Mixing it up in Five Points

Bobby Lewis has big plans - but not too big, he swears - for Raleigh's Five Points neighborhood.

The principal of Raleigh Development is tinkering with early plans to redevelop 1.1 acres that his firm owns next to the post office on Fairview Road.

Lewis wants to level three houses that sit on the property. That would make way for a three- to four-story building with condominiums or luxury apartments atop offices, shops and restaurants. He hopes to complement the businesses in the older buildings at Fairview, Glenwood Avenue and Whitaker Mill Road. "We could sure stand another bit of retail down there," Lewis says.

Lewis is taking pains to listen to neighbors. Opinions are sure to be mixed. Though some might welcome the intersection's first commercial construction in more than a decade, a growing number of neighbors have bemoaned almost any mention of bulldozers or bigger buildings.

"We're trying to figure out what we can do, what fits best and what looks best," he says.

Neighborhood buy-in could help Lewis when he heads to the city for approval next year.

First, he'll need the blessing of zoning officials. The land he wants to redevelop is zoned in a way that prohibits many of the kinds of boutiques and restaurants that have given Five Points its character over the years. He plans to seek rezoning that would allow for a broader mix of ground-floor tenants, such as coffee shops and bookstores.

He also wants permission to build closer to the street -- a design that he thinks is more in keeping with nearby buildings, and would allow parking behind the building, instead of in front.

Lewis might go head to head with a similar project being planned less than a mile east on Whitaker Mill Road. A partnership including former Mayor Smedes York is planning as many as 23,000 square feet of shops and 60 homes on Bernard Street.

The Forestland Group appears ready to throw more green at green. Partners in the Chapel Hill timber investment management organization are trying to raise as much as $550 million in the Heartwood Forestland fund, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The movement comes almost two years after Forestland, which manages 2.1 million acres of timberland, agreed to pay $465 million for Anderson-Tully, a Memphis, Tenn., real estate investment trust, and its 323,000 acres of hardwood timber. It was the biggest acquisition in Forestland's 12-year history.