Greenfire pressing on with downtown renewal; will the City, County follow?
October 26, 2007
I had a great opportunity (through my involvement in one of my non-blog community activities) to get a tour of some of Greenfire Development's downtown Durham properties on Thursday. A big thank you to the folks over at Greenfire for putting on this tour, most especially Evelyn Contre with Greenfire with being a great tour leader. Thanks, too, to the Kress residents who, upon encountering our tour group in the elevator, welcomed us literally into their home on the spot to see their finished condo unit.
Getting a look at some of the properties Greenfire is currently redeveloping -- including the Kress and Baldwin, which I've seen before, and the Hill and Rogers Alley buildings, which I hadn't -- it's clear that Greenfire is working on transforming these buildings into effective mixed-use that could add vibrancy and life to the downtown district. American Tobacco has that now, and West Village should come alive when its renovations finish over the next year.
The city center is an employment and services destination in the daylight, but has until recently been fairly quiet at night. Restaurants are starting to open, and residents behind them, following the trend seen in many urban area re-developments.
I'd earlier posted some photos that a BCR reader was kind enough to share of Durham's skyline from the top of the Hill Building (former CCB tower, now with SunTrust's name at the top, in case you're wondering.) Breathtaking as the photos are, there's nothing like seeing it for yourself. The conversion of Hill to a boutique hotel/spa with a few condos really is a perfect re-use for a building that is well past any effective use as an office tower.
And seeing the development at Rogers Alley, where Greenfire continues to demonstrate a keen interest in really keeping its development "green" (including a geothermal climate control system for the building that will see Greenfire reach down into the ground a distance of five Hill Buildings), and which will bring Dos Perros together with office space and other uses.
What's it going to take to bring together the redevelopment of downtown Durham's city center? If last week's Herald-Sun article on Greenfire's plans is any indication, the big debate in the coming years will be about "public-private partnerships" to support the renewal of the city center district. Which is, of course, the area where Greenfire has concentrated most of its properties.
One of the major contentions in downtown redevelopment has, for years, been parking, and who pays for it. American Tobacco (literally) set the stage on this one, but it was a long, hard slog and a difficult negotiation between the City and County that lasted a full three years before the project got underway, in terms of how to structure support for funding three parking decks at the complex, a $43 million+ total investment. (See the ATC's press releases from, oh, about 2000 to 2003 to see what I mean.)
And there were significant negotiations with the West Village and Heritage Square folks, too, over just how much local government money would go into those deals.
Will the mayoral election make a difference? I wouldn't count on it; at the Downtown Durham Inc. mayoral debate earlier this month, both candidates mentioned "infrastructure" including parking as an area local governments could and should help developers with (though Bill Bell drew some press for mentioning this only briefly before going on to talk in depth about transit.)
More to the point will come the question of exactly how much help Greenfire is looking for. But Greenfire's been watching. Back in June 2006, for instance, Greenfire principals Carl Webb and Michael Lemanski expressed concern over the proposed use of $200,000 a year from the city's downtown revitalization fund towards the Performing Arts Center's debt service. As Ray Gronberg of the H-S put it at the time, "Greenfire hasn't received subsidies from the fund, but Webb acknowledged that the firm may someday take on projects where city assistance 'could be helpful' in plugging funding gaps."
In that vein, the activities of Greenfire over the past few years in acquiring as many properties as possible in downtown make sense from a leverage and negotiation perspective. American Tobacco and West Village get the attention and the big bucks because they're big, unified campuses that sat "vacant" (read: eyesore) for years before the development. Ditto Golden Belt, and ditto Heritage Square, though the latter minus the vacant bit.
But the city center is a more mixed bag: diverse owners like the We Want Oprah folks; fractured ownership; lots of government-owned buildings; some successes, like the Carolina Theatre, and small businesses like Rue Cler.
Suddenly, Greenfire has mass downtown and has emulated the bigness of Capitol Broadcasting and Blue Devil Partners in the only way they possibly could -- a sumo-style approach to downtown. (We've talked about this here before in reference to the SouthBank building acquisition, too.)
Downtown observers will be watching the release of the downtown master plan in November to see clues about what Downtown Durham Inc. and its stakeholders (including Greenfire) are looking for in the next round of city support. Bill Kalkhof has already signaled that the city center district will be the target.
The big question for Greenfire, local government, and the voters will be just what the envisioned support for that target looks like.
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