by William Needham Finley IV™

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YMCA

Development Beat: Alamo Drafthouse Preview, Southeast Raleigh YMCA Breaks Ground

in Development by

Brought to you by York Properties.

Week of April 16, 2018

Alamo Drafthouse preview

Southeast Raleigh YMCA and elementary school breaks ground

Dedication at Oberlin Rising on April 21st

The Dillon gets a parking deck and art

Time Warp is on April 21st

Chris Combs Classic on April 21st

Standard Foods closes

PBX® 5 Year Anniversary

Midtown Yoga Opens

Lidl Purchases Additional Land in North Raleigh

Alamo Drafthouse Preview

The much-anticipated Alamo Drafthouse Cinema will open on April 26th. Located on New Bern Avenue in the Longview Shopping Center, this is the first Alamo Drafthouse in North Carolina. Featuring 11 screens, a full kitchen and bar, and Video Vortex (the largest VHS and DVD rental collection on the East Coast) this is much more than just a movie theater.

The menu blows the standard $7 box of Milk Duds and $12 bucket of popcorn right out of the water. Starters range from fried pickles to loaded cheese fries, and yes, avocado toast. With vegan options, sandwiches, pizzas, brunch (served all day, every day), cookies, milkshakes and more, this is a legitimate restaurant that just happens to be inside of a movie theater. Guests can order from the menu at any time during the movie and have their food brought to them inside the theater.

They’ve got a ton of beers on tap, including 27 from North Carolina breweries, with another 8 rotating taps to go with an extensive list of bottles and cans. Guests can grab a 32 ounce “Crowler” that can be filled with a draft beer and then sealed. There’s also an impressive cocktail menu, which will include movie-themed drinks from time to time, and wine with plenty of rosé all daaaaay.

During the media preview, which we were invited to, the owners stressed the fact that they are a “community of neighborhood theaters” and do things differently than your normal theater chain. With programming aimed at all demographics (Saturday mornings sometimes feature a cereal bar and show kid-friendly movies/tv shows) and relationships in place with many local groups (Raleigh Little Theatre, Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, VAE, and many more) this place should be a big hit.

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Southeast Raleigh YMCA Breaks Ground

The home of the Southeast Raleigh YMCA and Southeast Raleigh Elementary School broke ground last week. Located at 1436 Rock Quarry Road in Raleigh, the 32 acre property will include the joint YMCA and public school, mixed-use housing, and commercial spaces. Southeast Raleigh Promise, an independent nonprofit, will take the lead role in supporting children, families, and neighborhood needs in Southeast Raleigh.

The Southeast Raleigh Promise organization described their goals:

“We envision a site, along the Rock Quarry Road corridor, that has tangible, physical resources including a state-of-the-art YMCA with quality wellness facilities, a pre-K-5 school, safe and affordable housing for families, access to healthy food, and accessible spaces for recreation and play.”

In September 2016, the YMCA announced it hoped to have the school portion of the development — which would be run by Wake County in a joint partnership — open in 2019. The rest of the facility may be ready around the same time.

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Oberlin Rising Dedication On April 21st

A dedication for the Oberlin Rising sculpture and park will be held at 11:00 am, this Saturday, April 21st. Located at 801 Oberlin, the sculpture was created by Thomas Sayre and includes work from Howard L. Craft, an African-American poet and playwright, and others. The project is a monument to the community started in the 1870s by freed slaves following the Civil War. The art is on private land and funded by the York Family, who have lived in the nearby area for decades.

David Crabtree recently covered the project and interviewed Smedes York, Joe Holt, and Thomas Sayre about their involvement. It’s a really fascinating look at the history of this area and what went in to the project.

The Art of Parking at The Dillon

The Dillon, Kane Realty’s mixed-use development in the warehouse district, has now opened its 950-space parking deck. The deck will feature fully-automated pay stations, with no cashiers on site. Daily parking will cost $2/hour or $18/day.

While the parking deck is exciting news to many who can never seem to find a parking spot on their way to leveraging synergies at HQ Raleigh, it wasn’t the only new development at The Dillon recently. Some of the artwork commissioned by the developers is now visible to the public. Ashton Smith, friend-of-the-media-empire and owner of her own newsletter empire (Raleigh, over-easy), got a look at some of the new art last week.

Kane Realty issued a press release announcing that several original commissions are set to be installed. Curated in partnership with CAM Raleigh, local and regional artists will be featured in a variety of works. No word on if a 40-foot mural of ITBlake the intern will be commissioned.

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Time Warp at the City of Raleigh Museum

Time Warp, Raleigh’s hottest party that has everything, is coming up on April 21st. For more details, check out WNFIV’s write up. The party will raise funds to support the City of Raleigh Museum. Buy tickets here.

2nd Annual Chris Combs Classic On April 21st

The second annual Chris Combs Baseball Classic will be held on April 21st at NC State’s Doak Field. Broughton will play Middle Creek at 12:00 pm and Johnson-Lambe has once again agreed to donate a set of game jerseys to the team that raises the most money. All proceeds go to ALS Awareness in the name of Team Chris Combs. Combs is a Broughton and NC State alum who was diagnosed with ALS in 2016. The Walk to Defeat ALS will also be held on Saturday at the Halifax Mall in downtown Raleigh. Donations can be made here.

Standard Shutdown

The TBJ has reported that Standard Foods, a restaurant and grocery store that served as a downtown showcase for fresh, farm-to-table ingredients, has shut down. This is not the first time Standard Foods, located at 205 East Franklin Street, shut down. It closed for several months in 2016 before reopening in October. Our thoughts and prayers are with all the food Instagrammers out there.

PBX 5th Anniversary On April 22nd

While this isn’t related to development, we want to wish our friends at PBX® a happy 5th birthday. They’ll be hosting an Outdoor Pop Up Mat Class to celebrate at 1:00 pm on Sunday, April 22nd. Please RSVP here for the free event.

Midtown Yoga Opens In North Hills

Midtown Yoga, the locally-owned studio on the ground floor of North Hills’ Park Central Apartments, celebrated its grand opening this past weekend. The Raleigh Construction Company began work on the space back in October of 2017. Midtown Yoga owner Emily Wallace had previously been holding Yoga classes in outdoor spaces at North Hills.

Lidl Buys Up Land in North Raleigh

It’s been nearly a year since we first reported on German grocery chain Lidl’s plans to open a second Raleigh location on Buffaloe Road. Lidl US Operations, LLC recently paid $1,222,881 for the vacant 6.17 acre property located at 4117 Buffaloe Road to the trustee of the Buffaloe family (seriously) who used to own the land. The new store will be about 35,962 square feet in size, and be accompanied by a 180-space parking lot. Lidl opened their first Raleigh location on Wake Forest Road in November 2017.

Development Beat: Castle Video Building For Sale, Alamo Drafthouse and YMCA Progress

in Development/ITBNN by

Brought to you by Rufty-Peedin Design Builders.

Week of February 12, 2018

Castle Video building under contract

Construction progress at Alamo Drafthouse, Downtown YMCA

Seaboard Wine adds ITBlessed glasses

Moore Square Parking Deck set for million dollar renovation

Developers of The Willard release renderings

City to unveil plans for new Civic Campus

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The Last Castle

Situated on the northbound side of Capital just past the split with Wade Avenue, Castle Video & News has for decades served as Raleigh’s top 24-hour adult bookstore and video arcade. But now, it looks like the store could be going the way of the Foxy Lady. The property has been owned by the same family for nearly 60 years and is now under contract with a new owner, although the sale has yet to be finalized.

Amy Bush (Broughton graduate), whose firm is representing the seller, told us that “the buyer’s agent has been mum on their plans.” George Elliot, who owns the business but not the building, told us that “the future is very uncertain” for Castle Video, although he’s not sure whether the sale of the property will actually go through. “It’s not the first time they’ve had people looking at the building,” Elliot said, adding that if it is sold, he hopes the owners would keep Castle Video on as a tenant.

“We try to run a clean, decent establishment with no monkey business,” Elliot said, noting that zoning regulations would make it very difficult to simply pick up and move to a new location.

First built in 1959, the “one-story, flat-roof, commercial building with Modern styling that is now “primarily clad in a decorative concrete block,” opened in 1960 as the Piggie Park Drive-In on what was then known as Downtown Boulevard.

According to the 1963 Hill’s City Directory for Raleigh, the restaurant changed names just three years later to the Kwix Drive-In. Elliot told us that the drive-in was converted to an adult bookstore by the name of “Chateau” in the late 1960s, and that his company took over the space in 1987 as Castle Video & News. “I was told, but haven’t found any evidence that there was a radio tower built on the roof and that a station was broadcasting out of there when it was a drive-in,” Elliot said.

Despite this storied history, the building itself was deemed ineligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. Apparently, the building “does not exhibit high artistic value as the work of a master, nor is it an outstanding example of this particular architectural style.” Sad.

The impending sale of Castle Video is unrelated to the work the City has been doing in that area. Over the last few years, Raleigh has been acquiring and demolishing a number of properties, including the Foxy Lady, the Milner Inn, and the Capital Inn. Is this part of a larger plan to flood Capital Boulevard to create a Downtown Canal? Possibly.

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Alamo Drafthouse Progress

Image: Alamo Drafthouse Raleigh

With death, there is life. While Castle Video may soon be no more on Capital, the Alamo Drafthouse is closer to opening in the Longview shopping center on New Bern Avenue. The developers of Raleigh’s newest movie theater — and the state’s first location of famed cinema chain Alamo Drafthouse — have published a brief photo gallery detailing progress on the project.

Image: Alamo Drafthouse Raleigh

We first reported on plans for the theater in January of last year, and noted that construction kicked off last May. You can take a look at the construction progress here.

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Progress on Poyner YMCA in Downtown Raleigh

The Poyner YMCA, which began construction in downtown Raleigh just a week after the Alamo Drafthouse, is also moving along at a nice clip. They’ve been posting updates on social media lately, so we figured we’d share them here. You can sign up here for more news and information about the Poyner YMCA. You can also follow them on Twitter (@PoynerYMCA) and Faceboook (@PoynerYMCA) for more details.

Matt Lilley gave an update from the group fitness studio, which will hold bootcamps, cardio-dance classes, and more. There will also be a cycle studio, and a space capable of holding hot yoga classes, among many other amenities. They’re expected to open in late spring of 2018.

Seaboard Wine Adds ITBlessed Wine Glass Section

Seaboard Wine, Raleigh’s premier wine and tasting bar, recently upgraded a section of their store located in Seaboard Station. Last week, they set aside approximately 20 square feet for the purposes of selling the highly coveted ITBlessed wine glasses. The glasses are part of the Shop ITB home goods line and are available exclusively at Seaboard Wine for $15 each, or 2 for $25.

The move was praised by many wine and retail experts. The markets reacted positively as well.

More Renovations for Moore Square

After renovating the Moore Square bus station and the historic Moore Square Park (in progress), the City has set its sights on the Moore Square Parking Deck.

Last week, Strickland Waterproofing Company out of Charlotte (a city that was not named to Amazon’s HQ finalists list) was issued permits valued at $1 million for work that will include repairs to the deck’s concrete slabs and beams, the installation of a supplemental floor drain, and miscellaneous electrical wiring and fixtures.

Blueprints for the job describe tasks such as “Tee Flange Repair,” “Epoxy Injection” and “Cove Sealant Installation.” We aren’t sure which one of those terms means “make the deck stop smelling like urine” but we’re hopeful that will be addressed in the repairs. The Moore Square Parking Deck was first built in 1986 and last underwent major renovations in 2000.

New Renderings Unveiled for The Willard

The developers of The Willard, who were asked to appear before the Appearance Commission last month in order to move forward with their new seven-story hotel/condo complex on Glenwood South, released new renderings recently.

Our friend Leo Suarez uploaded a gallery of the renderings to his fantastic website The Raleigh Connoisseur, so go check them out.

What Will Raleigh’s New Government Campus Look Like?

The existing building, built during some year. No one cares.

A new conceptual master plan for Raleigh’s consolidated civic campus is set to be unveiled later today at a City Council work session, offering a glimpse into what could be one of the largest downtown public projects of the 21st century. The new campus will be located on the site of the current Municipal Complex at 222 West Hargett.

Many core issues, such as whether the existing building should be remodeled and expanded or torn down entirely, are expected to be addressed. An advance copy of the presentation was not available, but we’ll be sure to include an update next week. William Needham Finley IV requested we put this as the last item in this week’s column, noting that “City Council is dead to me and I don’t care about anything they do anymore.” Strong words coming from the man who didn’t even know where the City Council complex was located until approximately two years ago.

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