marriott for McDowell Street. Only renderings with this one. As discussed in a recent post about this project, these may be slightly out-of-date, specifically that brown-brick “hat and drapes” shown below.
Corner of McDowell and Cabarrus Streets. Click for larger
Looking east down Cabarrus Street. Click for larger
Back of the building on Gale Street. Click for larger
Rendering of future hotel on McDowell Street. Rendering comes courtesy of Winwood Hospitality Group.
That’s it. 2017 is going to be the year of the downtown hotel. However, you could probably see that coming if you really paid attention last year, right?
Anyway, let’s take a look at the recently submitted plans for a hotel on McDowell Street, one of a few in the pipeline for downtown. Above is the latest rendering submitted to the blog from the local developer, Winwood Hospitality Group. A big thanks goes out to them. (Note to the commenters who’ve talked about this already, this rendering is slightly different than the one shown in the N&O)
SR-003-17, the submitted plans on the city’s development page, shows a 192-room, 12-story hotel and parking deck for the Enterprise Rent-A-Car lot along Cabarrus Street between McDowell and Gale Street. See the map below to get an idea of the proposed hotel’s footprint.
Click for larger snapshot of this 3D view from Google Maps. Site of the new hotel is highlighted.
Corner of Cabarrus and McDowell Street, January 2017
The new hotel would be a Courtyard Marriott brand and the building footprint would pretty much consume the entire property. Taking a look at the site plan, you can guess that the planned restaurant and retail spaces would face McDowell Street with the lobby entrance and parking deck along Cabarrus. I’ve included it below for your convenience.
Click for larger. Site Plan from SR-003-17.
Looking at the area, it’s unfortunate that even more parking was added to this hotel as a plethora of decks are available directly next door. I can’t back it up with stats but perhaps there might be a way to leverage underutilized spaces for the hotel rather than adding even more supply to downtown. I’m curious to see how many spaces are built here as downtown hotels only require 1 space for every 2 rooms.
Looking south down McDowell Street, January 2017
Residence Inn construction site, January 2017
Checking in on the progress at the Residence Inn on Salisbury Street. Most of the exterior materials are in place and the hotel is planning to be open this Spring.
I can’t say I’m very excited about the color palette used on this project, especially on the rear (west facing) side of the building. When someone posts an updated “money shot,” you’ll see the Residence Inn looking so bleak, so boring, that it blends in, almost out-of-sight from the view on South Saunders. (I don’t have a photo but when I see one, I’ll post it in the comments)
Here are the colors that I’m talking about, looking at it from Lenoir Street.
A lot of folks clamor for better architecture in this city. What about more interesting color choices? Is beige, gray, and brown paint cheaper than greens, blues, and reds?
The sites of various car repair shops and the former Ice Market and Grill building have been cleared along West South Street. 42 units of residential are planned for this land, which were covered in more detail in this post.
Corner of Davie and McDowell Street, December 2016.
Revisiting a topic we talked about in May 2015, new site plans for a hotel at the corner of Davie and McDowell Streets popped up at the city recently.
Plans show a 259-room dual-brand (Hilton Garden and Homewood Suites) hotel with interior parking in a 13-story building. The site plans suggest a different building style compared to the appearance commission renderings we saw in 2015. (no more curved corner?)
As always, here’s the site plan map for your viewing pleasure.
Click for larger
The site plan doesn’t indicate any ground-floor retail. I’m not saying there won’t be any; it’s just that this plan doesn’t show it.
The parking garage entrance would be along Davie Street indicated by the driveway in the plan.
I also spotted some outdoor spaces. The 14th floor will have a terrace in addition to a 2nd and 5th floor balconies.
One key detail to note is that the former Morton Trophy portion of the area is not part of this development. It’s predominantly the Turn Key Tire station, the red brick building that will be demolished to make way for this new hotel.
Former site of Morton Trophy on Davie Street
I also want to guess, seriously just a guess, that the “delay” in this project comes as a result in the council changing the required amount of parking for hotels in the downtown area.
You can revisit that topic here but in short, the required amount of parking for hotels was reduced in early 2016 from 1 space per hotel room to 1 space for every 2 hotel rooms. That sounds like incentive enough to rethink some development plans.
We’ll keep on eye on this one as it progresses.
The end of Kindley Street, 3D view from Google. Click to see on Google Maps.
Back in the summer of 2016, we took a look at the Gateway Center, the area along Salisbury Street near the performing arts center and Raleigh Convention Center.
I’m guessing few of us have had any real interactions with this property as it used to be a fenced in building owned by Duke Energy. The property has since been sold to Exploris and now submitted site plans show us of what could come to the area.
SR-099-16, called Gateway Southeast AKA Exploris School, shows a 10-story building consisting of parking, office space, and the consolidated K-8 charter school. The property doesn’t consist of the entire Gateway Center, just the portion across the Norfolk-Southern railroad tracks. (highlighted in orange in the map below)
Here is the site plan. The first is a screenshot from the plan, the second is the same thing but turned so that North points up. (approximately anyway)
As you can see from the plan, all the parking, offices, and school are contained inside the building. There will be a large courtyard and sidewalks around the building. The northern end of the “campus” will also retain some of the existing field as well as turn the old Duke Energy building into a lawn, perhaps for outdoor activities.
Development fans may find hope that in the future, there is room for more buildings here. Exploris has a track record of supporting innovative ideas and initiatives and their expansion to grades K-8 now may not be the end so you never know what long-term plans might come at the Gateway Center.
This is a good 2017 project to watch rise up and hopefully it applies a little pressure for the suburban-style campuses on the other side of the tracks to go urban in the coming years.