West Raleigh's makeover

Central location attracts more apartments after growth in office building

RALEIGH -- Barbara Robinson's fingers and toes can account for all of the homes on her side of Nowell Road. She knows almost all of the people who live in them by name.

But Robinson, 67, will need more toes to count the 350 apartments planned adjacent to the white cinder block house she has lived in for almost half a century. "We're going to have to learn a lot of new names," she added.

Fairfield Residential of Grand Prairie, Texas, paid $5.7 million for 25 undeveloped acres between Nowell and Corporate Center Drive, hoping to capitalize on a growing legion of West Raleigh workers.

Apartment demand has surged throughout the region during the past five years. But the craving has been more acute in West Raleigh, where few units have been built in the face of rampant office construction.

At least 1 million square feet of offices have sprouted in West Raleigh since 2002. Companies seeking a central location and convenient road network have gobbled them up, dropping the the submarket's office vacancy rate to 8.7 percent from 15.7 percent in four years, according to data from Karnes Research of Raleigh.

The epicenter of new supply has come near the nexus of Trinity and Edwards Mill roads, less than a mile from Robinson's home.

It stands to reason that some of the employees filling those offices would welcome a shorter commute. But the number of apartments in West Raleigh actually declined in the past few years, in part because investors converted some units to condominiums. And a lack of amenities, particularly in this growing employment hub, has caused some apartment builders to first seek opportunities elsewhere in the region, brokers say.

"There's no shopping nearby," said Jim Anthony, a Raleigh investor who recently inked a deal to fill 223,000 square feet in a long-vacant office building he owns across Corporate Center Drive from the Fairfield site. "No health clubs, no restaurants. There's nothing to do out there except sleep, and maybe have a job."

The landscape, however, is maturing beyond cubicle farms and homes. Last month, a Georgia developer bought four acres just south of the Fairfield site with plans to build a hotel, which would cater to nearby companies.

And in 2006, developers announced plans to build about 150,000 square feet of shops and restaurants as part of Wade, a massive mixed-use development along Edwards Mill Road across from the RBC Center.

That project, developed by a group including Post Properties of Atlanta, Lincoln Harris of Charlotte, Raleigh-based Lichtin Corp. and Preston Development of Cary, also is to include up to half a million square feet of offices and 1,500 residences, including hundreds of apartments.

The amenities didn't factor heavily into Fairfield's decision, said Jim Allaire, the Colliers Pinkard broker who represented Fairfield in the deal. The same criteria that brought all those jobs -- central location, strong road network -- were enough.

But as undeveloped land in other parts of the Triangle dries up, it makes sense that Fairfield and other developers would look to West Raleigh for more action. Only 5.2 percent of the submarket's apartments were empty at the end of September, making it one of the region's tightest areas. That helped landlords boost monthly rents by 8 percent to an average of $762, Triangle Apartment Association data show.

Meanwhile, Barbara Robinson monitors the changes, good and bad.

It's harder for her to get out of her driveway than it was decades ago, when church, not Carolina Hurricanes hockey games, was the big weekend attraction. And the mulch company that moved next door wafted something rank on hot days.

But she's thankful for the traffic lights that came with the Canes, and for her neighbors at Nowell Pointe, a subdivision built across Nowell Road about a decade ago, who she credits with driving the stench away.

Now she braces for what she says will be her neighborhood's biggest change: the 350 apartments. And all those new names.