I didn’t time it at all like this but exactly a year ago, I posted about the city’s plan to reimagine Commerce Place. After last week’s First Friday event, which I could not make, we can see the latest iteration of this plan in the photo above. It’s a bad photo because there are no people in it but you gotta get those pics when opportunity strikes, am I right?
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The city is making plans along Commerce Place and had it closed down for November’s First Friday to give citizens and visitors a light taste of what it could become in the future. They envision a more people-centered place where cars are either allowed as “guests” or restricted all-together.
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The Raleigh Union Station Bus Facility is seeing some movement. There’s a combination of demolition and preservation taking place at the old warehouses along West Street. In the photo above, the metal braces are in place in order to preserve the brick façade as it’ll be incorporated into the new development. This is at the corner of West and Hargett.
Some buildings are coming down, especially the ones facing the railroad tracks. You can see plenty of photos being taken by members of the Community right here and I’m sure there will be more so do follow along.
A rezoning case (see Z-9-22 here) that’s been in progress throughout the year involves The Depot, the long warehouse situated at the end of West Davie Street fronted by the delicious Videri Chocolate Factory. Owned by the North Carolina Railroad, a desire to develop more of their properties seems to be part of their future. The rezoning would allow for up to 20 stories of new development and could possibly alter the layout of the existing Depot building.
To dive right into things, the presentation and discussion from the August 9, 2022 meeting of the planning commission, embedded below, (or watch it on YouTube) is the best place to start. The commission has recommended approval of the rezoning and it next goes to city council for overall approval.
Earlier in the year, the rezoning started at the Raleigh Historic Development Commission and that group recommended to deny this rezoning request. However, throughout the year, conditions have been added that would save some of the historic structures and possibly make the rezoning more palatable to city leaders.
Looking at the aerial photo from Google Maps as well as Exhibit A (above) from the commission presentation, we are actually talking about the The Depot building and the parking lot. The section where Videri is located currently is the head house of the building and plans are for it to remain. The rest of the Depot building could be partially or entirely removed as part of the future development.
For completeness, the request also wants to rezone a property on the other side of the tracks. If you look at the Google Maps aerial, you’ll see the former train station site. It has since been demolished and is a gravel parking lot now.
If approved in its current form, the rezoning conditions around the Depot would preserve the head house as is and any new additions to it must have complimentary materials. There also must be a 30 foot wide pedestrian walkway between Davie and Cabarrus street. That could look something like this.
The architect, Gensler, proposes a mix of uses and buildings that compliment the Depot as well as the rest of the warehouse district. A “strong retail base” was mentioned in order to support active uses along the pedestrian walkway, shown in the proposed site plan above.
The rezoning hits the city council starting at their meeting on September 20.
My thoughts on this are evolving. If you watched the commission video above, members of planning commission were definitely feeling emotional trying to find a way to preserve the building that the entire historic district is named after. It is called, “The Depot Historic District” after all so demolishing most of it seems unfortunate.
I have however always disliked the surface parking lot and welcome the new buildings and the pedestrian walkway. The Depot can be pretty active on nights and especially on weekends but I’m just not sure it’s being used to its full potential.
It always seems like it’s the parking in new developments that take up the most space and cause older buildings to be demolished. The new proposed site plan replaces the majority of the Depot with structured parking underneath new apartments. I can’t help but to continue to roll my eyes at the thought of this. Realistically, even though we don’t require any parking in downtown Raleigh, the city is just too car-dependent for new projects to offer less parking or none at all.
I do think that nearby project The Dillon gives me hope that a new development could be built that keeps some of the character in place and creates a whole new pedestrian experience with active uses. I also think being such a big transit supporter that I can’t fight more density near our Raleigh Union Station.
You also have to consider that as of today, if they wanted to, North Carolina Railroad could demolish everything and build from scratch. There are no protections in place. However, in exchange for an increasing in zoning allowances, the head house would be incorporated into the new development.
It’s not great but it feels like a strong compromise.
An administrative site review has hit the city with high-level plans for a new tower along Harrington Street. The Legends nightclub at 330 West Hargett Street (corner of Hargett and Harrington) would be demolished to make way for a new tower and parking deck, the site plans show.
The new tower would have 372 apartments, ground-floor retail space, and a parking deck. The plans show all these offerings in a 30-story tower. The building where Legends is located isn’t the only one getting the “demosh” as the tower actually goes along Harrington between Hargett and Morgan. Two buildings along Morgan, being used as office space today, will also be demolished for the new tower.
With a narrow lot, we’re getting a pretty thin tower compared to the current downtown Raleigh building stock. The parking entrance/exit will be along Morgan and the service/loading entrance is along Hargett. This shifts the ground-floor activity up and down Harrington Street. That seems necessary with a tower this size but is disappointing as Hargett was identified as a key pedestrian-retail street per the 2015 downtown plan.
Below is the view, from the site plan, staring at the tower from Harrington Street followed by the view from Hargett. (as if you’re looking at Legends’ front door)
That block will be pretty built up with over 600 homes, probably, when you include The Dawson and The Hue. Nearby, The Dillon has over 500 units and construction is starting on another residential tower over at the future Raleigh Union Station Bus Facility.
The latest news has construction starting at the Legends lot in early 2023.
I was feeling it for awhile now but I think it’s official. The developments planned for the Raleigh Union Station Bus Facility, RUS Bus as the cool kids are calling it, is now my favorite and most anticipated new development for downtown Raleigh. With some new renderings dropped at a recent meeting, I thought I’d post them here for us to go through.
RUS Bus will infuse a lot of new residents into the warehouse district with a residential tower and hotel. On the ground-floor, a bus station with retail just might elevate the area into a shopping district in the future. At least that’s what the optimist in me is hoping for.
While the Raleigh Union Station was very exciting (and still is!) to see build out, the rest of the station attaches a key piece of transit. For me, this just seems like the new center of town, the gateway to downtown Raleigh and for some, the entry-point to our city.
With that large plaza between the current train station and the bus station, there’s a lot of potential for it to a be a central spot, a meeting point, and even cultural center for our city. It’s very photogenic and has a sense of place. What’s missing right now are the sights and sounds of people!
And where are these people going to come from? We have apartments, a hotel, and lots of nearby restaurants and shops. In addition, the hustle of buses cruising in and out, dropping people off and on.
As a reminder, there are plans to also make this a stop on the future bus-rapid transit line. Easy way in and out from North Raleigh? That just might be it. Alternatively, the addition of more parking is fine plus The Dillon across the street has almost nine levels of parking.
It’s such a dramatic change from the warehouses we have on the site today. We may see the ground-breaking this year even. This one will be fun to watch.
Site plans for RUSBus, or the Raleigh Union Station Bus Facility, have been submitted to the city. Plans show a 34-story residential tower plus a 15-story hotel. The latest rendering, above, shows you an aerial of the site and a concept of what it could look like. As always planned, the towers would be built over a bus station that would connect to nearby Union Station.
We’ve covered the ground floor a bit in a previous post so I won’t get into that today but seeing the towers now is pretty exciting I think. There is an affordability component to the residential units as a means to secure some government funding for the project. A hotel would be great but I wonder if that one will actually happen as you can point to a few cleared sites in downtown with hotels announced but construction yet to take place.
Construction is planned to start in 2022 and my guess would be the residential tower goes up first.
I propose we rename the warehouse district to the rezoning district. I’m kidding of course but with a pair of approved rezonings earlier in July of this year plus plenty of cases in the recent past, you can’t deny the potential for multiple new projects adding a lot of new space to the area. It’ll be quite a change!
Approved recently were two cases around the intersection of Hargett and Harrington. Mentioned earlier this year, the “Legends block” was approved for a max-height of 40 stories. Across the street, now a parking lot owned by Highwoods Properties, is another piece of property with a similar 40 story max zoning.
There’s not much else to add about the Legends parcel in that it includes the entire building, front and back bar, and the small parking lot along Harrington. No details as to what is planned have been released. The owners of the property is CityPlat, a local commercial development company.
The owner of Legends was quoted in the News & Observer that the deal here was a positive thing for the business.
“The deal with CityPlat ensures the long-term survival of Legends as an on-going business and an opportunity to collaborate for future development,” said Tim Bivens, one of the club’s owners, in an email. “We are coming up on our 30 year anniversary and plan to be around for another 30.”
Downtown Raleigh LGBTQ club Legends sells property for $4.3 million – link
The Highwoods Property on the other corner was mostly surface parking. The surface parking expanded with some buildings being demolished in February 2020. It’s not even fully paved, a move Highwoods seems to be fond of like their property on the corner of Wilmington and Martin. Similar to Legends, no details on future plans have been announced.
What gets me excited about this potential is the possible future for a nice two-block street of retail and restaurants. 300 and 400 West Hargett could have retail facing each other on both sides of the street on their ground floors. That’s actually quite rare in downtown outside of the Fayetteville Street core and Glenwood South.
Long term, we have planned bus-rapid transit and an already running train station nearby with plans for commuter rail. Office, residential, or even hotel uses could be nicely served by these alternative transit options.
We’ll have to see what’s announced in the future.