Development Beat: Renovation Roundup

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James Borden/Raleigh Public Record

Friday, February 12, 2016

robertstackupdateBefore we start today’s post, I wanted to give a quick update on one of the teardowns mentioned on Tuesday: the Uncle Bob’s Self Storage facility on South Wilmington Street.

As we noted, the entire facility is not being torn down, and the company’s VP of Community Affairs was kind enough to reach out and let us known what they’ve got planned for the future.

The facility will be adding a new, 36,000 square-foot three-story structure that will offer climate-control and video surveillance and is described by Piegza as “state-of-the-art.”  It was designed by Stinard Architecture out of Atlanta.

Before McKenna Construction can demolish the old buildings and build the new one, Uncle Bob’s will have to finish relocating the owners of the existing rental units. Piegza said they hope to begin work on the new building in March. Once permits are issued, we’ll report on it here.

So: the largest renovation projects from last week were both at the Wells Fargo Capitol Center at 150 Fayetteville Street in downtown Raleigh.

wells fargo ground up

James Borden / Raleigh Public Record

The Wells Fargo Center

The two permits, valued at $1,108,797 and $907,979, were for phases one and three of an office renovation project for Brooks Pierce. Phase two wasn’t quite as expensive; at $146,822, it was only the tenth priciest renovation of the week.

Brooks Pierce is a high-end law firm that deals in industries ranging from advertising to transportation. Barringer Construction will be handling work on the more than 75,000 square feet of office space occupied by the firm.

Next up is another downtown office job, this time for Infusion at Charter Square, located at 555 Fayetteville, not far from the aforementioned Capitol Center. The $600,000 renovation of the 4,876 square foot space will be done by Inner-Tech Inc.

Charter Square's glass windows do not absorb heat, making it much easier to cool and light the building

James Borden

Charter Square’s glass windows do not absorb heat, making it much easier to cool and light the building

All in all it was a pretty slow, uninteresting week for renovation projects. A few more office renovations, a couple of reroofings, another new laundry room at an apartment complex, etc. Boring.

There were two fire sprinkler jobs that were somewhat of note though: Pinetop Distillery, located at 1053 East Whitaker Mill Road, will be paying Modern South Construction $70,000 for a reworking of their sprinkler system. According to their website, Pinetop will manufacture Moonshine, Gin and Vodka. Probably a good idea to have some fire-prevention measures in effect when you’re cooking up that stuff.

Next up is a place named, ironically, Burn Boot Camp, where a $60,000 alteration is described as “verify — no sprinkler work.” When Burn is in your title, you better believe you should make sure you have a good sprinkler system in place, even if that burn is referring to calories rather than arson.

It seems like there was a time when we were writing about, or at least seeing, a constant stream of Food Lion renovation projects. Nearly every one of the chain’s Raleigh stores was upgraded in the past year; although the store layouts still vary by location, some of the major changes: new checkout lanes, a wide center aisle for chips and soda and so on can be seen at nearly every store.

So it was interesting to see a $10,000 job at the Food Lion located at 1601 Cross Links Road; hadn’t all these places just been renovated? Did they miss something? What broke?

Apparently, the $10,000 is being spent on a new Deli hood. Walter B. Davis Company will be handling the installation. Like we said: it was a pretty boring week!