City Council vote clears way for 40-story downtown Raleigh development, including affordable housing

RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- The Raleigh City Council approved rezoning an area in the Warehouse District that could become a 40-story development with residential and office space.

As strongly recommended by the City Council, it would include affordable housing.

The 1.88-acre-space is located in the block bounded by Davie Street, Harrington Street, Martin Street and West Street.

The new zoning designation would impact the buildings housing HQ Raleigh, CAM Raleigh, Circa 1888 and Gracie Raleigh, where many train in jiu jitsu.

According to City Council, the development will likely contain between 10 and 25 affordable housing units. Mack Paul, the lawyer representing the owners of the property, said there will be about 250 units overall.

Raleigh City Council has specific standards that the developers must follow when marketing the affordable housing units:

Watch the full City Council meeting here

"This is something new for the city," said Gregg Warren, President of DHIC, a local nonprofit that connects folks with affordable housing. "We haven't tried it before. I think everybody's anxious to see how it's going to work out."

Warren said this is a good first step but not sufficient.

"The maximum that the developers would have to retain these units, these affordable units, is a maximum of 15 years, which I think is a little too short and, in some cases, they could even go as low as five years," Warren said.

Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin said housing affordability is one of our top needs but said she doesn't agree with how this came about.

"The former council felt that they needed to strong arm developers into providing affordable housing," Baldwin said. "I would rather see us do an affordable housing fund that development community can contribute to, and that would allow us to provide gap funding."

Warren said an option is for the city to take a fee in lieu of providing low rent units in the development. That fee would go towards affordable housing elsewhere in the city.

"What the city is wanting, which is commendable, is to have affordable housing in these high rise towers," Warren said. "That also happens to be the most expensive kind of construction out there. And therefore, the developers would be willing to provide, I think, in most cases, the developers would be interested in providing, financing of affordable housing elsewhere in the city as well."

Gracie Raleigh said their doors are still open since construction is not happening for a while.

Paul said construction likely wouldn't start until the end of the year or next year.