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Thursday, July 14, 2016
For those of you who’ve been reading all week: don’t worry, the dopey, alliterative day-of-the-week titles end today. Tomorrow we’re running the usual Renovation Roundup, which I briefly considered titling “Fix-Up Friday.”
For those of you who’ve been reading for even longer (thanks!) you might be surprised to learn that today’s subject is *not* another new self-storage facility being planed for Raleigh.
Instead, it’s another small apartment complex from the Sambrick Companies, which in March began developing the new Magnolia Groves apartment complex on Louisburg Road in North Raleigh.
The site of the newest apartment complex from Sambrick
As we reported back in March, Sambrick is a commercial realty firm with a construction division, which meant they both owned the land on which Magnolia Groves was being developed and were overseeing the actual construction of it as well.
The newest Sambrick project is a three-story complex named Ridgestone that will be built on Raven Ridge Road near the intersection of Falls of Neuse and Durant Road. As much as we normally dislike apartments named after their address — it’s almost always tacky or pretentious — Raven Ridge Apartments is a much better name than Ridgestone.
I wasn’t even sure if Ridgestone was a real word or not, so I checked, and apparently a ridge stone is a “stone for the margin of a well or a shaft.” Of course, Raven Ridge isn’t much better — officially it’s an exposed piece of sedimentary rock out the deserts of Utah — but it still sounds cooler.
The 32-unit, 44,403 square-foot Ridgestone Apartments will be made up of eight one-bedroom 18 two-bedroom and six three-bedroom apartments, the residents of which will be provided with 66 parking spaces, the minimum required by code. It’s a good thing the manager from Chotskies doesn’t work for the City’s planning department.
As the development will be located in a flood hazard area within the Neuse River basin and cover just under half of the parcel’s 2.19 acreage with impervious surface, a water detention device, such as a retention pond, will be installed alongside the complex.
Unlike Magnolia Groves, Ridgestone is being built on a piece of land not owned by Sambrick, but rather, a company named Wellons Realty out of Dunn, North Carolina.
Google Maps
A street-level view of the site
A look into the history of the property didn’t turn up much, Wellons bought it in 2010, and it had changed hands several times before that. In 1995, when the property was sold to the Falls River Properties Group, the deed mentions a number of restrictive covenants, including a maximum of 96 multi-famuly units.
It doesn’t appear anything’s ever been done with the property, but thankfully we were able to dig up at least one interesting tidbit: the site was almost developed into a medical office building, way back in 2005. At the time, it was owned by a company by the name of Raven Ridge Professional Investments LLC.
A real estate ad from back then claimed the vacant site would seen be developed into a new Medical/Professional office building “located just east of Wake Med North hospital on Raven Ridge road. Suites range in size from 1,500 to 11,000 square feet. Construction scheduled to begin in March 2005 and complete in 4th quarter 2005 Space may be purchased OR leased.”
A rendering of the planned medical office complex
Unfortunately, this development never came to pass, but some of the highlights they mentioned still apply:
- Very close to Wake Med North
- Excellent demographics
- Lease or own
Well not so much the last one, since these will be apartments and not condominiums, but who wouldn’t want to live in an area with “excellent demographics” (excellent by what metric?) and close to a hospital.
Once the site review process wraps up, the developers will be able to apply for construction permits, which means we should be writing about this in the not-too-distant future.
