Another Peace Street Rezoning Request Asks For The Ability To Build Up To 40 Stories
The potential buyer of property adjacent to Capital Boulevard and Peace Street wants the ability to build up to 40 stories there.
The new rezoning application is asking for the allowance on a 1.5-acre piece of land at 506 Capital Blvd., a parcel directly across from a Kane Realty-related property also in the middle of a rezoning request.
The property was originally zoned for 12 stories, but it now sits vacant after the buildings there were demolished for construction on Capital Boulevard.
The land is currently owned by Augusta, Ga.-based Morris Communications — though the rezoning request notes that the application is being submitted by a proposed buyer, with several officials from Wilmington-based Zimmer Development Co. named in the paperwork.
Efforts to reach Zimmer Development and Morris Communications by phone and email were not successful.
The application does not get into specifics about what the developer wants to build on the property, but it does note that it would include retail on the ground floor with the rest of the building being split between office space and residential units.
That would be a similar design to what Kane Realty and Williams Realty have proposed on another nearby parcel on Peace Street.
The Raleigh Planning Commission gave a positive recommendation last month to that proposed 40-story tower. That rezoning request has been one of the most anticipated applications in the city, with the project’s future now in the hands of the City Council.
However, just because both developers are asking for the ability to build up to 40 stories on these properties, it does not necessarily mean they will.
If approved the two projects stand to vastly change the appearance of the Peace Street corridor, which sometimes is referred to as the Smokey Hollow area, a neighborhood that was the site of a major urban renewal project in the 1960s.
Along with the two rezoning applications, Kane Realty is also building a mixed-use residential building that will house a 40,000-square-foot Publix grocery store as well as another office building along North West Street. Altogether, the three phases of the Kane and Williams project will add hundreds of apartments and hundreds of thousands of square feet for office and retail to the northern entrance of downtown Raleigh.
PN Hoffman, another development firm, is also planning to pump $250 million into Seaboard Station, a nearby retail destination next to William Peace University, to add a hotel and apartments.
Public money has also played a major role in the transformation that is currently happening to that part of town.
In addition to the private projects there, the city is developing a new park adjacent to Peace Street and the state is in the process of reconfiguring the traffic patterns for Capital Boulevard, all of which have made the area more enticing for investment.