The Nash (.pdf file) won unanimous approval from the Raleigh Planning Commission today. The 7-story condo building will rise at the NW corner of Hargett and Dawson Streets. Included in the plan are 208 condominium units, a somewhat hidden parking garage, courtyard with a pool, and Hargett street retail parcels. A representative from Trammell-Crowe, the developer, mentioned the company’s goal of selling these mostly 1-bedroom units somewhere near the $300,000 mark.
Functionally the building works quite well. The market is demanding smaller units, and these condos will likely be smaller than other new alternatives; somewhere around the 800 square foot mark (Note: This is not confirmed, just my own estimate. The point is the building’s focus is on small units.). A downtown overall development map (which has disappeared from the downtown alliance site) showed Hargett and Martin as important East/West retail corridors linking the Eastern portion of downtown to the TTA train stop in the Warehouse District. The alignment of five or so retail outlets works well in space that normally wouldn’t sell easily as residential.
Unfortunately the parking garage access is placed at the left end of this retail row. Perhaps integrating the service alley on the north side with the Dawson’s service ally would allow parking garage access from a lesser traveled sidewalk.
During the meeting Commissioner Betsy Kane addressed the redundant vehicular accesses that will be side-by-side on the Dawson Street margins of both properties. She pointed out that the service and parking garage access issue is so common with these new developments that the city should consider an ally system within the block to allow for common access and minimize pedestrian disturbance. Good idea! A shared access for the Dawson and The Nash’s service and parking areas would be an efficient use of space and offer an unbroken retail strip along Hargett.
Nash Square is a special block in downtown Raleigh, and surrounding buildings should acknowledge the public square. The Victorian Park Hotel once sat over on Martin Street diagonally across the square from the site of The Nash. Even then architects knew that the feature corner of the building should address the formal park with its best feature. So kudos to the architects for getting this dramatic element right.
While the building serves many great purposes, preliminary sketches appear to make it look cheap, though. The plain treatment of the windows, EIFS skin, and partial blue color scheme hold little promise for the public’s love of this building in the future. Perhaps a style that hasn’t been used in downtown Raleigh like French, Gothic, or something else could make this building a classic for the ages for relatively the same cost. Given its prominent location, it is important that this building be one that adequately coexists with its neighbor, Nash Square.
Planning Director Mitchel Silver showed several images of the project’s impact on the neighborhood skyline. At 7-stories this project adds mass, but not height like the nearby Reynolds tower "projected at 30 stories". Silver showed alternative massing for this project at 14 stories and showed how only half of the property would only have to be used. While 14-stories creates more of a landmark building, I’ll take the 7-stories at this point. Downtown Raleigh has nearly 150 unbuilt lots, so we’re not even close to having a land scarcity.
The project still must gain acceptance by the Raleigh City Council, however, because if its size, scope, and downtown location.
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