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Friday, October 21, 2016
It’s been a slow week in the world of Raleigh renovation projects.
When we applied our patented formula to last week’s permits, which helps guide our arbitrary and capricious decisions on which projects to cover here in Renovation Roundup, only two jobs jumped out. The minimum is usually around five.
First up we’ve got a small expansion of the Raleigh Social Event Center, located in the Starmount Shopping Center on Capital Boulevard just north of the beltline.
Oddly enough, we’d briefly mentioned the Social Event Center way back in January 2015, when it received a $3,000 permit for repairs to its handicap bathroom. Last week, it received $3,000 in permits for a “recombining [of] suites.”
The Raleigh Social Event Center
A quick primer on the set-up of Starmount: it address is 3300 Capital, and each business has its own individual address/suite number. For example, the hardware store Harbor Freight Tools is listed at 3302 Capital. The address for the Raleigh Social Event Center, however, is 3316-I. Apparently, “3316 Capital Boulevard” is actually split into fifteen separate suites, A-O.
The Social Center appears to occupy both suites I & J, while the adjacent suites G & H, both sit vacant. This is fascinating, right? Don’t worry, we’re just getting warmed up.
While we were too lazy to find out how significant of an expansion this is — at $3,000, we’d assume “not very,” we did want to find out a little more about what it is, exactly, that goes inside the Raleigh Social Event Center.
Despite having a name that reminds us of The Legitimate Businessman’s Social Club from The Simpsons, it turns out the Raleigh Social Event Center is just that: a center located in Raleigh where people can hold events and socialize together.
Google helped turn up some of RSEC’s past clients, the most interesting of which was the Raleigh debut of Diamond Platinumz, aka Naseeb Abdul Juma, who Wikipedia describes as “a Bongo Flava recording artist and singer from Tanzania.”
I’d never heard of Mr. Platinumz, or the Bongo Flava genre of music before; fortunately, a music video for his most popular song, Number One, is available on YouTube.
We’re assuming most of our readers didn’t make it out to his show last October, but I imagine those who did had a great time, even if they didn’t understand Swahili.
The renovation/expansion project for RSEC that received permits last week will be handled by Rising Sun Construction.
The other renovation job from last week that jumped out at us was for a retail space located at 713 Tucker Street, on the ground floor of an apartment complex with a preposterously-pretentious name: The Devon Seven12. Give me a break.
tfw you realize your stock photo is being used to sell a place named “Seven12”
We tried — not too hard, like we said, we’re pretty lazy here — to find out which of the retail shops in the building will be renovated, but like the RSEC job, this appears to be relatively minor, so it doesn’t really matter. Our best guess is the Tutu School of Raleigh.
Like the Raleigh Social Event Center, its name belies its function: it’s a dance school/studio for children. According to the Tutu School’s website, it looks like they rent the space out for parties, but it doesn’t look like Diamond Platinumz has played there yet. Too bad.
Anyway, the renovation at 713 Tucker will be handled by Axiom Green Build.
Like we said: it was a slow week. There were 17 other renovation permits to come out, but they were mostly interior office renovations or things like loading dock repairs. If you think we should spend more time touching on all those than going on about a Tanzanian Bongo Flava artist, please let us know in the comments.
