Thursday, July 2, 2015
Good news folks — there won’t be a new issue of the Development Beat tomorrow. Fourth of July holiday and all that.
Google Earth
This warehouse structure will soon be adding solar panels to its roof
Tragically the biggest renovation permits from last week were for yet another Food Lion fix-up and a not-so-interesting office fit-out.
The third biggest project was kind of cool though — the $165,027 installation of a rooftop photovoltaic system to a warehouse structure at 2424 Crabtree Boulevard. Sundance Power Systems will be handling the job for building owners Michael & Maureen Sabagh, who purchased the property in 2010.
Also of significance last week were a trio of permits issued to Capital Area Soccer Club for their facility on Woman’s Club Drive. The permits, each listed at a cost of $140,000 were for the south, west and east restroom shelters. Zachary Michael, Inc. will be handling the work.
Although college students are not, in my experience, big fans of spirituous liquors, the small percentage of NC State students who do like to imbibe from time to time will be pleased to know that the ABC Store at the Avent Ferry Shopping Center will be expanding into the space next door, increasing the size of its sales area from around 1,920 square feet to 4,000.
York Properties
The ABC Store at Mission Valley
I expect this means the variety of booze sold at the store will grow as well, as I remember the place seemed to mostly specialize in low and mid-grade firewater. Which isn’t something I’m complaining about.
The ABC job will be handled by Diamond Contracting for $120,000. We hear the owner wears a jewel-encrusted hard-hat to pre-bid meetings as a way of intimidating the other general contractors. In this case, at least, it must have worked.
James Borden
Artist’s rendering of the jewel-encrusted hard-hat
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
The Maystone at Wakefield, a 360-unit apartment community located off Falls of Neuse Road, will soon be welcoming a new self-storage and wine-storage facility to its premises.
Wake County
Site work being done for the Maystone in December 2014
Bee Safe Storage is being developed by the Carroll Companies, which is also responsible for the Maystone itself.
According to a news release issued last year, the facility will be a 280-unit, three-story structure with a brick facade. It will also purportedly feature 60 climate and humidity controlled units for wine storage.
The permits verify some of this; it’s listed as a 65,316 square-foot, 3-story structure. Plenty of room for 280 units.
CubeSmart
A Bee Safe facility in Greensboro
Bee Safe currently operates two facilities in Greensboro, and maintains a five-star rating on the website “Cube Smart.” Although it should be noted, there is only one review, and, well … it kind of smells like a plant. But I could be wrong. I’m just saying, even if I were the type who was inclined to leave online reviews of businesses (I’m not) I certainly wouldn’t be writing things like this:
“Ayana assisted me with the movers during what was one of the toughest moves of my life and her support and advice that she gave me helped me tremendously.”
What??
Melissa85, if this was a real review, than I’m sorry for singling out “one of the toughest moves of your life,” but how many difficult moves have you been through that you have to describe this particular one as “one of” the toughest? I’ve moved more times than I can count in my 32 years, and none of them were particularly difficult. Weird.
That being said, Bee Safe’s logo is totally adorable, so for that alone, they deserve a five-star rating.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
It’s Teardown Tuesday again, and we’re facing the same problem we’ve encountered three weeks running now — nothing but single family demo projects. I know some of you might argue it’s a good thing that less of Raleigh’s history is being torn down, but I think I proved last week that for the most part, commercial demolitions are a good thing.
Unfortunately we don’t have any commercial demo projects to look at, and I already pulled the cop-out “Let’s take a retrospective look at demolition projects” move last week, so instead, we’ll get up close and personal with the three new residential teardown jobs permitted last week.
Wake County
This house is coming down
Of the three homes, only one is not owned by a corporation. It is also, at $9,500, the priciest demolition of the week. Built in 1948 and located on Mills Road off Wake Forest, and, incidentally, not far from the subject of our current photo contest, this 1,287 square-foot structure will be torn down by Aspire Homes.
CSL Inc. will be handling the two other projects. The first, a tiny, 802-square foot structure, was until recently owned by the Shiloh Presbyterian Church. Located on Georgetown Road of E. Whitaker Mill, it was purchased by Dixon/Kirby Company on June 12. Demo permits were issued June 24 in the amount of $4,000.
Wake County
So tiny!
The final residential demolition permitted last week was one we could oddly enough not locate on Wake County’s deed registry, although Google Maps had no problem turning it up, so at least we know it exists. Located on Reynolds Road near North Hills, this house will be torn down at a cost of $9,000.
Hopefully we’ll have some better projects to talk about next week, or it might be time to seriously reconsider this whole Teardown Tuesday. I hope not, but, worst case scenario, maybe it’ll just be an alternate for when there’s nothing worth writing about. Terrific Tuesday; maybe, focusing on a particularly interesting Raleigh building? We’ll see.
Monday, June 29, 2015
Welcome back to another week of the Development Beat. Regular readers may notice something slightly different today — chiefly, that my ugly mug is now staring back at you from the sidebar. You’re welcome.
The main reason for the change, other than stoking my ego, was to allow for some more flexibility in the layout of these posts. Also, this will make it easier for businesses to sponsor specific types or series of posts. In the meantime, if there’s something you’d like to see on the sidebar, let me know. It’s pretty barren right now.
Moving on. The biggest job of the week was the permitting of two new buildings at Wake Tech’s north campus off Louisburg Road. Totaling more than $27.8 million, the construction of both buildings will be handled by a team comprised of Balfour Beatty and Clancy & Theys Construction. Although only Balfour is listed on the permits, Wake Tech’s website lists both as making up the team handling both buildings.
James Borden / Raleigh Public Record
A previous construction project at Wake Tech
The larger of the two structures is described on the permits as the 90,779 square-foot “Building M” — a multipurpose sports facility. It accounts for $22 million of the overall project cost.
This sports facility was designed by Clark Nexsen Architects, a firm that has done a number of projects at Wake Tech to date, including the health sciences building, buildings A, B, D, E & F and perhaps most notably, a bus shelter.
Clark Nexsen Architecture
If they can make a bus shelter look cool…
I’m a big fan of the sleek, modern approach they’ve taken with the rest of their work on campus, and it’s likely the new facility will bear a similar look and feel as their other work.
The second, smaller building being done at Wake right now is described on the permits as the 26,767 square-foot “Building L” — a skilled trades building. Its total cost on the permits is listed at the relative bargain rate of $5 million.
Building L was designed by LS3P Associates, a firm that has done work for a number of educational institutions throughout the area. One of their projects the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, at NC State, a collaborative effort between NCSU and Wake County Schools located on State’s Centennial Campus.
The institute, like the Friday Center at UNC Chapel Hill, was named after William and Ida Friday, two North Carolinians who “devoted their lives to enhancing and improving the lives of their fellow citizens through their work in education, the arts, and public health.”
That’s nice, but honestly, I wouldn’t mind living in a world where NC State had instead used the name “Friday” for one of their criminal justice buildings, in honor of the greatest cop of all time, Sergeant Joe Friday. They could even carve the motto “Just the Facts” into the frieze beneath the building’s name, although, like most quotes associated with famous pieces of pop-culture, this one is slightly apocryphal.
This is why smoking is banned on TV now, because people like Jack Webb made it look way too cool
What Friday (played by the late, great Jack Webb) usually said was something along the lines of “All we want/know are the facts, ma’am.” Just like the classic “Play it again, Sam” line oft-attributed to Casablanca (Rick actually says “You played it for her, now play it for me. If she can take it I can!”) this famous catchphrase never appeared in the show.
Sorry. But it’s rare I get to shoehorn my love for both Casablanca and Dragnet into one single post, so I had to go for it.
