The Roxboro just got posted on loopnet

Looks like they are going to break ground soon. 24,000 sqft of retail

https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/464-Pettigrew-St-Durham-NC/15506070/

I really like the look of this project. More street level retail and commercial space are both critical. Excited to see it get underway.

Completely agree. Office space is apparently difficult right now, but good projects like this one could keep tipping the scales and we start to see more medium-sized fish wanting office space downtown.

Great find! Looks like a solid addition. These mid-sized buildings seem to be Durham's wheelhouse.

Glad to see this becoming official on this plot, but as I said in ATC2 thread....can't keep building 8 story buildings with 4 story parking decks. Gotta go down. I understand why this particular development probably wasn't a great candidate for it right on the tracks with possible digging for light rail (RIP), but this model will bury Durham in above ground parking it we aren't careful. Downtown is getting cluttered with it already...

I completely agree that parking eats up WAY too much land. It is absurd the percentage of downtown Durham (and downtown anywhere, USA) that is dedicated to parking.

The sad part is that underground parking is wildly expensive. I'm not sure exact current numbers, but I have seen it estimated at $40,000 PER SPACE! That is quite a hit to the financial feasibility of a project.

This may be something that only gets better on a longer time horizon as downtown parking demand softens due to Uber/Lyft, Autonomous Vehicles, and some density tipping point where it becomes possible to own fewer cars or no cars in a household.

Dave @ Building Bull City wrote

I completely agree that parking eats up WAY too much land. It is absurd the percentage of downtown Durham (and downtown anywhere, USA) that is dedicated to parking.

The sad part is that underground parking is wildly expensive. I'm not sure exact current numbers, but I have seen it estimated at $40,000 PER SPACE! That is quite a hit to the financial feasibility of a project.

This may be something that only gets better on a longer time horizon as downtown parking demand softens due to Uber/Lyft, Autonomous Vehicles, and some density tipping point where it becomes possible to own fewer cars or no cars in a household.

http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/HighCost.pdf (from 2014, but given the diversity of locations studied still relevant)

At a mere ~$10k more per space, I have to imagine ANY investment in below ground parking in Durham would reap outsized rewards to not take up another prime parcel with a deck. Not to mention that the added density of buildings instead of parking decks would encourage car-less behavior since more people could live and work within a mile or so of each other.

For reference - the new Morgan/Mangum St Deck had a budget of $23M. I'm not sure what exactly was paid to the city for that project, but I have to imagine they'd have made more money and improved downtown in a better way with a mixed-use building that had any component of below-grade parking (even if it still maintained some amount of above ground deck to increase total number of spaces).

In the article that you shared, if you go to page 90, figure 1 shows underground parking costing between $28k and $48k per space in 2014, depending on the city ($48k is Honolulu, so that will obviously be an outlier), but since 2014 construction prices have gone up quite a bit.

Shoup references $10k to $14k as the average expenditure per unit likely based on surface parking instead of underground parking. So, in other words, if a developer has to pay $20,000 per space, but only builds half a space per unit, that would be $10k per unit.

Would $40k per space be viable? I'm not sure. But the incentive is to spend less money on surface or even structured parking if you can get away with it (which developers can because parking is not restricted by Floor Area Ratios or other density maximums).

Looks like they finally started site prep for this project. Nothing really to see yet or I would have tried to snap a picture or two.

According to a TBJ article it sounds like there were some pieces moving around with the investor group but now they are ready to move forward with construction this fall. Looks like the project will be finished in late 2021.

I saw that as well. Good catch. Glad it was only a temporary hiccup.

Passed by downtown on 147 this morning and it looks like the structure is starting to go up for one of the buildings. Also a lot of work being done on the site for the apartment building on the other side of BullHouse in the triangle between Pettigrew and Jackie Robinson.