In February, the Raleigh City Council released a Request for Proposals for development of the storied Site 4 location in downtown. In Tuesday’s 1pm meeting (video stream), the Council will select a developer to build a new hotel on the site.

A boutique hotel was once planned for the site, however funding was unobtainable by the developer within a reasonable period, and the city retracted their selection and waited for the economy to recover. Now there are three developers proposing projects for the site:

• Summit Hospitality Group, Ltd.
• Raleigh Prime Investors, LLC
• Noble DLR Group

A selection committee of city staff and others reviewed the proposals and recommends the Summit Hospitality Group plan to build an Overcash Demmitt-designed Residence Inn of about 9 stories.

It’s been a long, long while since there has been this much (any) activity in the private sector, so we should probably just be happy that something is being built. However this building will be around a long time, and will contribute to the downtown Raleigh “Money shot”, so while the hotel doesn’t have to be a lavish design, it should stand for quality instead of just meeting a budget.

Overcash Demmitt has some interesting projects and some monotonous cookie cutter garbage. Hopefully we’ll see a project that more closely resembles the Charleston Hotel than the Hilton Garden (College Park, GA). Given the standard that has been set by hotel design in those blocks, well…we’ll see.

map it