Northgate Redevelopment Speculation

Nice, thanks for the update. Dave also posted previously about a small mixed-use project across Club from Northgate. That stretch from Buchanan to Duke is going to be very active in the coming years.

Rosewalk will be going before the City Council work session on Thursday, Nov 4. A final vote would likely follow at the next council meeting in 2 weeks. Still 310 units on about 7.9 acres.

Staff report: https://cityordinances.durhamnc.gov/OnBaseAgendaOnline/Documents/ViewDocument/WS-Published%20Attachment%20-%2015013%20-%20STAFF%20REPORT%20-%201%20-%20ATTACHMENT%200%20-%20Z20000.pdf?meetingId=486&documentType=Agenda&itemId=24486&publishId=107082&isSection=false

One of the Northwood Ravin folks joined the Walltown Community Association meeting in early February and said they are taking a step back and reconsidering their approach to the redevelopment project. He did not offer any other details. Sounds like it will be some time before we see any real progress.

I hope that 'reconsideration' will be for something much denser, much taller, and with a large amount of housing units. Above everything else, Durham needs housing. Retail to serve those residents too, but the housing demand in the Triangle should be driving density in areas that can support it. This site can certainly support it.

I guess we’ll see. We don’t even *really* know what the initial plan looks/looked like beyond the site layout filed with the city back in August. One big sticking point is that they’d have to get approval from the city in order to go higher. According to one of the earlier neighborhood engagement sessions, they had previously asked about going to 6 stories with the residential portion and were told no.

Looks like they submitted a development request for Rosewalk (not sure if they are still calling it that). Ended up at 268 units. Haven’t seen any renderings but not expecting anything too impressive. Good to see it moving forward though.

A year and a half has gone by since the original announcement of Northgate Mall redevelopment and the project feels further away than ever before.

It really is a shame, how many acres is the site? One of the most important pieces of essentially undeveloped land sitting vacant. Hopefully these rising gas prices push the developer to reconsider the importance of a true mix use development. If done right, this land could be critical to provide housing for our shortage and remove many car trips per day from the surrounding neighborhoods.

Agreed.

I think public process needs to be examined as well. Unfortunately, a year and a half doesn't seem to be all that out of line with other projects I have heard about.

If process is choking supply and demand continues its meteoric rise, the problem isn't going to get better.

My theory awhile back was that they just got tired of dealing with battling it out with the community association in the court of public opinion. They got particularly quiet after the letter the community association published suggesting the city preemptively rezone the property or take ownership of it via eminent domain to prevent the project from moving forward. Which honestly I get from their perspective. It seems to me they are just going to proceed fairly quietly with building what’s allowed under the current zoning for the site. And that does suck to some extent if it’s all 3-4 stories when they had wanted to go to 10 for the office component at some point (and that was all pre-covid so who really knows if that would have changed anyway).

But ultimately they did submit a development request in August last year and the status was updated to “corrections required” in April so *something* is happening. They also refreshed the website, just a generic landing page but again why bother if they don’t have plans in motion. I just don’t think they are going to be very forthcoming until things are firmly underway.

And to Dave’s point, it does seem like this is fairly normal in some ways for these projects. Heck they still haven’t broken ground for the ATC expansion. And in some ways this will be the biggest project anyone has undertaken in the urban core of Durham so I’m sure there’s an awful lot of work involved. But like you I am anxious to know the vision and see the site put to much better use.

Personally I'd like to see Northgate push forward with a 'dream' project with the density they are after. Just because there is neighborhood opposition that does not mean there wouldn't also be support from across Durham.

There was tons of neighborhood opposition to the Latta Park development in North Durham (Publix and 200 townhouses) and the city council approved it anyway. The developer met with the neighbors and heard their concerns, but got approval anyway due to concessions like including affordable housing, making road improvements, and going beyond city requirements on storm water controls and public spaces. The same was true with the Southpoint Mall rezoning 25 years ago. Neighbors don't always get their way.

A great project could be built at Northgate.

If I had more time in my life, I would consider forming an organization whose sole purpose was rallying people to show up to public hearings, rezonings, etc and speak out in favor of good, dense, walkable projects.

I could see having some group members show up in favor of the project and some against it. Those against would say "I am against this because there aren't enough units".

Northgate Mall property submitting a request to rezone for Commercial General. Most of the property is already zones for CG, but has some RS-8 for rezoning.

https://t.co/wIveTteRzs

Am I hearing this correctly? This would leave 0 room for any residential, right?

That’s really interesting. The letter specifically says “…life science use in addition to office, retail and amenity space.” with zero mention of residential. That would be very surprising as residential projects seem to be preferred right now given the demand. Anyway thanks for posting. I will definitely attend the information session and will be curious how much they share about what this could look like.

Wonder if they have interest from a big company to take a big piece of this project. That would seem to be the most likely explanation for this pivot. Seems like it would be a big gamble to build a lot of office/lab space at this point without some sort of foundational tenant.

Attended the developer's meeting tonight.

-Existing Shops at Northgate to be renovated.
-Sears Auto to be torn down, replaced with surface parking.
-1 acre park between the Sears building and Shops at Northgate. Retail to face the park from the Sears building.
-A section of the mall between the Macy's building and roughly the food court to be torn down, with a new street running through the property there.
-Existing parking decks to remain.
-Pretty much everything else to be renovated for office/lab space, including the theater.

Zero residential. Zero new building.  

I consider this a huge disappointment.

They went silent and worked on that plan for a year? What a joke

SeriousPetes wrote

They went silent and worked on that plan for a year? What a joke

My thoughts exactly. This plan is anything but inspiring.

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article264930579.html

A few other notes from the meeting:

-When asked about housing, they said repeatedly that the zoning only allows 14 units/acre, or essentially 3 story buildings, there was no way they could do affordable housing at that density, and that structured parking residential would require is too expensive. Left unsaid was why not ask for greater density / different zoning so they could build more units per acre. Question dodged.

- When asked about storm water, they noted that the site is essentially 100% impervious now and talked about the1 acre park and the trees they'll be required to plant in the parking lot. That won't help. It was a complete dodge - as a redevelopment of an existing site, they won't be required to put in the usual storm water controls, and they're not going to.

- They think they can build out lab / office space and a company will appear to rent it. I don't think they have a tenant in mind.

- When asked about home values for surrounding properties, they said their project would have zero impact. Never mind that all those high tech workers are going to need somewhere to live, and some of them may like the idea of walking or biking to work, so those homes in Walltown are going to look mighty tempting.

This really seems like a B or C team development plan done on a tight budget. It'll be a shame if the City Council approves this.

Noticed the dodge about zoning. If you are doing a rezoning already, they could clearly ask for more zoning.

Agree, plan was super disappointing. This is a huge plot of land -- it calls for something transformational. Hope the city just buys it back or Northwood sells it to someone who has vision.

Do folks think one possible narrative might be that they felt so defeated by the pushback and demands the first go-around that they just decided to stay out of the business of residential altogether?

That could be totally off base, but that is the first explanation that popped into my mind.

I think the problem is: who’s going to acquire this property from Northwood? Nobody is going to build a project that meets the community’s demands and they will have already seen the public response to a proposal that is not deemed suitable. Maybe someone comes in and gets the city to agree to rezone it for additional height/density and includes affordable housing that way but they’d be putting a lot of money on the line hoping that they could make it work. Also believe that Duke owning the Macy’s property would be problematic for a new buyer. They would likely want to control the whole property, although maybe Duke would sell for the right price. All in all just think it would be a really tough sell observing what has played out so far. So that leaves us at a bit of a stalemate.