Brought to you by York Properties.
Retail and Parking Development coming to Hillsborough Street
Updates on Tower II at One Glenwood
Old Rex Hospital back on the market, again
Baseball Stadium envisioned for State prison site
Muscle Maker Grill coming to McNeill Pointe
LGBT Center of Raleigh relocating to E Hargett Street
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North Carolina Community Foundation Disaster Relief Fund
NC Hospital Foundation Disaster Relief Fund
Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC
Volunteer for a 6 or 12 hour shift with the Red Cross
Retail and Parking Deck Planned For Hillsborough Street
A parking deck with ground-floor retail is coming to Hillsborough Street as part of the new Block 83 development from Heritage Properties. The site at 701 and 709 Hillsborough was for years home to Allen’s Automotive and Rosenberry Rooms.
Heritage, the developers of the nearby One Glenwood, filed site review plans for a project they’re calling “Block 83 Parking Deck.” The 267,333 square-foot structure will stand nearly 90′ tall and provide 693 parking spots. Four retail spaces totaling 8,472 square feet will be located on the ground-floor.
A closer look at the renderings reveals where the four retail spaces are planned, as well as the existence of a “Trash Room.” Seems like the developers thought of everything on this one.
This will be the fourth structure Heritage builds as part of the Block 83 project. While the name might sound like something out of a dystopian sci-fi novel, it’s apparently part of an overall rebranding meant to pay tribute to the number assigned to this group of properties back when the city was divided into blocks in the days of yore.
To be fair, naming the development Block 83 is more creative than the standard “Let’s just use the address as the name of the building” formula used by so many recent projects.
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One Glenwood Tower II
Heritage Properties released new renderings of Tower II, another phase of the One Glenwood/Block 83 development on Hillsborough Street.
Tower II will be a 10-story, 275,000 square-foot office building with two separate one-story retail buildings comprising a total of 4,850 square feet.
The new renderings show off a courtyard that can be used for concerts/events, as well as a coffee shop inside of a shipping container, because that’s cool and edgy.
The property is currently occupied by a few buildings, including Dram & Draught. Construction on Tower II is set to begin in the second quarter of 2019.
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Old Rex For Sale Again
A request for proposals issued by the North Carolina State Property Office last month seems to indicate that the Old Rex Hospital site may once again be on the market.
The RFP seeks to find a new office space for state employees who are currently housed on the Old Rex site at 700 Wade Avenue. The State is seeking a 10-year lease for about 100,000 square feet of office space and 500 parking spots. The lease would begin on or about May 1, 2019.
Situated at the intersection of Wade Avenue and St. Mary’s Street, the Old Rex campus was specifically singled out in the City’s Wade-Oberlin Area Plan, where it was described as the only site on Wade Avenue where new retail uses should be allowed.
When redevelopment plans were announced in 2016, the City said it hoped to limit that retail use — no one wants to see a Brier Creek style development here — to about five percent of the total square footage.
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Field of Dreams
Oak City Baseball, a “grassroots organization with the goal of bringing Major League Baseball to Raleigh” recently unveiled a concept for a new baseball stadium at the Central Prison site along Western Boulevard.
The plan is quite extensive and very detailed — it describes everything from proposed bus routes and bridge extensions to an elevated greenway to the location of home plate.
The idea, per Oak City Baseball, is to create a stadium like Wrigley Field or Fenway Park that is “nestled within the existing city fabric” and would mesh into the existing neighborhood. The 17-part Twitter thread can be viewed in its entirety here.
Full disclosure, we did not investigate whether @OakCityBaseball has the funds to make the baseball stadium a reality. They did, however, provide more information on their mission:
Love it! 🙌🏼
And, to be clear, we’re just the MLB-to-Raleigh idea factory, sowing seeds to see who would be on board, fan-wise. If any newly-minted powerball billionaires would be so inclined, you know where to reach us! #oakcitybaseball https://t.co/QuLnVZTpqT
— Oak City Baseball (@OakCityBaseball) October 23, 2018
It’s hard to say how much a project like this would cost. Including land acquisition, we’d estimate anywhere from $1 million to north of $1 billion. However, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity for Field of Dreams photoshops. We considered going with the headline “Field of Pipe Dreams” because the chances of this happening are quite low, but we didn’t want to crush the spirit of a good idea. After all, the one constant through all the years, Raleigh, is baseball.
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McNeill Pointe Muscles
A new fast-casual health food franchise will soon be muscling its way into a space at McNeill Pointe in Raleigh’s burgeoning SoJo area (South of Trader Joe’s).
Permits were issued last week for the fit-out of an 1,800 square-foot space for the Muscle Maker Grill at 2330 Bale Street. The chain — which we wrongly assumed was a seafood restaurant specializing in mussels — actually focuses on healthy menu items and meal plans that help improve their customers’ physiques.
The food actually sounds better than you might imagine; they offer flatbread pizzas, Cajun chicken pasta, turkey burgers and more. There are about 50 locations of the chain nationwide.
LGBT Center of Raleigh Set for Relocation
The LGBT Center of Raleigh will soon be relocating from its present location at 324 S. Harrington to a new 2,249 square-foot space at 119 E. Hargett Street.
The organization behind the center was incorporated in 2008, and says that its mission is to “strengthen individual and community development through social and educational activities; to facilitate the incubation of supportive services and groups; and to identify needs and advocate for resources benefiting the diverse population of lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual people, their friends and supporters within and beyond central North Carolina.”
As the center’s new home on E Hargett is owned by Empire Properties, the $141,470 project is being handled by the company’s construction subsidiary Empire Hard Hat.
