Friday, March 13, 2015
This appears to be the week for paired up projects — yesterday it was two Food Lions and another set of grocery stores, today we’ve got a pair of jobs at the Crabtree Valley Mall and another set at the Greystone Village Shopping Center.
The first job at Crabtree will be an expansion of the Sears parking deck, a $750,000 job being handled by Wakefield Associates. Although the Sears parking deck is sort of in the back of the mall, this reporter sincerely hopes the expansion will somehow tie together the Sears parking deck with the little parking area located to the left of the mall’s main upper entrance, near the Starbucks and PF Changs. That too-small area is currently a torturous dead-end that can trap unwitting shoppers and expand their search for parking by almost 20 minutes on a busy day due to traffic.
The Victoria’s Secret at Crabtree will apparently be moving into a new space, hopefully giving guys a lot more space to stand around and try not to look like creeps while their girlfriends and wives search for new unmentionables. Horizon Retail Construction will be undertaking the $600,000 job.
The Greystone Village jobs appear to be an odd fit at first — Mathnasium and Bottle Revolution, a craft-beer bottle shop. But really, what takes the edge off some long division like a sixer of Puck, the Beer? Unfortunately, Mathnasium seems to cater mostly to high school students, who really don’t have any business drinking craft beer. Kids: if it doesn’t come in a bottle that you can top off with some water to make it appear untouched, then you probably shouldn’t be messing with it.
AIM Construction will be handling the slightly larger $10,000 Mathnasium project, while Taylor Building will undertake the laughably small $160 Bottle Revolution project.
Bing Maps
Greystone Village Shopping Center
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Another week, and another round of Food Lions are getting renovated — but this time they’re not alone, as two other big grocers are throwing their hats into the renovation ring.
The two Food Lions in question are at 1030 North Rogers Lane in Southeast Raleigh and 9101 Leesville Road in North Raleigh.
The North Rogers renovation is being handled by a company called STH and Associates (not Sith, which would admittedly be a lot cooler) for $464,464.
Wake County
The Food Lion on Rogers Lane
Quality Builders will be tackling the North Raleigh location at a cost of $464,464.
This reporter has actually had the good fortune to experience a Food Lion renovation first hand, as his home store at Capital Crossing is currently in the midst of its own revamp. The only downside? The store closes two hours earlier each night, and the floor (what hasn’t been torn up) is packed by a huge team of employees busy shuttling stock to new and exotic locations throughout the store. But hey, at least they’re still open.
The Whole Foods on Wade Avenue is also set for renovation, although unlike the Food Lions, this is only a bathroom renovation. Hero Tile will be handling the project for $22,650. A sign posted on the men’s room door at this Whole Foods indicates that a port-a-potty will be installed outside for the duration of the renovation. For some reason, Whole Foods and port-a-pottys just don’t seem to mix, so we’ll have to see how this plays out.
The final grocery renovation is also the biggest — the Lowes Foods at 8440 Louisburg is getting a huge overhaul courtesy of GL Wilson. The renovation is listed on permits as costing $1,969,744. Considering the low margin on which most grocery stores operate, this is pretty significant.
Wake County
This Lowes Food is getting a significant renovation
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
In early January, demolition permits were issued for an office building at 2305 Stafford Avenue, is a 2,906 square foot single-story structure that was built in 1955 and last valued by the county at $285,921.CC Holcomb Demolition tore it down for $12,500.
James Borden / Raleigh Public Record
The former home of Raleigh’s “Dentist Angel”
At the time, we declined to speculate on what would be coming in its place, assuming any future plans were, well, in the future. We assumed wrong.
On March 4, $1.1 million in permits were issued to McDonald-York Construction for a new, 3,357 square foot office that will be built in its place.
The original structure, which over the years was home to everything from the Triangle Telecommunications Center to a dentist’s office, was in a sad state of disrepair before being torn down. Judging by a photo taken by Wake County in 1995, it was in this state for quite some time.
However, a gloomy exterior belied the good that was done inside, as the dentist who once owned the building, Dr. Russell Walton, was renowned as Raleigh’s “dentist angel” — providing low or no cost services for the indigent, and often handed out fruit he’d grown himself to his patients.
The property is now owned by an LLC known as Smiling Mind, although that entity’s registered agent is none other than Mary Walton, DDS, Russell’s daughter, who followed in her father’s professional footsteps.
The building, too, will follow in the footsteps of that which came before it, as its name on the permits is listed as “Walton Orthodontics.”
Dr. Mary Walton currently operates out of a practice in Cary near Rex Healthcare. The Stafford Avenue location is located near Cameron Village — making it, to this reporter’s eye, a much more desirable location.
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Welcome back to Teardown Tuesday here on the Development Beat, where we finally say goodbye to a Western Boulevard landmark.
That’s right. We’re talking about the Pizza Hut. After closing its doors at the end of June, the building sat empty as the owner looked to lease or sell the space. On January 22, the property was sold to an LLC that traces back to the AAA Carolina Motor Club.
On March 3, a $30,000 demolition permit for the former restaurant was issued to Williams Realty and Building Company.
Originally built in 1973, the restaurant remained one of the last sit-down Pizza Huts in the area before closing this past summer. Located inside the beltline and along a heavily trafficked route into the city that some refer to as the “(Western) Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” the building’s unique architecture has always stood out to passing motorists.
It remains to be seen what AAA will do with the property; an existing Jiffy Lube sits next door, so it might make for an odd space for a car care service center.
Either way, sit back and enjoy this gallery of photos this reporter took back in June but never published.
Monday, March 9, 2015
Welcome back to another week of the Development Beat, where we’re going to kick things off with a quick round of By The Numbers — a snapshot of last month’s permit and real estate transaction data.
February was another banner month for Raleigh’s burgeoning construction and development community. Both the overall number of and total value of real estate transactions & permits issued exceeded last year’s, in some cases by quite a healthy margin.
There were 604 real estate transactions in February 2015, compared to 489 in 2014. The total value of this February’s sales was $168,854,800, $20 million higher than last year.
WikiMedia
The CapTrust Tower at North Hills
The total value would’ve been a five-year high but for 2013, when that number peaked at more than $234 million. This incredibly high number — nearly twice the five year average — can largely be attributed to one single transaction. That sale? 4208 Six Forks Road, the CapTrust Tower at North Hills, for $98 million.
The largest transaction for February 2015 was in the comparatively small amount of $7,999,200, for a Walgreen’s in south Raleigh on Fayetteville Road. The pharmacy was built in 2012.
February’s permit numbers also set a five year high at 506, and the overall value at $124,006,483 was the highest since 2010. The largest permitted job for the month was the $16,026,161 renovation of the former Wake County Public Schools headquarters building at 3600 Wake Forest Road by Local Government Federal Credit Union.
