Kindley Street is about to get some new neighbors. The Mira Raleigh apartments are getting close to opening, with move-ins planned for May 2024, according to their website. Above is a photo of the building from outside the construction site on Kindley. We’ll have to follow up once the sidewalks are poured and all the construction buzz flies away. Some of the units will have some nice views to the south of the city as they overlook Western Boulevard, as shown in a pic from June 2023. There were also plans floated for pushing Kindly down to Western as well so it’ll be interesting to see that ha ..read more

The dual-branded Hilton hotel at the corner of McDowell and Davie Streets is now taking reservations in October of this year. That brings another 240 or so rooms to the downtown hotel market. You can check out Homewood Suites as well as Tempo on their websites to get more info. Reservations can start on October 14, 2024. That’s a great time to visit as Raleigh really pops in the Fall. For locals, the rooftop bar, Urban Oak, might interest you as I believe it’ll be the highest in the city. It may be higher up but does it match the views from the upcoming Terrazza restaurant? Terrazza is set to ..read more

Harrington and West Streets are really becoming the most densely populated area of the city. It probably is already but will be more so once the currently under-construction project, The Alexan, welcomes new neighbors. You can see in the photo above that they are at floor two of seven. The Alexan plans for about 185 homes. From my observations, the concrete podium you see here may be it as they may switch to wood construction from here on out. We’ll check back in later this year. The blog has over 17 years of content and is still going strong. Support this blog and thank you for reading ..read more

Above is the video for the March 5, 2024 City Council evening session where council revisits the topic of rezoning properties along New Bern Avenue in an attempt to support the now under construction Bus Rapid Transit route. It’s actually a more manageable 40 or so minutes to watch so I encourage anyone to check it out or watch it directly on YouTube here. Seeing as the rezoning request consists of over 740 properties and spans miles along the New Bern corridor, it was likely that this would be phased in and it sounds like the approach will be to work through those phases at different points ..read more

This view has always been an interesting one. As the sidewalk along the west side of Person Street opens up now just before Spring, we see two sides here. On one side, we have The Acorn, a soon-to-open apartment building, and on the other, we have an almost 100-year-old building with a new coffee shop in it, Little Native Coffee. Now, I’m admitting my naivety a bit as I do not recall the businesses in the older building before the coffee shop. If you know, let us all know on the Community. The apartments look almost done and should have new residents moving in later this year. On the flip sid ..read more

Construction is well underway at the site of the future Union Station Bus Facility. The groundbreaking actually took place back in October 2023 but what really matters is when the crane is put in place. That’s when it feels alive and active. The bus station will have eight bus bays as a way to connect bus riders to train service at Union Station. Ground-floor retail spaces will also be included and the last plans I’ve seen are for apartments to be added above. There was once a hotel at one point but the plans for above the station seem unclear at this time. We’ll have to wait and see. The b ..read more

The former Police Headquarters is no more. There’s a pile of materials right now at the corner of Hargett and McDowell Streets that will be cleared away soon. Let’s hope construction follows shortly for the city’s new Civic Tower. The blog has over 17 years of content and is still going strong. Support this blog and thank you for reading ..read more

The DRA has released the first part of their Economic Development Strategy for Fayetteville Street and the list of recommendations are quite numerous. We’ll still get even more recommendations later this year but this initial piece focuses on the central business district with Fayetteville at the center of it all. Above is a video of a city council work session where the report’s highlights are presented to council and is a very good watch. Scott Page from Interface Studio, the consultant team on the project, gives us a very comprehensive overview of the plan so watching, or just listening, i ..read more

The 400H building is now complete. Maybe not technically but as far as I’m concerned as a downtown regular it is. The sidewalks are open and recently the Downtown Raleigh Alliance posted that residents are moving in. Now we wait for some ground-floor shops. We’ve been following this development for quite some time now and I really like it for a variety of reasons but the main one being it’s mixed-use nature. First, as mentioned, the residents. 200 homes are offered here in the building with all the usual amenities like a pool and gym. The views are probably fantastic. The block formerly had z ..read more

Wasn’t 2007 a fantastic year? We saw the iPhone. Netflix starting streaming. The Raleigh Connoisseur starts publishing blog posts. All of these things are changing the world and today is a day to celebrate one of them in particular. With 1,527 posts logged, I’m happy to report that I’m still here. We have our community, our meetup, and this space here of course for various topics around urban planning, transit, developments, and a little food and drink. There’s so much to talk about if you follow what’s going on in Raleigh and I’m happy to keep putting these thoughts out there where I hope it ..read more