Townhomes on West Street
The townhomes called West + Lenoir are taking shape along West Street. The units are almost all sold at the time of this writing.
Fund the work of Raleigh’s Photo History Detective
If you spend time in downtown Raleigh, it’s not hard to run into historic photos of our city. Restaurants, shops, and offices have been getting photos from the State Archives office and framing them as part of their renovations and presence throughout the growing times of downtown Raleigh.
These photos are maintained, labeled, and identified by the good folks at the State Archives office. A local star among these efforts is Karl Larson who has done great work in helping to identify photos and where they may come from.
His detective work is top notch and this new Indiegogo campaign was an easy one for me. I encourage you to take a look and consider it if this kind of work is important to you.
Pic of the Week
The NitNeil Partners storage facility on South is starting to take form. The four-story project will, fortunately, be much more urban in form than the newer ones popping up on Capital Boulevard. Just take a look at their rendering below.
Rendering courtesy of Nitneil Partners
Limebike Bikeshare Spotted Around Downtown Raleigh
With so much attention going to the city’s bikeshare system, planned to launch in Spring 2018, this was somewhat of a surprise for me. NC State helped launch a private installation of Limebike a few weeks ago and recently, the citrus-colored bicycles have been spotted around downtown Raleigh.
I couldn’t help myself, I just had to try it. There was no signup fee and a 30 minute ride was only $1. (after my first free ride of course)
This system does not use any docks and relies heavily on the use of a smartphone app to help you get to a nearby bicycle. When I went out to use one, I couldn’t find the first but found a pair two blocks away. With a quick barcode scan, the bike was unlocked and ready for use.
In theory, I could park it anywhere, allowing others to just grab it for their own ride. The site encourages you to park it where there is existing bicycle parking so after showing it off at home, I rode it back to the nearest park to leave it.
The experience was quite delightful, even with a cheery jingle when the bike is locked and unlocked.
There is cause for debate here. With these bikes around Raleigh and a second system coming next year, I believe this changes the dynamic for bikeshare.
In my book, this is not the most ideal system, fragmenting the user base and causing a poorer user experience. Limebike’s reach won’t be as wide as the city’s system so there is overlap as well as individual coverage areas. To get the most, you need two apps, two sets of rules, etc.
That may seem simple to transit fans but we’re trying to get adoption by as many people as possible. It’s hurting the mission.
At the same time though, we may be in an experimental phase where the two systems can duke it out for user preference.
Either way, riding bikeshare in Raleigh has me excited and I hope for a far-reaching system with a plethora of options one day in the future. It’ll be fun to watch.
The Apartment Mid-rise Boom is Fading in Downtown Raleigh
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:
- The Saint – 17 units
- Hargett Place – 19 units
- 10 Arros – 10 units
- West + Lenoir – 12 units
- 611 West South – 42 units
- The Ware – 15 units
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.
Pic of the Week
It may not be officially complete as of today but as far as we’re concerned the two-way conversion of South and Lenoir Street is now finished. I say that because the streets are now running as two-way streets compared to their former one-way. The new bike lanes are in and landscaping is done.
According to the city’s website at the time of this writing there is still some drain work to wrap up. Drive/ride away, I say!
Let’s get plans for a Jones/Lane Street conversion going as well!
Checking in on The Saint townhomes
Construction underway at The Saint
Construction for 17 new townhomes is underway along St. Mary’s Street between Jones and Lane Street. Called The Saint, these units are being billed as luxury with price tags on the higher end of the spectrum for downtown Raleigh townhomes.
A quick visit to the location recently shows the foundation work has begun and you can get a glimpse of the new alley-street that will cut from Jones to Lane to access the units.
With all high-end products comes high-end aerial video which I’ve embedded below for your enjoyment. (the views are nice, click here if you don’t see the video)
You can find out more about The Saint at their website.
Raleigh’s Parking Requirements
The video below was posted this summer from Vox. They explore a topic of mine that’s one of my favorites; parking requirements set by cities. If you can’t see the embedded video, click here.
One part of the video shows the various parking rules based on the type of development such as number of spots for a public pool or library. It got me thinking about what kind of rules Raleigh has for new developments. I went ahead and pulled it out of the UDO.
Click for larger
It’s nice to see the bicycle parking requirements right next to the vehicle requirements. What isn’t nice is how little bicycle parking is required, especially on the residential side. Bicycles need a home too!
Nothing too crazy jumps out at me (except maybe parking itself having no parking requirements!) but if you believe the approach in the Vox video, the thinking of Dr. Shoup, then these few pages from our development ordinance play a huge factor in how the city is going to be built and how we will interact with it in the future.
Keep in mind there are ways to get reductions from these requirements when building near transit, which should reduce the amount of built parking as the county expands its transit infrastructure over the next ten years.
I also wanted to post this as a reference as I feel it may be important to look back to in the future.
[UPDATE 8-18: I’ve added the snippet from the UDO about parking requirements for downtown Raleigh]
