Development Beat

Friday, August 21, 2015

Yesterday we touched on about a third of the largest recent renovation projects, or around 10 percent of the total recent nonresidential renovation permits issued. Today, we’ll try and get to everything else worth talking about.

First, let’s look at the smallest remodel permit issued in the last few weeks: a $1 (according to county records) job at Cameron Village’s Johnson Lambe. MP Contracting and Consulting will be handling this micro-job, and rumor has it Johnson Lambe will be awarding them a trophy for the smallest commercial renovation job of July.

But back to the big leagues – while we covered the most expensive renovations yesterday, next up on that list was a $270,000 roof replacement for the Public Storage facility located at 1400 Capital Boulevard. Nations Roof of Carolina will be handling the work, and hopefully, handling it pretty quickly since the whole concept of renting a storage unit breaks down pretty quick when there’s no roof to keep it safe.

Also receiving permits recently were a pair of automotive projects: a $104,703, 800 square-foot expansion at Fred Anderson Nissan on Glenwood, and a $90,000 renovation of a 7,876 square-foot space for Enterprise Rent-a-Car on Hargrove Road. Choate Construction will be handling the Fred Anderson job, and Bobbit Design Build will be doing the one for Enterprise. While this reporter has never utilized the services of Enterprise, he did purchase a car from Fred Anderson late last year, and in good conscience, cannot recommend the place.

While 616 Oberlin/Six Sixteen was recently issued a trio of new building permits, it was also the recipient of around $500,000 in renovation permits issued July 31. The ten separate $50,000 permits are all described as “exterior roofing, siding, painting, handrails.” Wilkinson Construction will be handling this “miscellaneous, building-wide exterior renovation” project.

Much more exciting than that, however, 616 received permits on August 12 for an $83,000 “pool amenity.” Like most of the other work at 616 Oberlin, this is being overseen by the developer, rather than an outsider like Wilkinson.

616 wasn’t the only ongoing project to receive pool permits recently though, as the Aloft Hotel on Hillsborough Street was issued one in the amount of $70,500 for its pool and deck. Hot Springs Pools, LLC, will be handling the construction.

Finally, and really only because I mentioned it in the teaser yesterday, Advanced Construction will be handling a $154,865 alteration of a 7,487 square-foot space at the Triangle Town Center Mall for Rue 21. Rue 21 is not to be confused with Forever 21, although both are fashionable clothing stores aimed at a young demographic, although one seems to celebrate that year at which Americans come of legal drinking age, the other, more wisely, implies there will be a lot of regret associated with this newfound privilege.

Speaking of drinking: be sure to come out for Trivia Night this Sunday at North Street Beer. I’ll once again be hosting four rounds of trivia, including one focused specifically on Raleigh and the surrounding area. There’s prizes, of course, plus tons of rare beers and free popcorn and trail mix. And you can bring your pets along with you too, if that’s your thing, although my cats won’t be making the trek this week. Sorry.

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Since we last looked at renovation permits in this space (basically the last week of July through last Friday), 72 of them have been issued by the city of Raleigh.

Of those, 19 were for more than $100,000. The average of all 72 permits was around $167,000, but the median was significantly lower, at $48,750. This reporter may or may not have only recently learned how to properly calculate medians, and may or may not find it fascinating.

Even if we just touched on the most significant of the “big 19” from the last few weeks, it would take up more space than we aim to fill on a daily basis. So the plan is to try and split as many of them as possible between today and tomorrow’s editions of the Development Beat.

The biggest of the 19 was a $5.9 million permit for interior renovations at the Duke Energy Center. The work has been reported to include new lighting, carpeting, fire protection systems, a reworked concession stand and is part of a planned $10 million renovation of the center that will also include exterior work. TA Loving will be handling this portion.

Next up is another interior renovation, this time at Wake Health Services for $727,488. This second-floor remodel on Rock Quarry Road will be handled by Balfour Beatty Construction.

Blackjack Brewery on East Whitaker Mill Road received two permits totaling $800,000 on July 31. The work is described as a 7,273 square-foot renovation of the loading dock office there, and an 649 square-foot addition for the loading dock ramp and exterior stairs. Modern South Construction will be handling both jobs, although we kind of wish a company with a name like Aces Alterations, Kings Remodeling, Queens Construction or Jack of All Trades was handling them instead so we could make some kind of blackjack/Blackjack joke. Oh well.

Another Raleigh brewing company also received permits recently: on August 6, Trophy Brewing Company was issued $300,000 for an 880 square-foot change of use to “Trophy Brewing Taproom” for a property at 656 Maywood Avenue. The Raleigh Construction Company, which we’d venture a guess is headquartered locally, will be handling the job.

Anyone looking to sweat out the booze from a night spent at one of Raleigh’s many local breweries will be pleased to know that the Corepower Yoga Studio on Woodburn Road recently received $315,000 worth of interior completion permits for a space owned by Temple Baptist Church. Work on the 5,527 square-foot space will be handled by Southeastern Utility Construction.

Since the sixth largest job is yet another Food Lion renovation, we’ll go ahead and just call it a day here. Coming up tomorrow, we’ll be looking at renovations for everywhere from Public Storage to the Triangle Town Center to Fred Anderson Nissan. Try to contain your excitement as best you can until then.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

In case you missed it yesterday, we received a late-afternoon update on the future of the property at the intersection of Boylan & Tucker. Spoiler alert: it’s likely getting replaced with a parking lot.

Moving on, it’s time to look at some of the new-building permits that have been issued over the past two weeks. We mentioned on Monday the new Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church, the largest new construction project for the month of July. The $30 million project is being handled by Clancy & Theys.

In other news, it seems like the unabated flow of permits for 616 Oberlin has yet to cease, as three separate permits totaling more than $35 million were issued for a phase I parking garage, and phases II & III of the residential build out.

The developer, Wood Partners, is handling the construction of all three projects.

The two new residential buildings will add 207 additional units to the property.

Speaking of twos, two private elementary schools both received permits earlier this month: on August 3, the Montessori School of Raleigh on Lead Mine Road received a $1.1 million permit for a new 18,003 square foot building, and on August 12, the Envision Science Academy on Forum Drive received a $23,500 permit for a 3,360 square-foot modular classroom.

Note: as part of our extensive “research” for today’s column, we turned up something pretty cool being done at Montessori — a CSI: MSR summer camp where students can learn about Forensic Anthropology and Entomology. We’re not a big fan of the CSI shows, but it seems like the subject of this camp has more in common with one of those other murder-of-the-week detective shows: Bones. CSI: MSR makes for a better name than MSR Bones, we imagine.

Everything is apparently coming up deuces today: in addition to these two private elementary school projects, two public colleges recently received new-building permits as well. On July 29, NC State received $8.9 million in permits for the new 104,020 square-foot Center for Technology and Innovation on Centennial Campus. Danis Construction will be handling the project.

On August 5, Wake Tech received permits for the 90,779 square-foot “Building M.” Balfour Beatty will be building out the $22.8 million project.

Finally, Fire Life Safety America received on August 6 permits for a $13.7 million new 14,312 square-foot building at 1731 Roundrock Drive. Engineered Construction will be doing the work. No surprise that a very generically-named company would hire a generically-named contractor for a project. For the curious: Fire Life Safety America is, not surprisingly, a company that installs and maintains … fire protection systems.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015:

Note: this post has been updated twice since originally going up. Scroll down to read them. It’s Teardown Tuesday here on the Development Beat, and despite having two weeks of permits to pore over, we were only able to come up with one demolition project worth looking at.

Thankfully, it’s one people have been asking us about, and now we finally have an answer.

A few weeks ago, fences went up around a property in Glenwood South owned by the Raleigh Housing Authority. A few readers sent in questions, but we couldn’t find anything going on at what we mistakenly assumed was the address: 420 North Boylan.

After all, that is the address, and according to county records, it’s owned by the city housing authority and it sits on the corner of Boylan and Tucker, right where the fence went up. To date, no permits have been issued for 420 North Boylan. We even checked back a few years; nothing. But after seeing a tweet last week from @ShopLocalJen with a picture of said property being torn into by a bulldozer, we finally reached out to the city to find out what the deal was.

We should have just taken a closer look at the recent demo permits.

On August 4, a $30,000 permit was issued to Janezic Building Group for the demolition of a property located at 619 Tucker Street. 619 Tucker Street, for all intents and purposes, is 420 North Boylan. They share the name parcel and property identification numbers, and when keyed into iMaps, both addresses highlight the exact same piece of land.

The 5,188 square-foot office building that is now being torn down was first built in 1957, and was acquired by the Raleigh Housing Authority. According to county deeds dating back to that year, the office building itself was first owned by local real estate development company Davidson & Jones. The company now operates out of a space on Front Street.

As for the space on Boylan & Tucker though, well, we’re not quite sure what’s coming next. We only reached out to the city yesterday, so if we get more information, it will certainly be posted here. It should be noted that the stated land value for the property in more than $800,000, which shouldn’t be all that surprising given its proximity to Glenwood South and downtown Raleigh.

Update: it appears the city has been planning for some time to demolish this property, which has sat unused since 2010, and selling off the land to the highest bidder. Proceeds will go toward funding future housing authority projects.

Update Part II: Late this afternoon I received a call from Raleigh’s housing authority. Although they had plans dating back to 2010 that were still in place as of April this year to sell off the property, the current plan is to turn the soon-to-be-vacant property and turn it into a parking lot. They are already working with a civil engineer on the project. Since the structure was an office building, the old “paved paradise/put up a parking lot” maxim doesn’t really apply here. Besides, the land is sure to grow in value over the coming years, and by holding onto it a bit longer, the RHA can reap a greater financial reward.

Monday, August 17, 2015

Welcome back to another week here at the Development Beat! Thanks to last week’s vacation (to beautiful Ocean City, NJ), we sorta need to play catch-up when it comes to all that’s been happening in Raleigh lately, and we figure it’s best to get this month’s already-delayed edition of By The Numbers out of the way before delving into anything more recent.

For newer readers: By The Numbers is a look at the real estate transaction and issued permits data in Raleigh for the previous month. The numbers are pulled from county and city data, but any errors are our own, because sometimes 2+2=5.

As it happens, July 2015 was a banner month for both real estate sales and issued building permits, as both came in at five-year highs.

There were a total of 1,443 real estate sales in July 2015: this is more than three times the number of sales in July 2010 (418). The total value of all these transactions was also significantly higher: $399,520,085, which is more than double July 2010s total value of $179,737,624.

The five-year average for real estate sales between July of 2010 and July of 2014 was 887, with a total average value of around $302 million.

The largest of this July’s real estate transactions was the $47.85 million sale of the downtown Raleigh Sheraton to the Buccini/Pollin Group, a “privately-held, full-service real estate acquisition and development company.”

The 17-story, 249,480 square-foot, 353-room hotel was first built in 1981.

According to a press release issued by a company, the Sheraton will be “operated by PM Hospitality Strategies, Inc. (PMHS), a leading, national hotel management company. This brings PMHS’ third-party management portfolio to more than 35 hotels, including seven new assignments in 2015, with multiple projects in the pipeline expected to close within the next 18 months.”

Exciting stuff.

While the increase in the number and value of residential and nonresidential building permits was not quite as dramatic as the real estate numbers, the 732 permits issued in July far exceeded the previous five-year average of 560, and the value of July 2015’s permits, at more than $199 million, was nearly double the five-year average of $104 million.

The largest permit issued last month was for the $30 million Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, set to be built between Western Boulevard and Centennial Parkway near the Mission Valley Shopping Center. Clancy & Theys will be handling the construction at the behest of the Roman Catholic Dioceses of Raleigh.