paytonc

Rezoning filed. Very little retail, mostly office or residential on city blocks. Existing Belk and/or Sears buildings might be maintained, but everything else will get razed. https://www.townofcary.org/projects-initiatives/cary-community-plan/eastern-cary-gateway/cary-towne-center-redevelopment

I assume it's Chatham Walk, at Urban Drive, podium building with condos. Plans have been filed for an apartment building across the street. https://www.townofcary.org/projects-initiatives/maps/interactive-development-map The small building that was on that site was moved a bit closer in on Chatham and will be incorporated into a small office building.

Someone on City-Data found a rezoning application from April 15 for Cary Towne Center, on the TOC project-filing website. Grid of streets, building heights from 12 stories at the northwest to 3 stories at the east. The program they're asking for (looks like up to 4 million sq ft) looks to be about 50% residential, 30% office, 10% retail, 10% hotel. https://townofcary.idtplans.com/secure/utilities/viewer/?vid=2357099 Architects listed on the front page are Sasaki (from Massachusetts) and McAdams (from Durham), both firms with a ton of experience in mixed-use -- including North Hills.

I spent a fair amount of time reading the covenants on file with the Wake Recorder for Triangle Town Center, trying to figure out the amount of time that Saks is legally obligated to stay open. That particular figure is in a private agreement that's not online, but the recorded covenants often mention a 55 year term -- which can only be breached if the department store is in serious financial distress. So Saks' lawyers had better hope that something about TTC's current financial woes is enough for them to call a breach of contract on CBL's part. The other thing I now realize is that redeveloping a mall is way more complicated than I thought. These contracts (standard for all malls) require that the mall exist as it was built (including the amount of parking and the allowed uses) for decades, and allow the owner or the various department stores to sue one another for breach. Even selling one outparcel to one hotel requires amending the entire thing, and getting all six parties to sign off. It's insane. The only reason why two nice malls can survive side by side at Buckhead or Tysons is that they're islands of high density, each surrounded by a million rich people who zealously guard their low density. The nearest competing malls to Tysons are about 10 miles away.

It's legit; 800,000 sq. ft. at $312 per sounds about right for 5-over-1. The same developer just wrapped up a $2 billion project a block away from where I live. The urban design is impeccable, but the retail mix is heavily tilted towards pricey restaurants. That's definitely how the world works, and it's why repealing parking requirements doesn't mean that many car-free buildings will get built. (When LA removed parking requirements for adaptive reuse downtown, new parking spaces built fell by 60%, not 100%.) A bank's office-tower construction loan is only for maybe three years; they expect that it'll be built, leased up, and refinanced in that time period. If they think a lack of parking will hinder leasing, they'll say so up front. One office developer I talked to in Portland (!) was required to add parking spaces by his bank; even though they leased spaces next door, that wasn't enough for the bank.

Or, at the very least, pulled the Wegman's to the back of the parcel. You'd think the whole point of an anchor store would be to draw customers past the other stores. Wegman's is not nearly as progressive about its store layouts as, say, Harris Teeter. I've seen several of these new lifestyle centers built around them (Leesburg, Woodmore, Woodbridge, Hilltop Alexandria, Hunt Valley, Chestnut Hill, Westwood), and they always demand a giant parking field in front of their entrance. They're currently building out Metro-adjacent stores in multistory buildings in Tysons Corner and Hoffman Town Center; will be interesting to see how those work. In adjacent news, Cary Towne Center was effectively foreclosed upon, and will be sold to new owners by next year. Anyone need a cheap stocking stuffer?

No. Cash incentives and tax credits are only given per job. Create half as many jobs, get half as much in incentives. Virginia's local transportation investments are also "unlocked" at certain tiers of job creation, but the education investments were fixed and (per state officials) were already in early discussions and eventually would have been made anyways.

Besides the higher cost of masonry, there's a bit of a "dematerialization" effect with using lighter materials closer to the sky. Supposedly, that makes the upper floors less visually imposing, and makes the building appear shorter than it is.

Prudential, which holds a mortgage on CTC, intends to foreclose on CBL. Good riddance to the bandits who ran it into the ground, and may it quickly find a better owner. http://www.snl.com/Cache/c393826440.html (Incidentally, Prudential/PGIM now owns Avalon in Alpharetta, the development that Cary's planners kept recommending as a model for CTC's redevelopment. However, PGIM is just the investment manager, not the original developer.)

As Green_man notes, the market for the 4BR condos with elevators and underground parking is probably empty-nesters, not students. The rezoning could have requested more units, but instead voluntarily capped the unit density. As for Jones_' suggestion for Rite Aid, I highly doubt that in 1960 Colonial Stores built a foundation engineered to support additional floors. About the only times I've seen that happen were when a building's use changed to one with a significantly lighter load, e.g., cold-storage warehouses are designed to be crammed full of ice, so when they're converted to offices or residences they can sometimes support more floors.

Hi, I direct the Urban Land Institute's Case Studies program, and we just released a 16-page report about North Hills: http://casestudies.uli.org/north-hills/ To answer orulz's point, Kane's principals insist that North Hills will "never" be complete, and point to the one-acre vacant lot behind Walgreen's and the Total Wine building as opportunities to densify the Lassiter. Redevelopment of the Exxon/tire shop was planned back in 1999 (early renderings show high-rises there and behind Walgreen's), but is only now possible because the remediation was just certified in 2015. JCPenney's lease will not be renewed, and the building will either be re-tenanted with junior anchors or re-developed, with the parking lots to its north and west. Two interesting-to-me historical tidbits from the interviews that didn't make it into the report: - Lowe's had a signed letter of intent to build a store *beneath* Target, with another layer of underground parking, but that fell through in 2001. - Saks Fifth Avenue was courted to open a 50,000 square foot location where the cinema is now. At the time, they were rolling out a "Main Street" prototype to markets like Austin, Charleston, Pasadena, and Santa Barbara. Raleigh was not on their radar then, but they were excited enough by the demographics to sign for a full-sized store at Triangle Town Center. It's perhaps just as well, since most of the "Main Street" stores have since been closed.