The Nati

I went to the meeting at Duke Energy today at lunch that discussed the new AIG/Carter plans for the Banks. It's a bit different (more modern) than the old plan, but I really like it.

Some notes:

• You will see two orange oval shapes in front of the current freedom center lawn. These are to be restaurants, but it's not clear if they are phase I or II.
• Phases, on that note, you the site is an 8-10 year plan withe the two blocks between the Freedom Center and Great American being built first. The first phase will have up to 300,00 sq ft of office, 325 Condos, and 70-100,000 sq ft of retail.
• Freedom Way will be main street for development with retail/restaurants on both sides of the street.
• Timeline - Assuming the development agreement is finalized at it's deadline in a couple weeks (May 15th), it would be about 6 months to finalize some of the grants/finances to begin work. You would then see shovels in the ground building the parking garages by around Nov/Dec. 2007. It would be ready for occupancy then in late 2009. Still a long way off, but at least it's some progress instead of a wasteland.

This is an evening picture of the 2 blocks proposed to be developed first. You will see on the south side of the development (closest to the river) buildings that are lower. These are set to be lower density housing in the form of townhomes. You also see the glass restaruant sitting on the lawn of the Freedom Center. The glass building on the top left of the image is the planned office development. We should note that ALL of this can/likely will change to a certain extent as they finalize the plan and determine what the market will bear!

Here are two renderings of what things would look like from the street level looking towards Great American. All in all I think the new renderings looks great. It'll be nice to see some things coming out of the ground!

Labels: Banks