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Friday, March 11, 2016
The week of February 28 was an expensive one when it came to renovation permits: the combined value of the top three jobs alone is more than $3 million.
Almost half of that was for a renovation of the Rite Aid at Cameron Village. First built in 1958, the 38,974 square-foot structure has undergone significant renovations and expansions over the years, most recently in 1997.
I do remember thinking that the location felt a bit…old, the last time I was there, but that didn’t seem to have any effect on the unending flow of customers. Rite Aid shouldn’t bother to fix up the store; it’s good enough. What they need to do is build a bigger parking lot. It’s a complete nightmare; worse than the Harris Teeter.
MP Contracting and Consulting will be handling the $1.4 million job.
Next up we’ve got an always exciting tenant fit-out, although this one is for the new Tower II at North Hills, so it’s kinda cool. KPMG LLP, an “audit, tax and advisory” firm, will be occupying 11,224 square feet of space.
It seems like it was only yesterday that we were writing about the initial building permits being filed for Tower II out there in “Midtown” Raleigh, but it was actually way back when in September of 2014. A different time.
James Borden / Raleigh Public Record
Work had just gotten underway at the site of North Hills Tower II in September 2014
Next up we’ve got a series of permits issued for a space at 1700 Glenwood Avenue. Goodnight Raleigh did an interesting writeup about five years ago on this space, the former “Audio Buys” building located at Five Points.
The opening line from author John Morris was my favorite, so I’ll just quote it here:
Disliked by many Raleigh residents, the long-vacant Audio Buys Building always seemed a bit odd in the Five Points neighborhood context. Detractors now get their wish as it appears the building is in the early stages of demolition or renovation.
A recent-looking brochure for the space from Brown Commercial Realty advertises the entire building as being available for lease; the three $495,000 permits issued February 29 to Riley-Lewis Contracting only specifically indicate work for a second-floor tenant. The square footage listed on said permits is also a bit weird; 2,604, 860, 4,050. The brochure from Brown says there’s 3,800 square feet on the second floor and 2,000 on the first.
Wake County
1700 Glenwood Avenue
In addition to renovating the existing space, Riley-Lewis also received permits to install a stair and elevator shaft.
Outside of these big-dollar permits, there wasn’t a whole lot of interesting renovations happening last week: a bunch of office spaces and suites, some minor retail alterations, etc. But there was a relatively small $10,000 permit issued February 29 that happened to catch my eye: a bleacher installation for the “Universoul Circus” at the Walnut Creek Amphitheater.
That was weird; I don’t usually see permits issued when say, the State Fair comes to town. And what was the Universoul Circus? Some kind soul-music concert? A religious-themed circus?
Well, the second guess was a little closer: it is a circus, one that judging by their website contains that act where a bunch of motocross riders drive around in a steel cage. That’s always cool. I’d link to the site and list a few other things the circus offers, but said site started auto-playing really obnoxious music about 30 seconds after it loaded, so I X’d it out. Obnoxious!
But I did manage to grab this screenshot first. The circus will be in town March 8-13.
