Efforts to control the coronavirus have shuttered businesses across the Triangle, but commercial real estate developers are still betting on the future of the area, with construction work continuing and new projects being announced four months into the pandemic.
Here’s an update on some of the biggest new commercial developments in the Raleigh and Durham metro area:
Genesis at Research Triangle Park
The Genesis 104-acre commercial development in RTP is being planned by Charlotte-based commercial real estate firm The Keith Corp. at 3029 E. Cornwallis Road. The project is being designed to include 5.5 million square feet of lab, life science, manufacturing and office space, according to a press release.
Genesis will have eight buildings, divided into four R&D and manufacturing buildings of 90,000 to 30,000 square feet and four multistory office and lab buildings of 40,000 to 450,000 square feet. A projected completion date hasn’t been disclosed.
Developers told the Triangle Business Journal that they’re in talks with several potential tenants. The city of Durham recently approved its plans and the Genesis site has work underway.
A map drawing of the site plans for the big industrial Genesis development at Research Triangle Park. Courtesy of The Keith Corporation
Raleigh mixed-use developments
▪ Raleigh developer Dominion Realty Partners, which brought the F.N.B. Tower to Raleigh’s skyline last year, is planning to build a huge high-rise tower project next to the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Raleigh.
This mixed-use project, titled Salisbury Square, will include towers and mid-rise buildings with housing, hotel, retail, office and parking space.
One tower will have 242 upscale apartments with 175,000 square feet of office and retail space, and the other tower will have 270 apartments with a rooftop pool, the architecture firm for the project announced.
The project proposes building two 20-story towers, a six-story hotel with 150 rooms, and a four-story building with 63 units for housing priced for low-income tenants, with an attached parking deck with 1,277 proposed spaces, according to JDavis Architects and the project’s plans filed with the city.
A rendering of the potnetial look of the completed Salisbury Square mixed-usetower project in downtown Raleigh. Courtesy of JDavis Architects
▪ A historic warehouse in an area with redeveloped industrial property between the Five Points and Mordecai neighborhoods will become an 11-acre site of apartments, restaurants and office space along Wake Forest and East Whitaker Mill roads.
Raleigh developers SLI Capital and Atlas Stark are behind the project, titled East End Market. It is next to Dock 1053, an office and retail complex made up of redeveloped industrial space.
According to plans filed with Raleigh’s planning department, developers want to build up to 500 multifamily units and seven buildings comprising 394,000 square feet with five- and seven-story buildings in the site’s center. The project calls for buildings as high as 15 stories near the instersection of Wake Forest and East Whitaker Mill roads.
It’s next to Raleigh Iron Works, another recently announced commercial development being built by a Raleigh developer.
Work on the first phase of East End Market will start later this summer and fall, the Triangle Business Journal reported.
Park Point at Research Triangle Park
Trinity Capital Advisors announced earlier this spring that they would spend roughly $130 million in redeveloping the long-abandoned Park Point complex in RTP, which once housed Nortel Networks.
The developer said Biotech startup Grail Inc., which announced this summer it would bring 400 jobs to the Triangle, would be the anchor tenant of the site.
The first phase of the project will be completed early next year for Grail Inc. to move in, the developer said.
The office and warehouse site will be redeveloped into modern office, life science and industrial development with an earlier completion date since it doesn’t all need to be demolished.
Third Bloc[83] tower
The One Glenwood tower and its sister 10-story commercial tower Tower Two of the Bloc[83] development on Hillsborough Street at Glenwood Avenue has a taller third tower in the works.
Maryland-based developer Heritage Properties filed a rezoning request to build an 18-story office tower with parking and ground retail and at 615 W. Morgan St. and 117 S. Boylan Ave.
A rendering of the Hillsborough Street side of One Glenwood, Tower Two, and the adjacent parking garage of Bloc[83]. Courtesy of Heritage Properties
Crabtree Valley Mall redevelopment
The Raleigh shopping mall is under new ownership by California-based Pacific Retail Partners as of May. The company says it will focus on reopening the mall.
A rezoning request and plans were submitted last summer for a major expansion involving a $290 million 30-story office and apartment tower on the site of the current Sears building at the mall, The N&O reported previously.
The new owners will have to change those plans, but they still plan new construction in the future, according to the Triangle Business Journal.
A rendering designed to show where a 30-story tower would be located at Crabtree Valley Mall. Courtesy of Crabtree Valley Mall.
Durham Venable Center
The Venable Center from developer and investor Trinity Capital Advisors and SLI Capital will add a fourth building to go with the three fully-leased buildings.
The expansion of the historic collection of former tobacco buildings will be an eight-story building called The Roxboro, at 464 E. Pettigrew Street, east of the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. The updated plans for the building call for 200,000 square feet of office and retail space as well as 221 apartments.
Wheelock Street Capital backed out as an investor from the $170 million project for reasons unclear and the project will receive funding from unnamed investors, the Triangle Business Journal reported.
This project will feature a rooftop lounge as well as a conference center. The eight-story building will be constructed on a parcel of land that is adjacent to the Venable Center’s parking lot.
The owners of the Venable Center in downtown Durham have revealed renderings of a new office tower it plans to build on the property. Courtesy of CBRE
Kane Realty mixed-use projects
An expansion of North Hills will involve redeveloping the former site of the JCPenney store and calls for two new 12-story towers with ground-level retail in addition to smaller buildings. The most recent plans project 124,000 square feet of additional retail space and 362,000 square feet of additional office space, The N&O reported.
The massive Smoky Hollow development on Peace and Harrington streets next to downtown Raleigh is close to completion, featuring a residential building with hundreds of luxury apartments and anchored by what will be the first Publix grocery store in the central part of the city.
The nine-story commercial building on the site features 225,000 square feet atop ground-level retail.
In North Hills, Kane Realty’s also at work on the tallest tower in the city outside of downtown. The 35-story tall Walter tower will have 376 luxury apartments and 6,500 of retail space along Six Forks Road and Interstate 440.
A rendering of the commercial building part of the Smoky Hollow development on Harrington and Peace streets next to downtown Raleigh. Courtesy of Kane Realty
Wendell Falls
Wendell Falls, one of the largest master-planned communities in the Triangle area, has brought new residential and commercial growth to eastern Wake County in the town of Wendell.
The community’s developer, the homebuilding company Newland, released plans for the first phase of Treelight Square, which will have 35,000 square feet of retail and restaurants. It will be developed by Triangle-based Edinburgh Development.
Upon completion, the shopping center project across 45 acres is slated to have around 260,000 square feet of commercial space and also feature the first Publix in that side of the county. According to a spokesperson, groundbreaking on Treelight Square will start in early to mid 2021.
A new WakeMed hospital location will be built on the property in coming years as well.
This site will be joined by another commercial component of the property called The Collective, an office and industrial park on 48 acres within Wendell Falls, which is located at the intersection of U.S. Highway 64 and Wendell Falls Parkway.
A conceptual rendering of the new retail project at Wendell Falls in the town of Wendell. Courtesy of Finley Design
Industrial parks from Merritt Properties
Maryland-based developer Merritt Properties began construction on four industrial buildings near Research Triangle Park at the intersection of TW Alexander Drive and South Miami Boulevard in Durham.
The four buildings will total almost 283,000 square feet with a projected completion of January 2021. Life-sciences company Shimadzu Scientific Instruments has leased 7,300 square feet as the building’s first tenant, according to a press release from Merritt.
The industrial park is on 51 acres bought in January for $3.1 million, county records show.
Merritt, which opened an office in Raleigh, is also planning for Merritt Capital Business Park in Wake Forest, another industrial park aimed for completion in the second quarter of 2021. This park will feature seven buildings from 30,000 to 85,000 square feet on 74 acres they recently purchased, the company said.
Holly Springs industrial park
Development plans filed this summer with the town of Holly Springs call for an industrial and laboratory park in a new project by Skie Properties, a developer from the town.
The five buildings will up to 75 feet high and total over 90,000 square feet. It will be located at 420 Green Oaks Parkway on a vacant 14 acre site, the plans say.
Proposed developments
▪ New York City-based Turnbridge Equities, which is redeveloping the Cary Towne Center mall, filed a rezoning request with the city in June to build up to 40 stories in Glenwood South at the site of The Creamery on the corner of Glenwood Avenue and North West St.
If approved as is, it would be the tallest building in the neighborhood.
The Creamery, currently in a historic two-story building, would be preserved in the new mixed-use development.
▪ Virginia developer Capital Square wants to rezone a 1.32-acre lot with a church and a small decrepit building to build up to 20 stories for a mixed-use development at 320 W. South Street in downtown Raleigh.
Capital Square bought the property in April for $4.2 million, county records show.
▪ The Northside Center, a 35-acre industrial and commercial property next to Wegmans in Raleigh in the Midtown area filed rezoning plans to build up to 20 stories on the site, which is next to I-440.
The plans say the project “will allow for development of housing and needed office space in a mixed-use, urban configuration appropriate to both its Midtown and highway-adjacent location.”
The Spectrum Companies, a Charlotte-based developer, bought the site earlier this year for around $60 million, The N&O reported previously.
This story was originally published July 20, 2020 at 9:00 AM.
Aaron Sánchez-Guerra is a breaking news reporter for The News & Observer and previously covered business and real estate for the paper. His background includes reporting for WLRN Public Media in Miami and as a freelance journalist in Raleigh and Charlotte covering Latino communities. He is a graduate of North Carolina State University, a native Spanish speaker and was born in Mexico. You can follow his work on Twitter at @aaronsguerra.
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