City Councilors this week wasted no time scheduling public hearings for a set of rezoning projects, mostly for new residential development.
Councilor and Mayor Pro Tem John Odom grouped the four rezoning cases into two sets.
The first were both residential projects in northeast Raleigh, one on Forestville Road and the other on Louisburg Road. Council approved scheduling a public hearing for each project at its November 4 meeting.
The second set included another residential development along with a new office development. The residential project, located in northwest Raleigh on Globe Road, is technically located in Durham County.
James Borden / Raleigh Public Record
New office space could be coming to Sandy Forks Road
As previously reported, the land would have to be annexed by the city of Raleigh. When the project appeared before the planning commission, Adam Terando was the lone voice against it, citing a concern about a lack of connectivity to the surrounding area.
Council approved a public hearing to be held November 4 for the project.
The office development would be housed on what are now two residential properties on Sandy Forks Road near Spring Forest. The public hearing for this project was also scheduled for November 4.
Councilors also heard two special items cases. The first would convert the first floor of an office building on Century Drive into retail space. Council approved the request.
The second case dealt with amendments to the Comprehensive Plan. Although the amendments were initially recommended for approval by city staff, a decision by the Town of Knightdale to retain an existing transportation plan for the area in question led to council voting against the amendment.
By The Numbers
Thanks to a reader suggestion, this section will now also include year-to-date information on real-estate transactions and issued construction permits within the city of Raleigh. In previous editions, the analysis was limited to month-to-month comparisons, which failed to paint a complete picture of the current state of development.
Of course, this new data means even more possibilities for errors and mistakes, although this reporter was extra careful this month. Any readers who catch a mistake and bring it to our attention will be berated thanked in the comments section.
September 2014 saw a total of 533 permits issued for residential and non-residential construction. Although this is not an astronomical figure, there were a number of very valuable jobs among them, which brought the total value for the month’s permits to a whopping $167 million.
The largest of these permits was, not surprisingly, for the $44 million construction of North Hills Tower II. The smallest of these was for a $100 hot tub project at a house inside the beltline.
So how did this month’s numbers stack up? The number of permits was higher than the 5-year average for September of 493, but was topped just last year, when a total of 609 were issued. The total value of these permits, however, was not only higher than the previous average of $93 million, but it managed to surpass the next-highest year (2012) by almost $75 million.
Year-to-date numbers for both categories are looking good as well. 2014 has seen a total of 4,757 permits issued, with a combined value of $1.1 billion. The previous five-year averages were 4,554 and around $890 million.
Real estate numbers fared even better, with 841 transactions in September adding up to a combined value of almost $495 million. The previous five-year averages for September were 534 and $178 million respectively. No previous year has topped either the number or value of these transactions.
Not surprisingly, 2014’s year-to-date numbers are also chugging along at a much greater pace than years past. Through September, there were a total of 7,616 transactions with a combined value of more than $4.5 billion. That’s about four times the value of all the construction permits issued this year.
The previous year-to-date average for transactions was 4,815 with a value of $1.9 billion. 2014’s year-to-date numbers are higher than any other in the past five.
