Continuing this weekend's look at the Greenfire proposal, let's take a look at the seven buildings the developer has proposed constructing or renovating downtown, in chronological order of completion:
Rogers Alley: Already
underway at the corner of Parrish St. and Mangum St., the Rogers Alley
project is a conversion/renovation of three historic buildings,
including Durham's Fire Station No. 1, to new life in a mixed-use
context.
Engineering firm Kimley-Horn has signed up as a tenant, as has SJF Ventures, a venture capital firm with offices in Durham and NYC focused on clean technologies investments. Charlie Deal's Dos Perros restaurant is also slated to open in Rogers Alley when the facility opens; a second restaurant is reportedly under consideration for the complex as well.
The three buildings will be connected by an alleyway; the entire complex will feature green building techniques, including the use of geothermal technologies in the HVAC system. (Read more on the history of Fire Station No. 1 over at Endangered Durham.)
Hill (SunTrust) Building / Boutique Hotel: Also
already announced is the renovation of the Hill Building -- the most
notable structure on the Durham skyline, currently bearing the SunTrust
logo after the Atlanta megabank's purchase of CCB earlier this decade.
The Hill Building is proposed for conversion into a 150-room boutique
hotel in partnership with Lifestyle Hospitality, featuring an on-site spa, restaurant and retail.
As many as three penthouse condos are proposed for the structure's upper floors. Greenfire purchased the Hill building in July 2006 from SunTrust, which found the building's structure (lots of tall, not so much of the wide) to really not be ideal for office space. A boutique hotel, on the other hand, is a natural partner to the soon-to-be-completed Durham Performing Arts Center downtown.
Orange/E. Chapel Hill Deck and Mixed-Use: The
first of Greenfire's proposed new-construction developments would be a
revitalization of the Mangum/Orange/E. Chapel Hill triangle across from
City Hall, where a number of structures were razed in the 1960s
for a downtown parking deck and surface parking lot -- the former of
which is currently undergoing emergency structural repairs.
The artist's rendering at right shows a conceptual drawing of the proposed replacement, a new parking deck to include at least 380 spaces to replace the lost parking, wrapped with ground-floor retail and residential units on the upper levels.
Importantly, the proposal also reinvigorates the Orange St. pedestrian mall by providing retail pads and presenting the opportunity for a double-loaded shopping corridor that could actually allow this area to reach the usage hoped for when the City originally converted this former street to pedestrian-only use during the 1970s.
The Rogers Alley project is visible in the lower left-hand corner of
the image; Parrish St. on the lower-right, with the Post Office in the
upper-left quadrant. The Orange/Chapel Hill deck is proposed as a joint
component with two other projects, the Parrish St. office tower and
small-scale building renovations discussed below.
Parrish St. Office Tower: The tallest of Greenfire's seven proposed structures would provide 200,000 sq. ft. of Class A office space in the heart of downtown, immediately adjacent to the Hill Building. Carl Webb actually walked the parcel through the entitlement process earlier this decade before joining Greenfire, bringing the project -- for which Webb earned construction rights via a City RFP process -- with him.
Included in the proposal would be ground-level space for the proposed museum focused on the history of Durham, including Parrish St.'s role as an historic center for African-American financial firms in the early 20th century.
The remainder of the building would be primarily commercial, though local newspaper coverage of the Greenfire plan included mention of at least a few residential units in all projects, presumably including this tower.
Taken together with the revitalization of the Orange St. corridor with the proposed deck, it becomes much easier to see the impact of the concentrated redevelopment project in creating mass/density as well as pedestrian-scale activity along an area stretching from E. Chapel Hill St. all the way south to the Downtown Loop.
Parrish St. Low-Rise Buildings: Visible just to the right of the
proposed office tower in the above photo, Greenfire would stage an
"adaptive reuse" renovation of several existing buildings it controls
on Parrish St. in conjunction with the parking deck re-fit and the
tower construction. Office and retail space are the likely uses.
Ramseur St. Residential: This project stands as part of the third
component Greenfire's listed in its Phase II plans, and in many ways is
one of the most fascinating. An ongoing complaint about the impact of
the Downtown Loop and the railroad tracks to its southern side is the
impact this transportation corridor has in separating the city center,
West Village, and old DAP district to the north from the American
Tobacco, ballpark, performing arts center, and future courthouse
district to the south.
Besides the mere presence of the roadway and train tracks, a major issue has been the fact that the buildings within the Loop all face towards the center of the city, with the spaces immediately adjacent to the Loop reserved generally for structured or surface parking lots.
One of the major themes in the downtown master plan charrettes was the need to add density and scale to these spaces via new construction -- and this is exactly what Greenfire is proposing in its call to build a large residential project at the City-owned surface parking lot at Ramseur and the Loop.
The proposed structure would include a green roof (pictured here) or an internal courtyard and would have on-site parking to preserve and expand on existing capacity. Retail would be a ground floor-level component.
Just to give a sense of the scale of this: The Kress building is at the corner of Mangum and Main, making it clear just how much taller the Ramseur structure would be. (As a commenter notes, there are a couple of Kress condo units that look out to the southwest, and presumably would be impacted by this plan, though almost all of the units face east or north.)
East Parrish St. Mixed Use: The final element of the proposal would, as we discussed yesterday, serve as Greenfire's deepest foray into the eastern side of downtown, and would notably be positioned to give the developer first entry into a part of central Durham that will see major changes with the mid-2010s relocation of the County Courthouse to the block south of the County Jail between Mangum and Roxboro.
As with the E. Chapel Hill St./Orange St. project, this would be a structured parking deck wrapped with retail and residential units. I'd expect to see a great deal of transformation through this corridor as law offices sell their buildings or terminate their leases and hop further south to the new Courthouse district.
Interestingly, Greenfire's renderings show their deck and the existing Courthouse, but not the Courthouse Annex to the east of the proposed parking deck.
Thanks for laying this out so thoroughly for all of us, Kevin!
Posted by: Samantha | February 18, 2008 at 06:58 PM