Over 17 years, Raleigh developer bought up ‘prominent’ downtown land. What are its plans?
A Raleigh real estate company has spent 17 years compiling contiguous plots of land near one of the city’s downtown gateways. Now it’s ready to launch development.
Raleigh Development Company completed acquisition last week of 2.6 acres at the intersection of North West and West Peace streets in the northwestern corner of downtown. The company bought its first several area properties in 2005, according to city real estate records.
Company vice president Chris Carter said the firm postponed development over the years anticipating it would eventually control most of the block.
“It’s been a long, long process,” he said. “We have buildings on all the properties that we spent a little money on to fix up and do some renovations, but nothing of any sort of scale along the way. It’s just been really spent assembling everything and it kind of didn’t make sense to do anything until we got all of it.”
The city block, just west of Capital Boulevard, is part of Raleigh’s bustling Glenwood South district. Adjacent to RDC’s land is a 14-acre, city-owned property called Devereux Meadow. Raleigh has stored maintenance equipment and city vehicles on the site for 40 years, but plans to repurpose the polluted parcel for a park.
“That’s kind of the impetus for a lot of what’s happening in this area, and us included,” Carter said. “That’s going to be a big driving factor for our development there. It’s going to be a very prominent, very high-profile city park that is really going to kind of spur a lot of activities in this area.”
RDC’s property is zoned to permit 12-story buildings, Carter said. He was unsure if the company would petition for a change, but he expects it will erect high-rises.
“There will be a mix of uses,” he said. “Certainly we’ll have ground-level retail, and there may be some other other uses incorporated into the project. But we anticipate that it will be heavily residential.”
Development planning has just begun, but RDC could break ground on its project by 2024.
“Just buying the last property last week, we’re just now kind of kicking off the formal planning,” Carter said. “So a lot of things can shift around and move. But I think about a two-year time frame is realistic.”
This story was originally published March 11, 2022 at 1:06 PM with the headline "Over 17 years, Raleigh developer bought up ‘prominent’ downtown land. What are its plans?."
