Raleigh’s skyline is getting a new addition. A $175M downtown high-rise is in the works
The latest high-rise planned for Downtown Raleigh will bring a towering 20-story addition to the skyline with more housing and office space for the City of Oaks’ core.
A partnership of both local and out-of-state developers plans to erect the 400H tower, named for its 400 Hillsborough St. location. The building will have 11 apartment levels, five office floors, a building amenity floor, ground-level retail space and a built-in parking deck.
The high-rise, in the works for several years, also will have an outdoor pool and lounge on its ninth floor. It will occupy about 1.2 acres of space, which currently is home to unoccupied buildings between North West and North Harrington streets, across from State of Beer and the Second Empire Restaurant and Tavern.
“This tower is really at the nexus of downtown,” said Woody Coley, Senior Vice President at Trammell Crow Co., whose company is part of the team behind the project.
The mixed-use tower, valued at around $175 million, will include 150,000 square feet of office space, 242 luxury apartment units and 16,000 square feet of retail, with corporate branding opportunities available for the building’s exterior. More details and final designs of the tower will be revealed as plans progress.
It’s the first real estate undertaking in the Triangle for Dallas-based national developer Trammell Crow Co. and Los Angeles-based joint development venture AECOM-Canyon Partners, including High Street Residential, a subsidiary of Trammell Crow
These firms partnered with Triangle developer HM Partners, who began the preliminary work on the project. The principal architect is global firm Gensler, who is behind the designs of several local developments.
The 400H project is beginning construction soon to meet residential and office leasing demand, Trammell Crow developers said in an interview.
Project years in the making
The developers said they’re impressed by downtown Raleigh bouncing back economically from the pandemic and are making this investment based on the optimism of the Triangle’s future economic prospects, Coley said.
Completion is projected for the fall of 2023, an earlier timeframe than expected, thanks to site approvals and permits being taken care of over the last five years by HM Partners.
“This was back in 2016, when I had thought this really would be a heck of a site for a building,” Gregg Sandreuter, managing partner at HM Partners, told The N&O.
Sandreuter was able to get the land under contract then and through several site and design approval processes in the following years. During that time, conversations began with Trammell Crow Co. and AECOM-Canyon for the 400H tower, whose plans were slowed down by the pandemic.
“It’s a complicated design, and it’s a complicated financial structure to get financed,” said Sandreuter. “I think a lot of folks outside the industry don’t realize sometimes how long it takes to get to the point where you just have the permits and then you’ve got to make sure you can raise the money. So, you kind of look at the timeline of this and it really borders almost seven years between when I first started and when we plan to open.”
With the previous planning and approval for the site, developers hope to have a future competitive edge in commercial and residential real estate in downtown.
County records list the tower’s future site as being sold to an LLC owned by the developers for a cumulative price of $15,879,000.
Earlier this year, HM Partners announced their plans for the redevelopment of the site of Goodnights Comedy Club into a new mid-rise residential building on the corner W. Morgan Street and Tryon Hill Drive.
This story was originally published August 18, 2021 at 5:45 AM.
