Lakeview on Erwin Road gets... TGI Fridays?

Sunday's Herald-Sun reported that the developers of Pavilion East at Lakeview, a mixed-use development "nestled" between Hock Plaza and Erwin Terrace by Duke's medical center and West Campus, will be the home to a Chipotle mexican restaurant, a Firehouse Subs location,  an "upper-scale sports bar" (gotta love that thar' Herald-Sun copy editing) and ... a TGI Fridays.

I will admit to scratching my head a little bit at first on that last one.  TGI Fridays, king of the strip mall outparcel in comfy, suburban shopping centers with plenty of minivan parking... on Erwin Road?  And not in a standalone little box, but within a mixed-use development?  I would have expected them to look for a location such as the outparcel next to Tripps on Club Boulevard, or elsewhere in the city, before a dense mixed-use development on Erwin Road (where the traffic is often just gosh-awful.)

Of course, the answer lies in the neighborhood. There is a tremendously large base of employees at Duke (the medical center alone represents the Triangle's largest employer) coupled with close to 10,000 students resident on or near Duke's West Campus.

Of interest -- and some danger to the good folks on Ninth Street and the Northgate gang  -- is that places like TGI Fridays and Chipotle are exactly the strata of dining option that many Duke students are gravitating towards when they bustle past Durham's true fine dining options to drive to Southpoint every weekend.  Here, we have Southpoint-style quick-service and casual-dining options without the long drive.

This project seems to have sailed through with far less (any?) community opposition than Duke's Central Campus project, despite the developers' up-front assertion that they anticipated building as much retail on the space as currently exists on all of Ninth Street.  Depending on the mix of other retailers we see for Lakeview (and I'd be shocked if one head out of the caffeinated Cerberus that is Starbucks/Caribou/Barnie's didn't pop up here), this could have a big impact on the good folks at Ninth, even before the first buildings open up at the new Central.

Expect the new dining options come fall.

Comments

[Michael Bacon]

Kevin,

Quick note on why Lakeview didn't get any opposition, while Duke's Central Campus plans got tons. One simple word: taxes. Duke doesn't pay any. As such, they could have built a retail district that could outcompete anything the private sector had to offer, and serve not just as a shopping district for students, but for the whole city. All without paying a dime in taxes.

One of the early proposals for Duke was that they pay a property tax and sales tax equivalent for the retail district. It turns out that they'd rather deal with the handcuffs they agreed to for the central campus development than deal with taxes.

Frankly, I'm not terribly worried about 9th St. vs. the TGI Fridays on Erwin Rd. The stores that have been on 9th for a long time can tell you that while Duke students used to be a bigger part of their clientelle, they were never the heart and soul of the strip. In fact, in one history of 9th St., I think it was one of the McDonald's (of the drug store) who said that the opening of the Erwin Mill apts. ended up being the turnaround, which kept places like Regulator and Ninth St. Bakery (when it was on 9th St.) open. Now, with the in-migration back to Old West Durham and Walltown, in addition to the massive new Station 9 apartment building, Duke students are just gravy to most of the businesses. My friends who work at Elmo's say they barely even notice a dropoff in the summer anymore.

If TGI Friday's pries the undergrads off campus and across Erwin Rd., I'm all for it. The only business that will really hurt from it is Aramark, which runs Duke dining facilities.

[Bull City Rising]

Great points, Michael. Reflecting on this, it's probably more an issue for Northgate (which was right up there with the 9th St. merchants on the Central Campus discussion, but whose chain businesses have a greater overlap with Lakeview) than 9th, given the unique nature of businesses there and the resurgence of urban neighborhoods.

Incidentally, ARAMARK is out of the picture for Duke dining (much to the relief of student government, which passed petition after petition against ARAMARK for years.

[gails14]

TGI Fridays has a restaurant in Kirkland, Washington at a small shopping center called Park Place Center. It's not unusual for them to seek out locations in a mixed use development. Kirkland also has an older retail downtown similar to that of 9th Street, but it is much more comprehensive in that it has many more boutique type stores as well as restaurants.

As far as the tax issue for Duke University I still don't get why this issue keeps springing up. It is a federal law that no university pays property taxes anywhere in the entire United States. So, contact your U. S. Senator or Representative if you want the law changed.

Many of the universities that Duke competes with have begun to establish retail facilities on their campuses. Other universities also have acclaimed dining facilities and hire executive chefs to oversee their dining program. And to be honest, Duke's campus dorms are out of date compared to to much of the competition. It's like third world housing in some of these dorms - especially the ones with no air conditioning. Not every student at Duke has a car and would you really want them to? Just think of the extra traffic. So, Duke is in the process of trying to upgrade their campus to better compete with other universities. Duke's competition is out of state - take a look at the top 20 - 30 universities on any of the lists out there.

So what happened to the drug stores on 9th street? Are they all gone now? And why are there so many empty store fronts? Better retail in this area would be helpful for those students who don't have a car. And the student government realizes this as they have started a pilot bus service program to 9th Street on the weekends.

[Bull City Rising]

Gail -- thanks for the comments. I appreciate the WA perspective. I'd seen "urban" Friday's before in NYC and Boston (well, before the latter near Copley Square burned down!), just never in a mixed-use. So, perhaps not as unusual as I'd thought.

There are a couple of different issues around the taxability piece. For property taxes, state sales and use taxes, etc. absolutely, there's a strong precedent for tax exemption. From what I've heard from folks who work in this area (which doesn't include me!) there can be concerns around whether there are tax liabilities for so-called "unrelated business income," but that's another story. The real bugaboo with Central in some locals' mind was that some big-box retailer would be brought in and Duke would be competing from a low-tax perspective. Michael made the case for that above; personally, I'm not sure it was as much an issue as some made it out to be, but I also wasn't here for the whole history.

I absolutely agree with you about the evolving nature of what campuses offer as being compelling resources. Some universities have gone overboard with this (witness some of the debate over DePaul's super-pricy loft condos up in Chicago, or some of Boston University's luxe high-rises), but you're right that many colleges feel the competitive pressure to upgrade these facilities. This is one part of the Duke "Campus Culture Initiative" that hasn't received a lot of press relative to some of the other high-profile elements of the plan.

The empty storefronts is a good question, and one that is usually laid right at the doorstep of some of the landlords who hold Ninth Street tenants in feudal fiefdoms, er, I mean restrictive and pricy lease contracts. This is a story that's been told better on other blogs, but it's tough to make the finances work. The Regulator was lucky to have been able to buy its building some years ago, which gives them a financial freedom that some other business there don't have.

Obligatory disclaimer: I work for a university in the Triangle area; however, my views on BCR are strictly mine alone and do not represent those of my employer, the City of Durham, or my two housecats.