Charlotte/Raleigh Highrise Building Booms

[davidclt]

On 3/21/2022 at 9:22 PM, carolina1792 said:

NCDOT owns 4 major north-south streets in Downtown Raleigh they use for cross city traffic to the detriment of downtown. 

Is NCDOT actively malicious or just negligent? Is their charter just to focus on rural roads and dump mediocrity on the urban areas of the state, too little, too late?

[carolina1792]

4 hours ago, davidclt said:

Is NCDOT actively malicious or just negligent? Is their charter just to focus on rural roads and dump mediocrity on the urban areas of the state, too little, too late?

Behold the 1960s designed highway that NCDOT never got to build through downtown Raleigh due to protests. The compromise was converting several surface streets into 'highways'. Actually the southern portion of this highway system was built which is why south Raleigh is hilariously stacked with 3 supersized highway roads when 1 is already enough. 

 

 

[KJHburg]

Speaking of cranes and those in Raleigh and Charlotte,  downtown Concord is getting its 3rd crane in the next few weeks.  That is most cranes of any ring city in the metro outside of Charlotte.  2 at 3 apartment complexes rising downtown and 1 at the new courthouse.  Already 2 are up.  

[KJHburg]

this is how Fallon's 19 story 301 Hillsborough St office tower opened in downtown Raleigh.  We need something like on our super high rises.  this is poetry in motion! 

 

Edited April 10, 2022 by KJHburg

[tozmervo]

Pretty sure we had some building dancers on the side of the Government Center last year?

[JacksonH]

On 2/26/2022 at 6:00 PM, turbocraig said:

And here was the News&O's response.  I think we won that round.

RDU1.pdf 174.23 kB · 19 downloads RDU2.pdf 176.15 kB · 16 downloads RDU3.pdf 171.51 kB · 15 downloads RDU4.pdf 93.91 kB · 16 downloads

Oh this reminds me of another rivalry in the '80s and '90s:  Charlotte vs. Richmond.  Doug Robarchek (may he R.I.P.) wrote my favorite column in the Charlotte Observer.  One weekend I was visiting my aunt and uncle in Richmond, reading the local paper, and there was a columnist taking potshots at Charlotte.  I  cut the article out of the paper and mailed it to Mr. Robarchek (this was pre-Internet so he otherwise might have never known about what that columnist wrote).  And within a few days Robarchek responded in his column with a hilarious take-down of Richmond.  I so wish that I saved his column because it was brilliant and made me feel like part of Team Charlotte. 

[DownEast]

I remember reading an article back then as well stating Charlotte as "The city Richmond loves to hate." It went into detail how Richmond was the superior business metro in the region, most Fortune 500 companies and all that. I'm not sure if Richmond was in the running for the Piedmont hub or not but it was something hub related that fell through. Charlotte gained a hub and became the growth juggernaut while Richmond, still an important business/industrial center, stagnated or grew at a significantly slower pace. Similar article about Raleigh years later. 

Edited April 24, 2022 by DownEast

[KJHburg]

56 minutes ago, DownEast said:

I remember reading an article back then as well stating Charlotte as "The city Richmond loves to hate." It went into detail how Richmond was the superior business metro in the region, most Fortune 500 companies and all that. I'm not sure if Richmond was in the running for the Piedmont hub or not but it was something hub related that fell through. Charlotte gained a hub and became the growth juggernaut while Richmond, still an important business/industrial center, stagnated or grew at a significantly slower pace. Similar article about Raleigh years later. 

Richmond did indeed turn down the hub for Piedmont Airlines and the rest as they say is history.  The airline hub along with NC banking laws caused Charlotte to soar! 

[JacksonH]

19 hours ago, KJHburg said:

Richmond did indeed turn down the hub for Piedmont Airlines and the rest as they say is history.  The airline hub along with NC banking laws caused Charlotte to soar! 

It was around 1987, UNCC's basketball team under Jeff Mullins was becoming competitive after years of being a losing team.  My father came to town to attend a game with me.  Afterwards we went to dinner at a restaurant that was on the top floor of what was then the First Union headquarters (called Two Wells Fargo Center today and at that time the second tallest building in Charlotte).  The restaurant was called something like Top of the City.  (Anybody remember?)  Anyway, my father was impressed with the restaurant and with the view and we started talking about the size of Charlotte.  I had a World Almanac at home, which I read all the time and knew the stats and I told him Charlotte is bigger than Richmond.  He doubted me at first and said "Richmond is almost the size of Atlanta" (hardly!).  Anyway, I started spouting out the data until he was finally convinced.  And this made him happy because he and his brother-in-law (his sister's husband and my uncle), who lived in Richmond, had an ongoing rivalry about N.C. vs. Virginia.  So he couldn't wait to rub that in my uncle's face.  (My father often quoted the old saying about North Carolina being a "vale of humility between two mountains of conceit" -- the two mountains being Richmond to the north and Charleston to the south.). And in the next few years it became obvious which was the dominant city, with Charlotte getting the Piedmont Airlines hub, then a direct flight to London, then an NBA team, then an NFL team.  Then the greatest shaming of all:  when Richmond's Sovran bank merged with Atlanta's C&S bank in an attempt to prevent Charlotte's Nationsbank (formerly NCNB) from taking over either bank.  But in a very short amount of time, Nationsbank wound up gobbling up the entire merged C&S/Sovran.

In that instance, I think it was a situation of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" because otherwise I don't think Richmond cared much for Atlanta, either, at least not the Richmond oldtimers.  That's the sense I got from my uncle, who was a "First Families if Virginia" descendent.  Since at least the Civil War, Richmond perceived itself as the Capital of the South.  Then along came Atlanta, knocking it off its perch.  Old generation Richmonders, I don't think, much liked even acknowledging the existence of Atlanta.  And now after that humiliation, along comes Charlotte knocking it down another notch.  That was a bridge too far!

Edited April 24, 2022 by JacksonH

[KJHburg]

^^^Slugs 30th Edition was atop what is now the 2 Wells Fargo white building.    

 

[DMann]

I thought that Slugs was in the Darth Vader building. (Charlotte Plaza)

[turbocraig]

19 hours ago, DMann said:

I thought that Slugs was in the Darth Vader building. (Charlotte Plaza)

Bentley's on 27 used to be on top of the DV building.  Not sure if they were something else before it was Bentley's...

[KJHburg]

Slugs was originally at now named 2 Wells Fargo and Bentleys was always at Charlotte Plaza.  When Slugs closed Bentleys open afterwards in the "newer" building Charlotte Plaza. 

[DMann]

Ahhhh, I stand corrected!

[Windsurfer]

1 hour ago, KJHburg said:

Slugs was originally at now named 2 Wells Fargo and Bentleys was always at Charlotte Plaza.  When Slugs closed Bentleys open afterwards in the "newer" building Charlotte Plaza. 

They had an amazing buffet at lunchtime.  My dad and I used to pass by all the long lines at the hotdog stands downstairs, catch the elevator up and eat a full course lunch for about the same price as a hotdog lunch. Never any lines. If I'm not mistaken they were closed initially because of lack of sneeze guards.  in reality, probably lack of customers. It was a bargain!

[DownEast]

On 4/24/2022 at 11:59 AM, JacksonH said:

It was around 1987, UNCC's basketball team under Jeff Mullins was becoming competitive after years of being a losing team.  My father came to town to attend a game with me.  Afterwards we went to dinner at a restaurant that was on the top floor of what was then the First Union headquarters (called Two Wells Fargo Center today and at that time the second tallest building in Charlotte).  The restaurant was called something like Top of the City.  (Anybody remember?)  Anyway, my father was impressed with the restaurant and with the view and we started talking about the size of Charlotte.  I had a World Almanac at home, which I read all the time and knew the stats and I told him Charlotte is bigger than Richmond.  He doubted me at first and said "Richmond is almost the size of Atlanta" (hardly!).  Anyway, I started spouting out the data until he was finally convinced.  And this made him happy because he and his brother-in-law (his sister's husband and my uncle), who lived in Richmond, had an ongoing rivalry about N.C. vs. Virginia.  So he couldn't wait to rub that in my uncle's face.  (My father often quoted the old saying about North Carolina being a "vale of humility between two mountains of conceit" -- the two mountains being Richmond to the north and Charleston to the south.). And in the next few years it became obvious which was the dominant city, with Charlotte getting the Piedmont Airlines hub, then a direct flight to London, then an NBA team, then an NFL team.  Then the greatest shaming of all:  when Richmond's Sovran bank merged with Atlanta's C&S bank in an attempt to prevent Charlotte's Nationsbank (formerly NCNB) from taking over either bank.  But in a very short amount of time, Nationsbank wound up gobbling up the entire merged C&S/Sovran.

In that instance, I think it was a situation of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" because otherwise I don't think Richmond cared much for Atlanta, either, at least not the Richmond oldtimers.  That's the sense I got from my uncle, who was a "First Families if Virginia" descendent.  Since at least the Civil War, Richmond perceived itself as the Capital of the South.  Then along came Atlanta, knocking it off its perch.  Old generation Richmonders, I don't think, much liked even acknowledging the existence of Atlanta.  And now after that humiliation, along comes Charlotte knocking it down another notch.  That was a bridge too far!

Charlotte's banks were ruthless in those days. After Sovran left, Crestar was the by far the largest Richmond bank remaining. It was then promptly gobbled up by First Union.  I loved watching all those big east coast banks fall under our umbrella like Core States, Fleet... BB&T started to get hungry too. No bank was safe!

[Blue_Devil]

On 4/25/2022 at 2:42 PM, DownEast said:

Charlotte's banks were ruthless in those days. After Sovran left, Crestar was the by far the largest Richmond bank remaining. It was then promptly gobbled up by First Union.  I loved watching all those big east coast banks fall under our umbrella like Core States, Fleet... BB&T started to get hungry too. No bank was safe!

As the Banks need to inject tech into themselves, and a lot of the FinTech competitors are taking it on the nose right now, I expect it to happen again. 

[Mid South NC]

I spent 4 days in Charlotte last week and 3 in Raleigh this week, and tbh both cities are booming. 
 

Here is a few pics I captured today from the West side and from downtown NH, looking West @North Hills Raleigh today. 
 

https://kanerealtycorp.com/project/tower-5/

 

 

Edited May 21, 2022 by Mid South NC

[KJHburg]

^ Yes North Hills is booming   They are building this office tower https://kanerealtycorp.com/project/one-north-hills-tower/  and a huge RH store like the one at Phillips Place and an apartment tower https://kanerealtycorp.com/project/nhx-north-tower-apartments/    

North Hills in Raleigh is the densest suburban edge city between DC and Atlanta. 

[Mid South NC]

1 hour ago, KJHburg said:

^ Yes North Hills is booming   They are building this office tower https://kanerealtycorp.com/project/one-north-hills-tower/  and a huge RH store like the one at Phillips Place and an apartment tower https://kanerealtycorp.com/project/nhx-north-tower-apartments/    

North Hills in Raleigh is the densest suburban edge city between DC and Atlanta. 

Yes, and tower one is so close to the 440 belt-line that it will cast quite the imposing presence onto the outer loop and will certainly dominate the west side of the complex. 

[davidclt]

11 hours ago, Mid South NC said:

I spent 4 days in Charlotte last week and 3 in Raleigh this week, and tbh both cities are booming. 
 

Here is a few pics I captured today from the West side and from downtown NH, looking West @North Hills Raleigh today. 

 

Navigating the North Hills area is a mess. and the whole layout up there is surreal.

[DonkeyKong]

I would bet when Ballantyne is completely redeveloped it will be more dense then the North Hills development.  Its already on its way with Ballantyne reimagined.  

Edited May 19, 2022 by DonkeyKong

[Mid South NC]

Lol, tbh by that time North Hills will be even more dense then it is now, connected to other massive midtown developments all ready in motion, and I honestly have no dog in the fight because I absolutely love them both equally, and want the best for BRI as I do NH. 

"New additions are coming to Raleigh's North Hills. Kane Realty announced plans Monday for a $1 billion 33-acre development called the North Hills Innovation District (NHID). The project will include open green space with pedestrian bridges and room for outdoor working and dining"

https://abc11.com/amp/north-hills-raleigh-business-kane-realty-onnovation-district/10013738/

Not to mention the 40, 30, and 15 story buildings already approved by the city for the remaining surface lots and Lassiter mill SC. 

https://www.wral.com/north-hills-seeks-to-add-40-story-towers-to-its-own-skyline/19876350/?version=amp

This is all in addition to the existing towers, and the current construction that is already going on with the 3 towers cranes pictured here and the two tower cranes for the Cardinal Tower and tower 5 NHE. Lol so no offense, but density will be hard to compete with as this continues to evolve. 

I know John Kane, and he doesn't reveal any development without established iron (recession) proof financing and the primary tenant to carry specific towers, and expansion.

No worries, there's plenty to go around as Raleigh and Charlotte are both  on fire, and North Carolina is a sunbelt economic powerhouse with few equals. 

Edited May 19, 2022 by Mid South NC

[carolina1792]

10 minutes ago, Mid South NC said:

 

I know John Kane, and he doesn't reveal any development without established iron (recession) proof financing and the primary tenant to carry a specific towers, and expansion.

Which is why the recent announcement regarding Downtown South is so exciting. A 21-story residential tower and a 27-story office tower with construction starting next year. So you now Kane has already secured the financing and this project is moving forward.

I believe there's also about 12 separate projects in south Raleigh that have proposed towers of 18-stories or greater including Kane's son project near Dix Park which will have two 20-story towers. 

As of today, there's zero towers in south Raleigh so this area will transform much like South End in Charlotte--but without a light rail unfortunately.

Edited May 19, 2022 by carolina1792

[Richhamleigh, DC]

Let's not forget booming Durham...5 tower cranes up with more to come.