300 E Main…7 story parking deck?!

Edit: realized that side of the street is 301. Maybe this is different than the “300/500 E Main” development plans. Still frustrating.

Didn’t get a picture, but was walking past the 301 E Main St site this morning and the picture/description is of a 7-story parking deck with ground floor retail.

Did anyone see when/why/how this changed?! I’m so confused and infuriated and I hope it’s a mistake but I don’t think you spend time on design and a banner and then put it up on the lot for a mistake.

So happy to see a few thousand new spaces coming online for all these businesses heading back into their offices, and the new living complexes nearby, and that local downtown sports team bringing thousands of cars in each weekend with no where to park. Oh wait…

"Construction of the 300 E. Main parking facility is tentatively scheduled to begin in March 2021 with the housing component scheduled for December 2021."

They are building the parking first, and the site plan for the winning proposal showed a deck wrapped with housing... never saw any updates to this plan, so I'd be shocked too if it changed. My understanding is that this is intended to help meet the needs of employees and visitors of the Human Services building so that the 500 block - which is replacing their surface parking lot - can begin as well.

More info in this post from the neighboring church:

"You may have noticed fences going up around 300 E. Main Street. We are very excited to announce that construction is beginning! The County is building 110 affordable housing units around a parking deck with 762 spaces. The lot will be fenced off and no weekend parking will be available until the parking lot project is completed in August 2022.  Affordable housing begins construction in November 2021, and should be completed by February 2023. This is the result of years of work by our congregation and Durham CAN, and provides inspiration for our need to continue to devote time and effort to ensuring affordable housing for all Durham residents. For more information about the project, please watch the video above."

Other details here + others related to similar developments from 2019 - not sure how much of it is still relevant.

https://www.durhamhousingauthority.org/public/uploads/DDNP-Report-Final-Executive-Summary.pdf