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Week of October 23, 2017
Superchargers coming to North Hills
News & Observer selling downtown building
HQ Raleigh expands into Capital Club building
Charter Square North to break ground in February
Greek Fiesta on Western to be replaced with Popeye’s
Galaxy Fun Park To Add Mini-Golf
Superchargers Coming to North Hills
Kane Realty announced last week that North Hills would soon be adding Tesla Superchargers. We had hoped these would wirelessly charge your iPhone battery as you walked around North Hills. Apparently, they’re for charging your Tesla electric vehicle.
North Hills will be the first in the Raleigh market to offer this amenity and they have also secured a spot on the Tesla Model X Mobile Gallery tour. As part of the nationwide tour, the Tesla Model X and Airstream gallery will be in the Commons of North Hills from November 27th to December 4th.
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News & Observer To Sell Downtown Building By Year’s End
Nearly three years after announcing plans to sell its downtown offices, the News & Observer has reportedly found a buyer with plans to close on the property by the end of the year. Although the three-acre site has been home to the News & Observer for nearly 110 years, the paper did not move its editorial offices into the three-story brick building on South McDowell Street until the late 1950s.
In November 2015, the News & Observer had reached a deal to sell the property for $20 million to the cleverly-titled LLC Above The Fold. Plot twist, the deal fell through. The sale of this historic property was reportedly announced during an earnings call last week, although the buyer was not named. We can confirm that it was not ITB Insider™.
The existing office building will almost certainly be torn down or drastically re-altered — back when they first announced plans to sell, the N&O’s publisher described it as “an old and inefficient space” — although what will be built in its stead remains to be seen.
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HQ Raleigh Opens New Space in Capital Club Building
“So we beat on, startups against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the shared workspace.” – an entrepreneur, probably.
HQ Raleigh, a co-working space in downtown Raleigh, held a “Great Gatsby inspired” grand opening/five year anniversary party this past week to celebrate their expansion into the historic Capital Club building.
William Finley IV actually spoke at the Raleigh Public Relations Society awards dinner last week and said the space looked fantastic.
We first reported on this move back in February, when we noted that the $2.2 million project would renovate about 31,000 square feet of space. Included in that space were floors 9-12 of the 12-story building, which originally housed space for the Capital Club’s offices, “as well as a billiard room, lounges, kitchens, dining rooms, and a ballroom.” It seems these amenities were a must have since, according to a historic landmark application, “the Capital Club Building is associated with the lives of the individuals who dominated the governmental, commercial, and industrial affairs of the state during the five decades beginning in 1885.”
Groundbreaking Announced for Charter Square North
Raleigh’s most anticipated sequel is set to begin production in February 2019, when Dominion Partners will commence with the construction of Charter Square North, a 22-story office and residential tower on South Wilmington Street. Why they chose to go with Charter Square North instead of my suggestion, The Magna Charter, is beyond my understanding.
Designed by JDavis Architects, the $110 million tower has gone through a number of iterations through the years, from the 2015 unique stacked structure that looked like the Tet Corporation’s Hammarskjöld Plaza in Keystone Earth’s New York City, to the more sleek and modern look unveiled last year. The latest rendering includes signage for the building’s anchor tenant, F.N.B. Corp, a Pennsylvania-based bank that will occupy about 40,000 square feet.
Charter Square North will include a total of about 156,000 square feet along with 239 apartment units. The space is reported to be about 50 percent leased at this point.
The original Charter Square, one of North Carolina’s only privately-owned, LEED-platinum certified buildings, opened in 2015. Dominion sold the building to another local firm, Highwoods Properties, in September 2016.
Popeye’s Chicken Coming to Western Boulevard
Western Boulevard’s Greek Fiesta restaurant will soon be replaced by Popeye’s Chicken. Bringing in a Popeye’s to replace it is an interesting choice, considering there’s a Bojangles about 100 yards away. Although we imagine the proximity to NC State means they won’t have much trouble keeping the doors open.
Galaxy Expands
Go-Karts. Bumper Cars. A Rope Course. Laser Tag. A Trampoline Room. Galaxy Fun Park has it all, right? Wrong. Unlike its counterparts Adventure Landing and Frankie’s Fun Park, Galaxy, which opened just over a year ago on Falls of Neuse Road, is missing one key component of the family attraction center formula: mini-golf.
But that’s about to change. A $200,000 permit was issued to Carolina Building Systems for a “change of tenant space to miniature golf.” A Galaxy employee told us the course should be open within a few months.
