Development Beat: New Building Report

Print More

Brighton Pointe Phase I

Brought to you by Rufty-Peedin Design Build

Monday, June 6, 2016

The lives of the residents of the Brighton Pointe Apartments are about to get a little brighter, thanks to the addition of a new 88-unit senior housing complex on the adjoining property.

The Brighton Pointe Apartments are located in far North Raleigh

The Brighton Pointe Apartments are located in far North Raleigh, indicated by the white dot inside the purple circle

Technically considered phase II of the Brighton Pointe development, this new three-story, 88-unit building has received funding from both the City — $950,000 — and the State — $610,000 — as an affordable housing development.

The Brighton Pointe complex itself is located in far North Raleigh, past the 540 beltline off Louisburg Road.

Weaver Cooke Construction will be handling the $6,917,777 construction of the new, phase II building.

Phase I, built in 2013, is an 80-unit complex geared toward families making 60 percent of the area median income. While also the recipient of government moneys, we couldn’t find out exactly how much money they got from the State in 2012; we just know they were funded. For its part, the City kicked in $1.36 million to help fund the four-building, three-story complex.

Both phases of Brighton Pointe are being developed by the  Ohio-based NRP Group, which acquired the 7.3 acre site in 2013. Care of Globe Street (registration required, or I’d link the article), here’s a little more about NRP: “Ranked the Number One Affordable Housing Developer by Apartment Finance Today, NRP has been known in that sector for decades. It has only been for the past six years that it has taken its expertise into the market-rate side, and today the goal is to maintain a 50/50 ratio of projects, topping out at 16 annually.”

Impressive! NRP was also a dual winner at the prestigious NAHB Pillars of the Industry Awards, taking home the prizes for Best Garden Apartment Community and Best Multifamily Development.

Brighton Pointe Phase I

Brighton Pointe Phase I

That all probably bodes well for both the current residents of Brighton Pointe and the future residents of Brighton Pointe II.

What doesn’t bode quite so well are the accolades of Pollack Shores Real Estate Group, the developer of this week’s other new building project.

On its website, Pollack boasts of being a “2014 winner of Atlanta’s 101 Best & Brightest companies to work for.”

OK, so it’s not quite the same as a “Best Garden Apartment” from the NAHB, but it’s still something, right? Well…we did some digging. As it turns out, everyone on that Best & Brightest list is declared a “winner;” the ranking determination appears to be strictly alphabetical. 12 of the 101 companies are listed as elite winners, but Pollack Shores is not among them. Pollack Shores also appears to have been excluded from the 2015 list.

Moving on: Pollack Shores is developing the Corporate Center Apartments, which received permits just last week, in West Raleigh not far from the PNC Arena.

The Corporate Center Apartments — so named after the largest nearby road, and the depressing fact that it backs up to a large corporate center — was listed on planning documents filed last year as a 316-unit, 285,000 square-foot complex.

The plans, drawn up by Kimley Horne by Pollack Shores Real Estate Group, depict the complex as one spread across eight buildings on a now-vacant 15.8 acre lot.

The Corporate Center Apartments

City of Raleigh

The Corporate Center Apartments

Of the 316 proposed units, 142 are one-bedroom, 142 are two-bedroom and 43 are three-bedroom. The apartments will be accompanied by 524 parking spaces, a selection of garage spaces, a courtyard area, two stormwater rain gardens and a stormwater retention pond.

Despite its Corporate Center name, the address listed for the complex is actually 1229 Nowell Road, near its intersection with Conference Drive. Corporate Center Drive is separated from the lot in question by a small, unnamed road and a giant parking lot.

The twelve permits issued for this development last week were all granted to the Wieland-Davco Corporation based out of Michigan. Four of them were related to building parking decks. While the grand total of the project costs for each of these 12 permits was $23,396,508, it’s possible this includes “duplicate” numbers. While there are eight residential buildings planned for this complex, we were unable to verify whether the four parking garage permits were all for separate decks.

The project’s developer, Pollack, is responsible for a number of properties in Florida, which may help this new complex appeal to the Glenwood South crowd, as well as one in Atlanta and another in Nashville. Their complexes look nice enough and have decent enough reviews, and we’re sure this one will be no exception. But they really should’ve come up with a better name; Corporate Center Apartments sounds like the name of the place Peter from Office Space was living before he got hypnotized and met Jennifer Anniston. Although I doubt the people at CC will be lucky to have a through-the-wall neighbor as cool as Lawrence.