Abandoned Capital Plaza Hotel in Raleigh is set to be torn down. Here’s what’s next.
While the fate of the Capital Plaza Hotel remained undetermined for decades, it sat on the northeastern entrance into downtown Raleigh as an abandoned and graffiti-laden eyesore.
Alliance Residential Company announced plans this week for the long-awaited redevelopment of the hotel at 2815 Capital Blvd. The company, a national multifamily apartment developer, bought the property last week for $4.2 million, according to county records.
The company said the hotel and its 13-acre site will be torn down and turned into a new apartment complex with parking, amenities and the construction of a new public street. It will be called Broadstone Oak City and will be completed in late 2022, developers say.
A rezoning request for the redevelopment was initially filed with the city in 2019, and developers met with local residents, who said in neighborhood meetings that they were eager to see the hotel gone.
In addition being an eyesore, the hotel’s unpopularity grew after the U.S. Army used the closed-off hotel site as a training exercise with loud explosives and helicopters in 2019.
“We are excited to announce our acquisition of the former Capital Plaza Hotel for the development of Broadstone Oak City, which will allow for redevelopment of an underutilized site at a high-visibility location,” said Alliance Residential Company Carolinas Managing Director Donald Santos in a news release.
Santos highlighted the need for housing in this area on the edge of the Raleigh I-440 Beltline, which will be close to the Midtown and downtown areas.
The new project is slated to have 335 apartment units across four apartment buildings, according to Pickett Prouse, the firm representing the property’s seller. The rooms will range from one, two and three-bedroom luxury apartment units averaging 835 square feet.
“The redevelopment of this property has been a long time coming for the property owner, nearby businesses and residents,” said Brad Gregory of Pickett Sprouse.
Multiple owners
The hotel was a Holiday Inn in the 1970s and exchanged owners and names in the past 30 years. It closed its doors in 2000 when it was a DoubleTree hotel. It was purchased for $1.4 million in an auction in 2010 by hotel investor Balbir Brar.
Brar told WRAL in an interview then that he envisioned a “state-of-the-art” hotel, but gave up on the plans years later and sought to redevelop it since.
Developers discussed in 2019 neighborhood meetings building a new street to help traffic flow on Capital Boulevard and the neighborhood that the hotel surrounds. They also spoke of plans to have rent prices for its apartments to be within 80% of the area’s median income, The N&O reported previously.
Real estate firm Lee Associates, who represented Alliance Residential Co. in the property purchase, did not respond to The News & Observer’s phone message for additional details.
This is Alliance Residential Co.’s second redevelopment project in the Triangle. They bought the former Crown Park Hotel on Willard Street in Durham in 2017 and later turned it into a luxury apartment building called The Broadstone Durham.
This story was originally published January 12, 2021 at 4:10 PM.
