About a week ago, the city council amended an agreement between the city of Raleigh, Highwoods Properties and Progress Energy to build a parking deck to support RBC plaza. They also selected Stewart Engineering to be the technical engineering rep for the parking deck. The deck will sit mid-block on Martin St. and will have retail space facing the street. Here is a list of the changes to the agreement.

• The eight-story parking deck will now have 1,242 instead of 1,050 as originally agreed upon
• The deck will be built for future abutting developments.
• Total cost increases from $14.17 million to $20.93 million.
• The city will own two shelled spaces instead of one, probably for storage purposes.

Why do we care about this?

This is the first development that is moving forward on the PEIII block and future development must work around this huge parking deck. As was posted earlier this week, demolition of the old buildings here has already begun. I hope the rise in the number of spots for the deck is there for whatever is built around it. This will allow more room for developers to work with as they do not have to incorporate parking into their designs.

Over the past week, there has been some considerable work going on across the street from the Progress II building, the block we refer to as Progress III. Progress Energy owns the majority of the block and has major plans for this area. Possible plans may include a pair of 30 story towers but no renderings or announcements have been made.

Currently the block is being razed except for the storefronts facing Wilmington St. Most of them are closed and I expect them to be either destroyed or heavily renovated to be incorporated into whatever is built on the land behind the shops.

Witness the destruction for yourself. The map I have used earlier to show the construction on this block has been updated as well.

red – razed area, yellow – construction fences

That building used to have a middle section

Soon will bite the dust

Both those buildings used to connect

We’ve discussed some plans recently for a complete development of the block mostly owned by Progress Energy. This is the block bounded by Blount, Martin, Davie, and Wilmington st, shown here. They are planning to possibly do some big things to this block but no plans have been released.

It is odd however that fencing on this block has been put up and lots of the surface parking has been destroyed. Refer to my little sketch up of the block below to get an idea of what is going on at the moment.

Yellow – Fences, Red – Demolished lots

The fencing encompasses most of the block and even some of the store fronts, which are currently empty. It is interesting to see some kind of activity on this block, especially to this extent, without anyone knowing about what is going on; there is no news or media information about it.

The area is used for the RBC Plaza construction staging area, which is being built across Wilmington St. There is also a parking deck that will be constructed on the northern portion of the block, shown in this map. It may be reasonable to assume all this activity is for this deck and that the mid block structures are going to be demolished in the coming weeks. No concrete information can be found on what is going on exactly. As usual, I will post when more information comes about.

This will be a short one, sort of a follow up to this post about the almost 4 acre block north of Progress Energy’s newest building. I saw this on Raleigh’s livable streets plan website.

RFP Process results in Hamilton Merritt proposal being accepted – Mixed use hotel, movie theatre, condominiums, parking deck two 30-story towers – development agreement pending.

Such an important piece of information would not be announced this way. Who knows what this could mean or what is being planned. It may even be a leak of information or someone is playing a hoax. Either way when more information is available, I’ll be sure to post it.