This weekend I took a walk around the Blount Street Commons area. The Elan Apartments look almost done here along Wilmington Street. As we’ve discussed, nothing fancy at all but it’s a lot of urban infill compared to the parking lot that was here before.
The state government district could use some new residential for sure.
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.
This is part 7 of a 10 post series, rolled out all week, on residential projects in downtown Raleigh. Go here to see all the posts so far.
Another long running project, Blount Street Commons seems to deliver here and there. To the best of my knowledge, this nameless apartment project, owned by Elan Raleigh Property LLC, has been coming together at the corner of Wilmington and Polk Street since about November of 2013.
The four-story parking deck is pretty much done and the units are being put together around it. You can see units being built along Wilmington, Polk, and the new mid-block street John Haywood Way. Parking deck entrances are along both John Haywood Way and Wilmington Street, kind of around the bump out where the street starts to swerve down to Peace Street.
Unless I’m missing something, this project does not appear on the city’s development sites. Unless it’s “tucked” under some greater Blount Street Commons plan, which is on the city’s website, then that may be how it exists. The State or nearby William Peace University could be players but I have nothing to prove that.
This will be short as details are a bit light, as far as I know anyway, on this project. There’s movement on one of the apartment buildings planned for the Blount Street Commons project. The current parking lot near the NCAIA building and along Wilmington Street is being broken up.
I did some digging and this tract of land is referred to as “Block 2 Tract B” of the Blount Street Commons project. In early 2012, the Raleigh Planning Commission recommended the approval of a height amendment that was in place here. It was to go from 45′ to 62′. This was probably the beginning of plans for the upcoming apartment building.
By the way, the details are all in MP-3-11 on the city’s development approvals archive site.
I haven’t found much yet about it but the property owner, according to Wake County, is Elan Raleigh Property LLC. Their website, elanapts.com, shows some slides of some decent looking developments. The Elan Uptown project in Minneapolis looks pretty cool.
It’s taking a little more effort to find details here so I’ll post as facts come up. Please share if you have any insight to this potentially significant new residential project for the northern side of downtown Raleigh.