Tag / Hotels

by Leo Suarez

Renderings of The Willard Hotel in Glenwood South

Future site of The Willard hotel on Glenwood Avenue. February 2018.

Future site of The Willard hotel on Glenwood Avenue. February 2018.

On the city’s website, a submitted Administrative Alternate for Design (AAD-1-18) shows renderings of The Willard, a planned hotel and condo building for Glenwood South. Taking a peak, I wanted to share those renderings here on the blog.

As a refresher, The Willard will be an AC hotel by Marriott brand hotel on the southwest corner of Willard Place and Glenwood Avenue. The building will have hotel rooms and some residential units. Shown in the photo above is the site of the project which will see the demolition of two brick office buildings and the surface parking lot in between.

This particular AAD case seems to deal with the placement of the building and how far set back it is. I see a proposal for an outdoor amenity area which sits a little farther back than is required. Seems like a minor issue.

Either way, here are the renderings.

Rendering of The Willard hotel, AAD-1-18.

Rendering of The Willard hotel, AAD-1-18. Click for larger

Rendering of The Willard hotel, AAD-1-18.

Rendering of The Willard hotel, AAD-1-18. Click for larger

Rendering of The Willard hotel, AAD-1-18.

Rendering of The Willard hotel, AAD-1-18. Click for larger

Rendering of The Willard hotel, AAD-1-18.

Rendering of The Willard hotel, AAD-1-18. Click for larger

Rendering of The Willard hotel, AAD-1-18.

Rendering of The Willard hotel, AAD-1-18. Click for larger

by Leo Suarez

Boutique Hotel Planned for Peace Street Pending Rezoning Request

Corner of Boylan and Peace Street

At 615 West Peace Street, a request to rezone the property from 3 to 5 stories is working its way through the system. The developer wants to put a boutique hotel at the corner of Peace and Boylan.

At this point, only the request and information about the required meeting with nearby residents is posted on the city’s website. (see Z-017-17) I’m going to borrow some words from a regular commenter to the blog who was at that meeting.

In their initial pitch last night to neighbors, the developer promises a boutique hotel at that site but wants to exceed the NX-3-UG. The developer’s request came with no plans, elevations, or even design concepts to share. They have made no front-end investment in design services to sell their product but want neighbors to give their blessing to the zoning change to either 5 or 7 floors.

Thanks, John!

I kind of think that we have a wide gamut of proposed developments out there. Developers need a little salesmanship and need to do their homework regardless if they have a good idea or not. I really liked this article in the N&O comparing the pitches between 301 Hillsborough and 400 Hillsborough, both projects we’ve talked about on the blog.

You can see the reaction to a polished presentation versus the opposite.

It’s early on this project for Peace Street so we’ll see where it goes.

by Leo Suarez

Hard Hat Tour From The Top of the Residence Inn Raleigh Downtown

View from the upcoming rooftop bar at the Residence Inn Raleigh Downtown.

View from the upcoming rooftop bar at the Residence Inn Raleigh Downtown.

A big thanks goes out to Summit Hospitality, a local development group behind the Residence Inn hotel on Salisbury Street, for inviting me along one of their recent hard hat tours of the building. The hotel is nearing completion and should be welcoming guests in June.

View from the upcoming rooftop bar at the Residence Inn Raleigh Downtown.

View from the upcoming rooftop bar at the Residence Inn Raleigh Downtown.

With a contemporary flare, the hotel is not the typical Residence Inn. Included is a rooftop bar that the owners want the locals to embrace as well. Situated on the southeast corner of the building, the outdoor patio overlooks the performing arts center and the lush green tree canopy south of Raleigh. (shown in the two photos above)

Once finished, it should be a draw as it’ll be the highest outdoor bar in downtown Raleigh. The owners are also local conscious rather than make it “hotel bar generico”.

I’m excited but I just can’t help be teased at the view from a top floor corner suite on the northeast corner and think, “Why wasn’t the bar on THIS corner?”

View from a tenth floor suite at the Residence Inn Raleigh Downtown.

View from a tenth floor suite at the Residence Inn Raleigh Downtown.

by Leo Suarez

8-Room Boutique Hotel, Guest House Raleigh, Takes Big Step Forward

400 Block of South Bloodworth Street, February 2017.

400 Block of South Bloodworth Street, February 2017.

This past weekend, two historic homes rolled through downtown Raleigh from previous sites to new ones. The two houses along the 100 block of East Lenoir Street were moved to the 400 block of South Bloodworth Street to make way for a new 12-story, Element-branded hotel. Demolition of the Baptist Convention Headquarters building should follow soon.

Catch up on that project here.

Ahead of schedule!!

A post shared by Guest House Raleigh (@guesthouseraleigh) on

As the new hotel is being worked on, one of the two historic houses will also be used for some downtown hospitality. The Gorham House will be renovated this year and there are plans for it to house an 8-room boutique hotel called Guest House Raleigh. You can follow the progress of the project on their Instagram account.

For a boutique hotel, this area of downtown is actually a great location being only two blocks from City Market and four from Fayetteville Street. It also won’t feel like the edge of town as progress on Stone’s Warehouse, to the east of Guest House, should start up as the developers finally closed on the site.

A huge congratulations to those behind Guest House Raleigh. I’m hoping big success there so others might take a stab at going the boutique route rather than the safer, more sterile hotel route.

by Leo Suarez

Dissecting Hotel Designs in the latest Administrative Alternates

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).

Rendering of Dual Brand Hilton Garden, corner of McDowell and Davie Streets

Corner of McDowell and Davie Streets. Click for larger

Rendering of Dual Brand Hilton Garden, view from Davie Street

View from Davie Street. Click for larger

Rendering of Dual Brand Hilton Garden, view from McDowell Street

View from McDowell Street. Click for larger

Rendering of Dual Brand Hilton Garden, back of the building

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.

Rendering for downtown Raleigh Courtyard Marriot

Corner of McDowell and Cabarrus Streets. Click for larger

Rendering for downtown Raleigh Courtyard Marriot

Looking east down Cabarrus Street. Click for larger

Rendering for downtown Raleigh Courtyard Marriot

Back of the building on Gale Street. Click for larger

by Leo Suarez

Taking A Look At The Future Courtyard Marriott on McDowell Street

Rendering of future hotel on McDowell Street

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.

Corner of Cabarrus and McDowell Street, January 2017

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

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.

Site Plan from SR-003-17

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

Looking south down McDowell Street, January 2017

by Leo Suarez

Latest Update for Dual-Brand Hotel on Davie Street

Corner of Davie and McDowell Street, December 2016.

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.

Site Plan sr-102-16 for Hilton Garden and Homewood Suites Downtown Raleigh

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

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.

by Leo Suarez

Municipography, Downtown Hotel Parking and Moore Square Transit Station Renovation

title

Click for larger

Municipography is a summary of current issues going through the Raleigh City Council and other municipal departments in the city. The point is to try to deliver any video, photos, and text associated with the discussions happening at City Hall or elsewhere. Since this is a downtown Raleigh blog, the focus is on the center of the city.

Downtown Hotel Parking Requirements

If the video above does not show for you, click here to watch it.

If the development of hotels in downtown Raleigh is of interest to you then you first need to jump back to this October 2015 post about the Downtown Hotel Market Study. (if you haven’t seen it already)

A point from that study that was discussed at this council meeting was the fact that the hotel parking requirements in downtown were the same as the rest of the city. One parking space was required for each hotel room built. However, with higher land prices and alternative transit options, that need was recommended to be too high and the city should explore reducing it.

From the council agenda:

At the October 20, 2015 meeting, City Council directed staff to investigate reducing parking requirements for downtown hotels in response to a recommendation presented as part of the Raleigh Downtown Hotel Market Study. The current requirement downtown is the same as the citywide standard: one parking space per room. Staff analysis finds that the parking requirement can be reduced by half or more without adverse impact, which would greatly improve the economics of downtown hotel development.

In the video above, there was some discussion among the council about sending this piece to the planning commission for a recommendation.

Councilor Mary-Ann Baldwin wanted the planning commission to explore reducing it to more than half. Councilor Bonner Gaylord even wanted to expand the reduction to other property types. Councilor Kay Crowder suggested that a trial be done first before implementing the changes.

The main takeaway from the discussion was that these reductions are a move that supports mass transit. With momentum building for the new Wake County Transit Plan and a possible referendum this year in order to finance this transit plan, the reduction in parking would further support these initiatives.

City Manager Ruffin Hall mentioned that a downtown comprehensive parking study was underway, looking at hotel parking and other uses so more data will be available in the near future.

It was decided that the request to planning commission would be only on the hotels parking piece rather than all parking due to the fact that some hotels are being planned in the immediate future. They might benefit from a quicker decision rather than wait for a complete parking strategy overhaul for downtown.

We’ll follow this next in planning commission.

GoRaleigh (formerly Moore Square) Transit Station Renovation

No video is attached to this one as this line item was in the consent agenda and approved during the council meeting without discussion. From the agenda:

Bids were opened for the GoRaleigh (formerly Moore Square) Transit Station Renovation Project December 3, 2015. The GoRaleigh Transit Station project will provide a comprehensive renovation to the Downtown Raleigh Transit Transfer Facility. Improvements will include but are not limited to new restrooms, crew quarters, northern stairwell, elevator, and ticket/information office. The facility will have enhanced passenger waiting areas and advanced technologies for customer convenience, such as Wi-Fi-access and real-time arrival and departure information. American South General Contractors Company submitted the lowest responsive bid of $9,560,000; the proposed award contains the addition of five alternates with a final proposed bid award of $9,671,000. American South General Contractors Company submitted the lowest base bid and remained the lowest bidder when factoring the alternate options. American South Contractors Company proposes to utilize 9.9 percent Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) and 15.5 percent Small Disadvantage Minority and Women Owen Business (SDMWOB) firms. The Raleigh Transit Authority unanimously recommended this bid award during the December 10,2015 meeting.

I missed the renaming of the Moore Square Transit Station to the GoRaleigh Transit Station. I’m not surprised as the new branding is being pushed pretty hard throughout the system.

The overhaul of this station will be pretty extensive and could start this year. For more, here are two links for you as well as a rendering of the completed station below: