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Week of December 4, 2017
City of Raleigh to Repaint 20,000 Fire Hydrants
Cafe Lucarne Reopens As Lucarne
5 Lounge & Discotorium Comes to Glenwood South
Tapas and Wine Bar Announced for The Dillon
DriveShack Begins Work on Three-Story Driving Range
Iron Yard Coding School Copies and Pastes New Coding School
Penn Station Coming to The Stanhope
O2 Fitness Opens Fourth Raleigh Location
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Paint the Town Yellow
Driving through Raleigh over the past year, you may have noticed an odd phenomenon: the changing color of fire hydrants. In June of 2016, the City announced a massive repainting project involving about 20,000 public fire hydrants. Public hydrants in Raleigh, Garner, Knightdale, Rolesville, Wake Forest, Wendell, and Zebulon were all to be changed from red to yellow. Chrome yellow, if you want to be specific about it. Friend of the media empire, Andy Specht, covered this last year.
We recently noticed that the City’s Public Utilities department is looking for a contractor to “plan and execute a project” that will involve the application of a “Safety Yellow” primer coat, and a final coat of Chrome Yellow on our beloved hydrants. Proposals for the painting are due on December 22nd and we would like to officially endorse our sponsor Express Yourself Paint for this project. Sure, they’re mainly focused on exterior and interior painting of residential and commercial buildings. But we’re confident they could handle 20,000 fire hydrants.
The City notes that the project is expected to take about two years, with the contractor finishing about 10,000 hydrants per year. If you want to know even more about the “why” behind this project, Mike Legeros has more information.
Notes from WNFIV: While researching this story, we found that many of these yellow hydrants are often painted to resemble Minions, the lovable characters originally seen in the movie Despicable Me.
There was even a Mario hydrant. 
So, why can’t we have these? Why not LaCroix themed hydrants or Lilly Pulitzer themed hydrants? Or hydrants for each neighborhood. I want more fire hydrant diversity and I want it now. Your move, Raleigh.
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Cafe Lucarne Drops the Cafe
After nine months in operation on Blake Street in City Market, Cafe Lucarne shut its doors in March, only to reopen last week after another nine months as “Lucarne” — a late night spot serving small plates, craft beers, and cocktails.
When it opened in July 2016, Cafe Lucarne was a “casual, counter-service” restaurant serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The same group behind both incarnations of Lucarne also opened the high-end Royale restaurant (which WNFIV gave a 5 out of 5 beltline rating to) in November 2016. The new Lucarne was designed to serve as a companion restaurant to Royale and is open Wednesday through Saturday from 5:30 p.m. to midnight.
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5 Lounge & Discotorium Opens
Glenwood South’s newest bar comes with a twist — and we don’t mean the citrusy garnish they’ll be serving with the craft cocktails. It turns out, the owners of 5 Lounge & Discotorium want the bar’s patrons to “Party With a Purpose!” as the five owners of 5 will be donating five percent of their proceeds to a different charity each month. No word on if they’ll offer $5 footlongs as well.
While it’s wonderful the owners are looking to give back to their community through these donations, we’re pretty sure most Raleighites would prefer a charitable bar/nightclub in the vein of A Place at the Table; that is, a pay-what-you-can concept for booze.
Until then, drinkers tragically paying full price for their cocktails can take solace in the fact that some of the cost is funding a local charity, such as the Women’s Center of Wake County. 5 Lounge is located at 517 W. Jones Street off Glenwood Avenue.
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Barcelona Wine Bar Planned for The Dillon
The latest tenant for Kane Realty’s The Dillon development in downtown’s warehouse district has been announced: a wine and tapas bar that’s chosen Raleigh as its first North Carolina location.
Barcelona Wine Bar, which features dozens of tapas and charcuterie and cheese dishes ranging from Drunken Goat — semi soft goat’s milk soaked in red wine — to spiced beef empanadas with Piquillo sauce, currently operates in six states and Washington D.C.
We love a good tapas bar, and the menu prices for the Philadelphia location were surprisingly reasonable. The chain currently operates locations in Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia. We’re excited they chose Raleigh as their first location in the North State, but we’re even more excited they didn’t choose Charlotte.
Driving it Home
DriveShack, the TopGolf competitor whose plans to open up shop in Raleigh were announced exclusively here on the Development Beat back in May, received permits last week for their three story driving range with a “large bar and dining area.”
The new 63,885 SF, $8 million facility is getting built by Ashland Construction and will be located on Corporate Center Drive in West Raleigh next to Interstate 40.
Former Home of Iron Yard Coding School To Be Assimilated by New Coding School
Control C. Control V. The Iron Yard Coding School, a sort-of franchised venture that sought to train workers for a career change with three months worth of schooling, shuttered its Raleigh and Durham locations this past summer. Now, some of the former owners of Iron Yard are planning to open a brand-new coding school, Momentum, which, like its predecessor, will be housed in the American Underground building at 213 Fayetteville. In an interview with the Triangle Business Journal, Momentum CEO Jessica Mitsch said the intense local focus of Momentum would set it apart from Iron Yard.
New Sub Joint Coming to the Stanhope
Penn Station East Coast Subs will soon be serving their signature sandwiches from the ground floor of the Stanhope at 3001 Hillsborough Street. Permits for the interior completion of the 1,622 square-foot space were issued last week to Callahan Construction and Development, which is unfortunately not a subsidiary of Callahan Auto Parts.
O2 Fitness Opens at North Ridge
Raleigh’s fourth location of the popular O2 Fitness chain is now open at North Ridge on Falls of Neuse in North Raleigh, less than four months after permits were issued for construction.
Although we noted this is O2’s fourth location — they’ve got gyms at Brennan Station, Seaboard Station and another one on Falls of Neuse — this location will technically be the fifth to open in Raleigh. An O2 Fitness on Person Street closed earlier this year.
