Plans announced for $1 billion Raleigh development on St. Albans Drive
This article was updated on 1:08 p.m. Friday, Nov. 15th.
Ambitious master plans for a vast mixed-use development with an estimated value of $1 billion in Raleigh’s Midtown area were released Thursday by Raleigh-based real estate development firm Dewitt Carolinas.
The announcement of the Midtown Exchange project spanning 40 acres follows Dewitt’s $16.25 million acquisition of land in 2017, which added to 20 acres the company acquired in 1998.
Since then, the development has been planned in close cooperation with the city of Raleigh and with community input from the Midtown district of the Citizen Advisory Council. A rezoning application was approved in 2017.
At a presentation Thursday, Dewitt CEO Todd Saieed said firm is creating “a city within a city that’s not like anything else in Raleigh.”
Plans for the development call for 125,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space and 790,000 square feet of Class A office space. It is expected to include several mid- to high-rise buildings ranging from five to 20 stories. Also in the plans are more than seven acres of central green space with water and park features that are planned to connect to Raleigh’s greenway system.
“Typically you have an out-of-state developer for something as big as this,” Saieed said. “We’re not a developer from out of town and we care about what we’re going to do.”
The site is located at 900 St. Albans Dr. That’s at the intersection of St. Albans and Benson Drive, near the intersection of Wake Forest Road and the northeastern I-440 beltline.
“We promised we would listen to [neighbors and Citizen Advisory Council] and have a real conversation and listen to their ideas on what we could use for this special development,” said Dewitt senior partner Ven Poole. “We adopted a lot of input from the community in how we laid it out.”
St. Albans Drive is “a transition line between existing and proposed mixed-use development to the south and older, primarily residential, areas to its north,” according to information on the city of Raleigh’s Midtown-St. Albans Area Plan, which recommends future changes and improvements to the area’s infrastructure.
The master plan calls for:
▪ A 300-room hotel with a 31,000-square-foot convention center anchored with retail space.
▪ Two high-rise towers and a mid-rise residential building with a total of 302 condo units and six townhome units.
▪ Two high-rise and two mid-rise multifamily apartment buildings with a total of 823 apartment units, with one of the high-rises anchored with retail space.
▪ A senior living facility with 150 independent living residences and 300 assisted living residences.
▪ Twin high-rise office towers connected by a sky walk.
Saieed told The News & Observer in 2017 at the time of the property’s purchase that Dewitt’s vision for this site has been “gestating for nearly 20 years.”
Midtown Exchange is in final design and planning stages, and construction will begin in the first quarter of next year, the developer said. It is scheduled to be built out in five to 10 years, but that depends on tenant demand and market analysis, which Poole said will determine the speed of construction.
The development site is next to an upcoming Kane Realty project that will extend the reach of the North Hills commercial area.
The land is the former site of the historic Isaac Hunter’s tavern, an 18th century landmark that predates the foundation of Raleigh as a capital city. The News & Observer reported on the discovery of the tavern’s remains at the time of Dewitt’s purchase.
Dewitt has a 20-year history of development in the Carolinas, including the Pier 33 apartments and retail in the downtown Wilmington Marina and The Franklin apartments in Cary.
This story was originally published November 14, 2019 at 7:33 PM.
