InitialD

I'm trying to think of comparables of recent hotels in the region. So many of them are just bland. Westin and Omni in Nashville - meh. JW Marriott Nashville is a lot better. Twelve or W hotel in Atlanta. Houston Marriott Marquis - meh. San Antonio Grand Hyatt - yikes. Austin: Fairmont, eh okay, JW Marriott - meh. In any case, residential above hotel would be the best combination here.

It would be nice if they could build some underground parking here, especially if they combined both lots and made parking under both connected. Duke Energy Center in Charlotte has 7 levels of underground parking I believe. I see they want to extend Fayetteville to help with traffic but I think it would be cool to keep that one section pedestrian and make it a (possibly covered) pedestrian mall with restaurants/retail along it. Nice place for outdoor seating. I still worry we're going to get another situation of a 7 floor box atop 10 floors of parking.

Looking up Wake GIS the yellow areas are owned by the city of Raleigh on that block:

Phase II steel going up:

Crown nearing completion:

I was thinking RUSBUS would be in the 18 to 20 range.

Yeah, six retails spaces including a grocery, plus towers that are office, condo, apartments, and hotel. 19 floor office is going to make it slightly taller than Red Hat (and neighboring Justice Center), and the residential/hotel will be roughly that of the round Holiday Inn hotel. They won't add a lot of height to the skyline but will add some nice density overlooking Nash square.

I'm okay with not being a height queen on this one with that ground floor plan - retail, retail, retail, retail, bar/restaurant, grocery. That's fantastic. I thought we might get one whole side that is nothing but parking deck at ground level or something.

Today I walked by and saw the parking was closed and there were people with work vests on and I though "oh is something going to happen here soon?" and now I see they had the groundbreaking.

All of the area zoned for 12 floors is owned by the city, and the area zoned for 20 is owned by the city, Raleigh Rescue mission, and a few others so it could possibly be harder to pull together. Perhaps the city could world out a deal to trade the land for inclusion of affordable housing or something?

A couple more views:

yeah, so not this corner to start with. Though I wonder if they will raze the whole site when they start on the office building portion? Which means this could corner could end up a vacant lot for a time.

The League of Municipalities building is still boarded up. I guess they are still trying to shop the property around for redevelopment as it's been over 2 years now.

I remember seeing the idea that, were this to be developed into a stadium, R-Line route could be extended down from downtown to help with game day crowds. In any case, I think access would be better than it currently is trying to get to the NCFC stadium in Cary. Literally anything would be an improvement on that. Also, what about the possibility of extending Centennial Parkway to connect to Saunders?

It is only slightly further than Dix park.