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Week of May 8, 2017
The Wade luxury condominiums breaking ground soon
Outdoor driving range planned for West Raleigh
Empire Properties wants to build a new mixed-use development in DTR
Update on two of downtown’s new hotels
Moore Square renovation project out for bid, again
The Wade
One of Raleigh’s newest condominium projects will soon break ground. Located in Historic Hayes Barton at 620 Wade Avenue, The Wade will be a five-story building consisting of 27 condominium residences that come in two and three bedroom floor plans.
The project is being developed by Beacon Street Development, the same group behind the Fairview Row condominiums in Five Points. Beacon bills The Wade as “a meticulously designed community where no detail has been overlooked.” We met with Beacon to make sure they really weren’t overlooking any details.
“What’s great about infill projects like The Wade and Fairview Row is that they allow you to design around existing infrastructure. We believe that you can really limit a project’s impact while increasing density if you design it the right way. When you’re working with buildings in these locations you can encourage walkability, which contributes to that lowered impact on the environment and on the city infrastructure,” said Jim Wiley, President of Beacon Street Development.
From its location near the corner of Wade Avenue and St. Mary’s Street, The Wade will be in walking distance to Cameron Village, Fred Fletcher Park, Five Points, Glenwood South, and downtown Raleigh.
“We’ve worked on a lot of projects in a lot of different places. While visiting these great places we try to better understand the design and planning that contributes to the overall experience. We see great buildings and try to figure out how to use great planning principles. Architecture will change. Great planning principles are true, like adhering to age-old proportions seen in Greek columns, for example,” said Wiley.
In addition to 10-foot ceilings and over-sized windows, future residents of The Wade can choose from a wide selection of flooring, cabinetry, lighting and more when customizing their residence.
“Our desire is to offer the highest quality possible. We want to give people exactly what they want,” said Justin Hime, Director of Sales and Marketing at Beacon Street.
The building will feature several amenities including an office conference space, rooftop terrace, dog washing station, virtual concierge service, fitness room, Google Fiber, and an outdoor rose garden. Beacon is working with Frank Liggett of Liggett Design Group to create a traditional southern landscape on the grounds. A video rendering of the project was recently released.
Even in its current state as an undeveloped piece of land, William Finley IV has confirmed that The Wade is already more luxurious than the accommodations at Fyre Festival. We’re working with Beacon to give you exclusive access and keep you up to date as this project progresses.
Outdoor Driving Range Planned for West Raleigh
The Board of Adjustment heard a case yesterday for a proposed “outdoor sports arena” that would be located in West Raleigh at 1021 Corporate Center Drive.
The owners, an LLC by the name of AIS Forestry & Farming, were required to petition the City for a special use permit in order to operate an “Outdoor Sports and Entertainment facility in excess of 250 seats.” The facility would be located on roughly 66 acres of land that sits adjacent to Interstate 40.
A source with knowledge of, but not directly affiliated with the project, told us that the site would likely be the home of Raleigh’s first Drive Shack, a “golf-related leisure and entertainment business” that sets itself apart by selling batteries, circuit boards, and speaker wire. Kidding about that last part, we just love Radio Shack jokes.
Drive Shack is basically a 3-story indoor/outdoor driving range with suites and a restaurant and bar. While Drive Shack is new, consider it a competitor to Topgolf, which currently operates about 30 locations throughout the country. We’ll keep an eye on this as it develops.
Downtown as Destination
While downtown Raleigh isn’t lacking new condominiums and apartments, the number of available hotel rooms has failed to keep pace with the city’s tremendous growth over the past decade. Fortunately, a number of new hotels have either broken ground or been announced in recent months. Here’s an update on two of those.
Residence Inn Marriott in Downtown Raleigh
Finley got to check out the Residence Inn by Marriott last week, thanks to our friends at Raleighwood Media Group who were hosting a tour of the progress. Located at 616 South Salisbury Street, the hotel has some amazing views within the rooms and meeting rooms, as well as on the 10th floor rooftop bar that overlooks Memorial Auditorium aka the house that Ira David Wood III built. They’re planning to open in mid-June of 2017. We’ll take another look when they have a grand opening.
Hilton Garden Inn & Homewood Suites – 200 West Davie
In an effort to shore up the number of hotel rooms in the City’s downtown core, Council reduced the number of parking spaces required for downtown hotels to 1/2 a space per room last year. This ordinance did not apply to the developers of the new Hilton Dual Brand Hotel coming to downtown. As a result, the developers had to file a variance request in order to benefit from the 1/2 space per room deal available to other downtown hotels.
The site plan for this hotel, which we covered back in January, describes a 13-story (bad omen), 259-room hotel that will be a “dual brand” Hilton Garden Inn & Homewood Suites. I think “dual brand” means they charge you twice for the same room, but I could be mistaken. The site plan also notes a proposed 14th-story terrace and differs from a 2015 proposal calling for a Hilton Garden Inn at the same location.
The Empire Strikes Back
With his latest project, Greg Hatem hopes to triple the number of stories allowed on the site at 404 and 406 South Dawson. Empire Consolidated Development, founded by Hatem, has filed a rezoning request with the City to allow for a mixed-used building up to 12 stories tall next to Crank Arm Brewing on Davie Street.
As for the building’s occupants, it appears at this time that the only guaranteed uses will be office and ground floor retail. Residential use may be included as well, but it’s too early to say for certain. Despite its preliminary nature, construction could start on this development by 2018, if approved by the City Council.
Moore Square Redux
With the recent reopening of the former Moore Square bus station, Raleigh residents are now turning their eyes across the street to Moore Square park itself, wondering when the City will begin its long-awaited renovation of the space.
Although work on the project was bid out more than a year ago, Councilors ultimately decided to reject all submitted proposals and start the procurement process over from scratch. It’s a little complicated and a lot boring to explain why they did this, but long story short, there’s a million ways to bid out a government job, and Council decided to go with a more open process.
The job itself, as defined in the bidding documents, “consists of landscape renovations to Moore Square including the construction of a new public pavilion. The park improvements include a new central lawn, planted areas, pedestrian walkways and gathering spaces, sidewalk improvements, site lighting and furnishings, a play area, integrated public art and a jet-field water feature.”
The bids aren’t due until June 5, and we don’t imagine Council will be awarding that project until August at the earliest. This means we might see some dirt moving on this project by the end of the year, but that’s taking an extremely optimistic view of things. Planning on this project started more than eight years ago and construction is scheduled to last about 12 months.
Wow! I can’t believe they still aren’t starting Moore Square. This has been an absurd process, and I thought it was finally starting now that the bus station was done. Those poor businesses in City Market that thought this was going to be a nice new area for them.
Here’s hoping for Drive Shack after Cary ran Topgolf off to Charlotte.