The Skyhouse Raleigh apartment building that broke ground about a year ago is set to open in March of 2015. I remember taking a photo of the crane one year ago so am revisiting the site today. Weather was similar too.
Skyhouse Raleigh, photo taken in December 2013
Skyhouse Raleigh, photo taken in December 2014
Stone’s Warehouse, photo taken December 2014
Just outside of downtown Raleigh is a site that’s getting a lot of attention lately. The block containing what is called Stone’s Warehouse at 500 East Davie Street could see a major renovation and new development in the near future.
This city-owned property could be sold soon and transformed into a destination for a mix of uses. I wanted to introduce this project as well as dive into the current topic of affordable housing, a criteria the city has listed for potential developers of the site to comply with.
Stone’s Warehouse
An old bus repair shop, the warehouse has been around since about the mid-1920s. The Carolina Coach Garage and Shop outgrew the space and moved out in 1939. After a variety of uses, it was eventually acquired by the city in 2001 and has been empty since.
In addition to the empty warehouse, the site also includes the currently open Rex Senior Health Center. The parking lot and some open land rounds out the rest of the site.
The city has slowly acquired the majority of the block, not including a few houses on the southern end. They intend to use it for community development and have put the site up for sale to developers. A long list of criteria has been put together and today we have three developers in the running for the sale of the site based on their proposals.
According to an article in the N&O, here are some of the details of each plan:
As of this writing, Raleigh city staff and the Budget and Economic Development (BED) Committee recommend that the proposal by Transfer Company LLC be selected for the site.
For more reading see these articles:
Affordable Housing and the Scattered Site Policy
The most controversial and discussed topic with Stone’s Warehouse, and sometimes with downtown Raleigh in general, seems to be the affordable housing topic. Take note that the BED committee recommended a plan that does not include affordable housing.
I think we first have to recognize that the term “affordable housing” means different things to various people. The first place I looked for a definition is our city’s adopted 2030 Comprehensive Plan which explains it nicely.
The terms “affordable housing” and “workforce housing” mean different things to different people, and a variety of definitions have been advanced by various groups. For the purposes of this plan, housing is “affordable” if the cost of occupying it does not consume more than 30 percent of household income—the definition promulgated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). HUD defines housing costs as contract rent plus utilities for renters, and monthly payment (mortgage plus taxes and insurance) for owners. Affordable housing refers to housing affordable to households with incomes at or below 80 percent of the HUD-estimated Area Median Income (AMI) for owners, and 60 percent for renters. Workforce housing is generally thought of as housing affordable to essential public- and service-sector employees such as teachers, fire fighters and nurses. It is defined here as housing affordable to households with incomes up to 120 percent of AMI. As of February 2012, the HUD-determined AMI for a family of four in Raleigh is $79,900.
I hear a lot of commenters on this blog, people around town, in the media, all over say that affordable housing is important. But which one do they actually mean? We have:
Both may or may not be related. The housing section of the 2030 Comprehensive Plan has a lot more on this and should be your next stop for more information.
Now that we’ve defined affordable housing, what about policies that help guide where affordable housing should be placed in the city? The City of Raleigh’s Scattered Site Policy was created to help guide this. It identifies high and low priority areas where affordable housing is needed. It is a guide in order to avoid clustering too much affordable housing in one area.
As recently as early 2014, the policy was under review. The Raleigh Public Record has a write up, including a map, about the conversations that took place.
Areas of the city are broken up into four priorities: Priority One being areas are those that lack affordable housing; Priority Four areas have heavy concentrations of low-income and minority residents.
*Council Wants More Data for Affordable Housing Policy
*NOTE: As of this writing, the page on the city’s website for the policy has been taken down and I can’t find the policy listed.
The Scattered Site Policy is mentioned several times in the 2030 Comprehensive Plan. Updates to it should certainly be looked at but following it is a strong recommendation of the plan.
How is Raleigh Doing?
We have some figures here in order to make some generalizations. Using the 2012 data point of $79,900 AMI for a Raleigh family of four, we have:
I see this as kind of a range here in order to give us some context with the definition of what is and isn’t affordable. At the same time though, more detail is probably needed to account for taxes and of course everyone’s situation is different. 30% of the $79,900 figure is $23,970, or $1997.50 a month. Is the message that a $1900 a month mortgage payment is affordable to a family of four pulling in $79,900? More details are definitely needed. (for a follow up post perhaps)
When it comes to the locations of affordable housing in Raleigh, there is some data available showing the mapped locations. I’ve had a list of sites in Raleigh which include Raleigh Housing Authority developments, HUD subsidized projects, and NC Housing Finance Agency projects. I went ahead and mapped them which you can see below.
NOTE: Data is dated December 2013. City-owned rentals are not included in this map. Some projects may also be paid off and are no longer considered affordable.
Another map to show is this one below, showing subsidized affordable rentals on top of the scattered site policy. This map is dated December 2013 and shows the entire city. For finer viewing, I recommend downloading the pdf.
Click for larger. Download the pdf for even larger.
So with all this presented, here is the controversy. The adopted Scattered Site Policy is not being followed. The maps show a higher concentration of affordable housing projects in the low priority areas and very few units in high priority areas.
For Raleigh to be a diverse city with as much equal access across a variety of socioeconomic lines, a quality of a true 21st-century city by the way, communities of mixed-income must exist.
Adding market rate housing to an area of low-income is not something that should be avoided especially when it isn’t displacing anyone. Adding affordable housing to an area where there is little or none (priority 1) should be the bigger priority and real controversy.
How can Raleigh find the discipline to push against the trend as the city council approves again and again more affordable housing in priority 3 and 4 areas of Raleigh?
Back to Stone’s Warehouse
Let’s swing back to Stone’s Warehouse.
There’s a strong argument for the need for more housing that is affordable in our city. The comprehensive plan proves the demand and how the amount of residents burdened by housing costs has been rising over the last few decades.
However, demanding that affordable housing be included with all projects at the expense of nearby incomes is short-sighted. To create truly mixed-use, mixed-income communities Raleigh should place higher priority on delivering services, amenities that don’t exist.
That’s not a blanket statement, sure, but let me paraphrase a woman I heard at a South Central CAC meeting that stood up and kindly commented about the Stone’s Warehouse presentation.
More housing? I feel like we’ve got plenty of housing. We need retail and economic development in our neighborhood.
Stone’s Warehouse is in the middle of a sea of affordable housing projects. It’s also in the middle of a food desert. With a potential grocery store at the site, it’s possible nearby residents would benefit from access to healthy food, a close location, and possibly a nearby job.
With the warehouse being saved, the project should draw huge respect from the neighborhood for the efforts to save the history. Economic development could bring an even more impactful benefit compared to affordable housing at Stone’s Warehouse. Let’s not let a hot, politically-charged topic sway the real need in this location.
There has been plenty of conversation about a variety of topics lately and I try and group them together to relevant posts on the blog. For this week, I’m throwing up an anything goes post as we wind down to the end of the year.
Recent interesting downtown Raleigh news:
Wood framing is being put up for the townhomes called The Ten. Located at the corner of Person and Lenoir Streets, they are building 10 units here.
I’ve been interested in building a mapping project using the lightweight javascript library Leaflet and today I wanted to post what I’ve got. Far from complete, it may never be, but over at Hoods.DTRaleigh.com I have posted a project called DT Hoods and am attempting to map neighborhoods and nearby points of interest near downtown Raleigh.
I sometimes stray the blog content on topics that are just outside downtown but for the majority of my time, I focus on just the downtown area. That doesn’t mean though we shouldn’t pay attention to what is happening in the ring around downtown Raleigh. The neighborhoods have their own story and influence downtown in subtle ways.
The issues are all different and vary from neighborhood to neighborhood. Topics like historic preservation, new economic development, transit, and affordable housing are some of things being discussed just outside of downtown.
This isn’t to say that this blog will start covering those things and I’ll always maintain a hyper-local focus. Rather, while downtown is enjoying the success of the revitalization efforts that took place in the early 2000s and is currently making plans to move to the next level, it’s the adjacent neighborhoods that are starting to get attention.
The neighborhoods, slowly, are firing up their own economic engines and where before people came into and out of downtown we have a situation where destinations lay inside and just outside downtown. The neighborhood bar, bakery, or shop is a next wave of trend that I think we’ll be seeing in the next 10 years, all while downtown continues to grow.
The mapping project also helps myself and readers with a page to point to when talking about new developments and neighborhood impacts/planning. Play around and enjoy!
As always, the project is open-source and I show my neighborhood data on GitHub. Contribute or use it for your tech project.
Corner of Peace and Person Streets
I recently took a walk around East Peace Street and there is just so much happening here these days. On this particular weekday morning, the sounds of construction dominate. The hum of machinery, the beeping of vehicles, the hammering of nails are just some of the things you hear if you wander around Peace, Person or Wilmington Street.
These two blocks are just mushrooming with new developments. It’s not surprising that the new construction is predominantly residential as that is the current trend.
Townhomes at Blount Street Commons
Built up now are some new townhomes and carriage homes at Blount Street Commons. A lot of land has been cleared along Person Street for even more of these.
Holy Trinity Church on Peace Street
You can now get a sense of the space that the Holy Trinity Church on Peace Street will take as the building shell is pretty much wrapped up.
Peace Street Townes
More townhomes at Peace Street Townes are moving along nicely with the entire site out of the ground now. A lot of brickwork has taken place and the first units are close to being ready.
Elan City Center apartments
The largest presence here is the Elan City Center project, a five-story apartment building with about 213 units. There isn’t any ground-floor retail here but with Seaboard Station just across the street and the non-active government district nearby there may not be a big reason for it.
I’ll be interested to see more about Elan City Center as the project kind of just popped up and I’m not sure what kind of local presence there is here. There are no plans for this on the city’s website and their website showcases it as a ‘North Carolina project’ rather than a ‘Raleigh project,’ mistakenly using Charlotte’s skyline on their website.
In a hot rental market, complacency in management is common, as I’ve heard is the case in some of the newer buildings in or near downtown. Hopefully that’s just a few isolated incidents.
Wake Transit Plan Kick Off Meeting on YouTube
I just wanted to share this real quick. Here’s the video from this week’s transit meeting that took place at the Raleigh Convention Center. It was a great presentation by Jarrett Walker and I encourage readers to watch the whole thing.
In addition, you can follow the planning process at Wake Transit and it should wrap up this summer.
The Hampton Inn in Glenwood South
During this week’s Raleigh City Council meeting, money was approved to go towards a Downtown Hotel Market Feasibility Study. The city’s press release sums it up.
Downtown Raleigh has changed dramatically since the last hotel market study for the area was completed in 2003. The rebirth of the center city has included a return of vehicular traffic to Fayetteville Street; the openings of the Raleigh Convention Center, City Plaza and Red Hat Amphitheater; and new quality housing, office, retail and dining establishments.
The City of Raleigh considers that these new developments warrant an updated hotel market analysis for Downtown. The City Council voted unanimously today to partner with the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Downtown Raleigh Alliance on funding a new Downtown hotel market feasibility study. The City will contribute $20,000 toward the $55,000 study; the remaining $35,000 will come from the three partnering agencies.
The hotel market feasibility study for the Downtown area will include site analysis, a review of rooms and public space needed, hotel type and quality recommendation, impact on the Convention Center complex, and analysis of public/private partnerships existing in the industry.
In addition to funding the hotel study, the City of Raleigh, Chamber of Commerce, Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Downtown Raleigh Alliance will design a request-for-proposals (RFP) to recruit a study consultant and analyze the results and recommendations of the study. The City plans to work with representatives of the partnering agencies in forming a steering committee to develop the RFP and work with the selected consultant to complete the study.
The Downtown hotel market feasibility study is expected to begin in March. It will take approximately four months to complete the project.
*City Council Approves Downtown Hotel Market Feasibility Study
Outside of the actual buildings that the hotels are in, there hasn’t been much discussion yet on this topic so I thought it would be good to kickstart that a bit.
Let’s start with what we have so far:
That is a total of 1,127 currently active rooms within the generally accepted downtown Raleigh borders. An upcoming project to add to that is:
The Residence Inn is the only hotel project that I know of that has any real traction. That brings our total to about 1270 rooms.
Small, but growing, is the amount of Airbnb spaces in and around downtown Raleigh. The online space-rental service is rapidly growing across the country and a quick search for Raleigh shows some options in downtown.
I bring this up as the city is currently wrestling with how to properly regulate this service. From an N&O article:
The city won’t be punishing people who offer their homes for rent on Airbnb just yet, but some members of its governing council have dug in against the Internet-powered room-rental service.
*Raleigh City Council draws debate lines on Airbnb rentals
A debate on Airbnb in Raleigh could be its own blog post but you could argue that there are mixed messages going on here. For years, city council has said that more hotel rooms are needed in downtown Raleigh. Along comes an innovative service (we’re an innovative city right?) to offer more staying options for visitors and we’re stumbling over how to handle it?
It could just be as simple as a liability discussion really but I’m not an expert on this topic. Currently Airbnb options in downtown Raleigh make up less than 2% of the available room inventory from browsing the website.
The last hotel tidbit I want to mention is the historic Sir Walter Raleigh building at the corner of Fayetteville and Davie Streets. Opened first as a hotel in 1923, it was the premier hotel for visitors in Raleigh for decades before being converted to apartments in the 1970s.
Talk of converting it back to a hotel is not new and there is a 2008 Triangle Business Journal article that describes a failed attempt at doing this:
Hopes of returning the historic Sir Walter Hotel in downtown Raleigh back to its original splendor as a showcase inn have fizzled out.
…..
Alas, the project was contingent on HUD agreeing to transfer the rent subsidy vouchers from the Sir Walter to Saint Aug’s. Despite a letter-writing and lobbying campaign by Raleigh leaders and several members of North Carolina congressional delegation, HUD never approved the swap.
*Sir Walter Hotel revival dies as feds block shift
I imagine the Sir Walter could be a very unique boutique hotel, something entirely new in downtown Raleigh at this point. The hotel market study could shed some light if downtown has enough pull to sustain a boutique hotel compared to a national brand.
Building a new hotel is probably much easier than renovating an existing one, like the Sir Walter Raleigh, but the end product could probably not be matched by any new construction for years to come if done right.