North Hills Harris Teeter: Failure on Multiple Levels
The new Harris Teeter at North Hills East opened this week and introduced a new concept in grocery shopping to North Carolina, the 2-story grocery store. The design is part of the New Urbanist-styled North Hills East, which replaces a failing, low-rise apartment complex with a tightly-designed, semi-urban mixed use design. Judging by early reviews, the store has major, unrecoverable flaws that will prevent the store from sustaining its ambitious goal.
To be fair Harris Teeter has done an outstanding job stocking the new store. Along with their full compliment of non-perishables from their distribution centers, the store also stocks an impressive array of fresh food. The produce section is outstanding, and stocks some exotic fruits and vegetables that aren’t typically seen at even high-end grocery stores. A prepared foods bar and salad bar are positioned to rival that seen at Whole Foods, while fresh pizza and made-to-order sandwiches at a reasonable price add some value to the store over others in the area. The fresh breads are superior to Whole Foods, while the cheese and meat counters pale somewhat, but are still outstanding in their own right. This somewhat to be expected for a new store, and it will be interesting to see how the store is stocked once the constant clientele settles in.
That said, the rest of the store is a complete failure, and it goes back to the design stages. In residential real estate older houses blessed with a charming design and strong foundation, but need some cosmetic work are said to have “good bones”. On the other hand there is this Harris Teeter, which will stand for decades as an example of “bad bones”.
Most notable is the two-story design. I am all for breaking paradigms to find new solutions. We didn’t get where we are today without some people taking some risks, and to that, Harris Teeter and Kane Realty are to be commended. This implementation of the vertical big box concept, though, is horrible at best.
The second story hovers over the left half of the store, and contains aisles of housewares, baking goods, cereals, cosmetics, pet foods, and juices. It essentially is all of the stuff that exists in that 3rd, 1/4th of a normal grocery store. The problem, however, is that in order for one to get their cart upstairs, they must use an elevator, which in this instance, is not a glass elevator and only holds two people and two shopping carts. During fairly busy times, there is a line of people trying to get on at the top and the bottom. The design team did not account for this, and did not allocate an adequate space for the queues.
The aisles feel tight. While the central aisles in a store like the Cameron Village store are also tight, the end aisles are wide, and there is a high ceiling. Not so at North Hills. The end aisles are just as narrow as the grocery aisles, the ceiling is low, and there is no natural light entering the space, creating a nightmare for claustrophobic people.
The store did a poor job with signage inside the store. Brown aisle makers with small, beige type are hard to read from the end aisles.
The upstairs section consists of about 7,500 square feet of stock space. One has to wonder of the store would have been better served by a North Hills design that just implemented 8,000 more square feet of space on their footprint. It isn’t like there is a scarcity of land that required this usual design. It would have made an enormous difference in the convenience level for this store.
Second to the disastrous 2-story design is the store’s strange parking-deck-only entrance. The only way to access the store is from the parking garage. Did I mention claustrophobia? While I tend to favor parking garages for their relatively constant temperature and always dry settings, this parking garage design is horribly inefficient and dangerous. There are two stories of the garage that are designated for Harris Teeter shoppers. Cars coming from Six Forks enter the upper level, which is a simple ring with a downramp in the middle. The bombastic lower level is accessed also by the St. Alban’s Drive traffic. All traffic entering the lower level moves in a counterclockwise direction, and there is only one way, one lane out of the deck’s lower level. What happens when some big SUV wants to back out of a space? The entire line of traffic leaving has to wait. What happens when a second car backs out? Urge to kill rises.
To top it all off, before reaching the garage’s exit, this steady stream of exiting traffic makes one final sweep, right by the store’s front doors where the pedestrian concentration is highest. It is a design that is so bad and was so preventable, that is makes me wonder if the architect who is responsible for this should be allowed to stay in his/her profession.
Because the store sits on the ground level of a 7-story apartment building, I was only able to get spotty cell phone and internet service on the store’s main floor, and had absolutely no connectivity on the second floor, where all of the cafe seating is. This is a solvable problem, but a big one as while shopping I like to access my recipes and rolling shopping lists in Evernote as well as call home to check on current pantry inventory.
So what is the shopper’s best plan of attack? During hours that are likely to have light traffic, just park in the lower level. It won’t be that dangerous. During times where the store is likely to be crowded (and this morning is an example of that. The store was far more crowded that the old North Hills store ever was), though, I recommend parking in the upper ring and using the parking lot elevator. This upper ring can be accessed two ways: from the main entrance on Six Forks Rd, and from the State Street entrance. (State street is a little one-block long street off St. Albans, parallel to Dartmouth Drive, perpendicular to St. Albans.)
I also don’t like the store’s placement as it pertains to the entire North Hills development. The North Hills master plan would have been better served by putting this store at the Dartmouth/Six Forks corner, facing St. Albans with its back to Six Forks. The store could have been the base for a very functional, attractive building that would join the flow of the existing North Hills to the new East. As it stands now, one of the major advantages to living in The Alexan, an accessible grocery store, is gone.
I fear for the store’s future as I have heard nothing but thumbs down so far. Judging by the people I overheard and talked to in the store, most ITB shoppers will go to the Harris Teeters at Glenwood Village and Cameron Village, as well as the big, nearby Kroger. Those to the north are most likely to use this HT store, but that is not the demographic this particular store aims to reach. It is a BIG problem that the boys in Charlotte will have to address (most likely by eventually removing all of the labor-intensive, short-life fresh-cooked items that make the store special). As it stands now, the architects picked by Kane have done a great disservice to not only the Harris Teeter corporation, but also the residents in the North Hills region of Raleigh.
Harris Teeter at The Lassiter’s Last Stand
Back in the early 70’s North Raleigh had just a few grocery stores. North Hills had a Winn-Dixie, there was a Big Star next to the Six Forks K-Mart (where Borders is), and an A&P was in Colony (now Food Lion). As North Raleigh grew and bigger, nicer grocery stores opened, the Winn-Dixie in North Hills Plaza deteriorated progressively, but inexplicably remained open (probably because the Big Star closed and the Holly Park Winn-Dixie came and went). Finally the grocery gods granted us mercy and closed the Winn-Dixie, replacing it with a swank, clean Harris-Teeter about a decade ago.
That store location, the one that has fed me for most of my life, closes at 6pm tonight . With it go many memories: watching the live lobster tank, shouting on the store PA from my child’s seat, the Long Island woman singing about bagels (whatever those are!) on the P.A., racing out to the parking lot to repark our car that had drifted away in neutral, and meeting employees who would become close personal family friends. The memories aren’t just the old ones, either. The Indian store manager has been one of my little girl’s favorite retail personalities. (He, incidentally, is moving back to the Glenwood Village location). The store, while not stocking the wide range we have all had the luxury of knowing in the modern era, was still great for staples and extremely convenient.
Tomorrow everything changes. A new, 48,000 square foot Harris Teeter will open across the Mississippi (Six Forks Road) literally in North Hills East’s parking garage. The store is two-stories, but don’t worry about that second level. It reportedly will contain coffee, flowers, and gift cards. (How long until they recognize that sales of those items will be non existent, and move more necessary household items up there?). The stock from the Lassiter location will be divided among 12 different Harris Teeter locations. Managers and their staff will come in and take an aisle-a-piece in order to distribute the merchandise and offer North Hills customers a turnkey experience during the transition.
Much like the closing of the Cardinal Theatres, the closing of a grocery store in old North Hills Plaza means the end of an era for North Raleigh. Perhaps the store will be filled with books in the moderate future. Perhaps it will be something equally serviceable. What it won’t be is food, and it will never quite be the same. As they say, “the only constant is change”.
From the Vault: My North Hills Plan
In the summer of 2001 I was eating at Pulcinella’s in North Raleigh. As we left the restaurant, it dawned on me: what if this L-shaped shopping center were reoriented to two parallel strips, and the facade where broken up to look like Franklin Street (in Chapel Hill)? At that point many in Raleigh were worried that the dying North Hills would be replaced by a big box store, a few outparcels, and sea of asphalt. The idea of a village-like shopping center excited me, so I put some thoughts together on paper and dropped them in new North Hills owner John Kane’s mailbox.
Kane kindly responded that wheels were already in place for a very similar project, which was a huge relief to my family. The letter became the seed for the Raleighing.com project, but has not made an appearance on gogoraleigh. So, to celebrate gogo’s 2nd birthday, here is what started the whole blogging thing for me:
September 7, 2001
Dear Mr. Kane:
I am ecstatic that you are interested in redeveloping the North Hills Mall property. I grew up in the mall’s back yard and always felt that it could do more for our area. It is GOOD to have local ownership again!
I am troubled by the recent events with Neal Coker’s Oberlin project, and fear the same from some of the similarly short-sighted neighbors of mine in the North Hills subdivision. When I hear of residents intending to treat the 100-foot buffer like a forest preserve, I worry that logic is being trampled by an emotional fear of change. North Hills Mall is a dump, and it is time to put something there that makes Raleigh a better place to live.
North Hills East Harris Teeter Opening February 10
The long-awaited full-scale Harris Teeter at North Hills East is set to open on February 10, according to the North Raleigh Observer. The existing store at The Lassiter will close upon the new store’s opening. Nothing has been officially announced about a new tenant for the space in The Lassiter, but don’t expect another food venue (Fresh Market, Dean & Deluca, etc). Be thinking more along the lines of a book store.
Varsity Men’s Wear Moving to North Hills
Varsity Mens Wear
, one of the only remaining non-anchor tenants in its original space in Crabtree Valley Mall, is closing up shop and moving to North Hills
East
in the space next to Charlotte’s. (
That sure is close to Lile’s
) Hopefully they will bring back the tartan carpet!! (not likely)
I am certainly more out of touch with Crabtree than ever, but I can only think of Hudson Belk, Kanki, Merle Norman, and the Hallmark store as being the only remaining original tenants in their original spaces. Is there one I’m missing?
Bruegger’s Coming to North Hills East
It isn’t exactly news that
Bruegger’s Bagels
is coming to NHE, but the location is set, though. Brueggers looks like they are going for a March opening in the free-standing building located between the Captrust tower and Dartmouth drive. The store resembles the Ben & Jerry’s/Starbucks building in NHW, and is surrounded by ample surface parking. Now wouldn’t it be neat if they would twitter their daily soup selection…
Hurricanes Charity Event Coming to North Hills Ice
Raleigh on Ice presented by Warté Designs, will be hosting the Carolina Hurricanes and collecting gently used or new coats to give to Raleigh Rescue Mission. On Sunday, November 29, the Carolina Hurricanes will host events at North Hills from 2pm until 5pm to include a visit from Stormy the Hurricanes mascot, a community hockey clinic, appearances by the Storm Squad, the Carolina Hurricanes slapshot booth, and promotional item giveaways.
Trader Joe’s Opens
The Trader Joe’s at Holly Park Shopping Center is now open. Hark! People like William Needham Finley, IV need not venture Outside The Beltlin e to seek a better Trader Joe’s experience. The location of the store, near Costco, is a slam dunk for the company. Now if someone would put a really good butcher shop where Blockbuster was, we’d have an almost perfect neighborhood for food shopping
For those impressed by green companies and for those who hate unnecessary teardowns, this Trader Joe’s represents everything wrong with development in the modern era. The pedestrian unfriendly site was once host to Wake Paint and Wallpaper. In order to satisfy the signing of Trader Joe’s, the shopping center moved the paint store into one of the center’s original strips, into a space that was once a Winn-Dixie . So where is all of the whining about Trader Joe’s? They could have just taken the former grocery store space, and we wouldn’t have thrown away a perfectly good building, and wasted the energy and water it took to make the materials for this Trader Joe’s experience. Environmentalists and teardown critics need to be consistent if they are going to be taken seriously.
Just remember that when you clog the aisle to join your obnoxious geek friend in a loud conversation about how green you are when you’re shopping there (this happens a lot in the Cary store). Hopefully this location will offer a better experience. You “see the right people” at Costco, so surely Trader Joe’s will become the next ITB hotspot. My only question is whether or not the parking lot is designed adequately to handle the droves of Suburbans and Tahoes that will take over. ITB hotspots aren’t without their own challenges, but surely I’ll be more likely to utter this great Homer Simpson Halloween line in the Raleigh store than I could in Cary:
Urge to kill…fading…fading…fading — RISING! Fading…fading
(up)Root Elementary Finally Moving Home
Today marks the last day for the temporary site of Aldert Root Elementary at North Hills East. The replacement school building, on Lassiter Mill Road, is complete and staff will make the move during tomorrow’s teacher workday.
The completion of the new facility frees up John Kane to begin construction on The Cardinal once the WCPSS moves their 5 MCUs away. Though nobody loves going to school in a trailer park, this has been a VERY smooth 15 months at the temporary site. The trailers were really nice and did their job perfectly. The only real drawback to the site was the lack of a gym and field for P.E..
The original plan was to move Root to a site that Wake County uses for displaced schools. IT is next to East Millbrook, behind Sweet Tomatoes out on Capital Blvd. During the summer of 2009, some people made some phone calls and “paved” the way for the site at North Hills East. Kudos to John Kane, his accountant, and the WCPSS for making it happen!
Raleigh’s Most Beautiful Foliage
The most gorgeous trees I’ve seen this fall are in the North Hills parking lot, near Wachovia. While they aren’t big trees, they are 100% non-green. The reds in the one on the left are intense. Also pretty is the Eastbound side of I-440, travelling from Wade Avenue toward Glenwood.
Have a tip on beautiful foliage in the area? Let us know!
REI Hosts Basic Bike Maintenance Class
On Tuesday (10/27), REI at North Hills will be sponsoring another free Bike Maintenance class. The 7pm session is aimed at teaching parts, basic adjustment, and care of your bicycle.
REI Hosting Backcountry Cooking Class
Join the world of backcountry dining with REI on Tuesday (10/13) at 7pm at the North Hills store. You’ll get tips for enjoying prepackaged foods as well as learn ideas for do-it-yourself cuisine.
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