Durham continues to grow–and gentrify.

According to a report in the Triangle Business Journal this week, Hillsborough-based LLC Elmwood Development filed plans with the City of Durham earlier this month to build a five-story, mixed-use project with street-level retail, penthouses, and apartments on a half-acre lot located at 318 W. Corporation Street.

The property, located between Rigsbee Avenue and Madison Street near Fullsteam Brewery and across from Surf Club, is currently home to The PickleBack, a neighborhood bar popular with longtime locals that is housed in a single-story building dating to 1962. Throughout the pandemic, The PickleBack has been home to a steady stream of outdoor cookers and guests mingling in the concrete courtyard, as disco music drifts from inside the building. 

The bar could be replaced with 82 apartments–6,858 square feet of penthouse space on the top floor–and 2,038 square feet of street-level retail and restaurant space at the street level. 

The proposal is the latest in a series of upscale vertical projects planned for downtown Durham, including the Four Points residential building plans next to Durham’s Central Park, which will share space with Motorco Music Hall, and which has received much community pushback, and the American Tobacco Campus’s expansion with a 700,000 square-foot-mixed-use space. Other proposed projects in downtown Durham include the Elizabeth Street Apartments at the corner of North Elizabeth and Liberty Streets from Charlotte-based developer Laurel Street, and the six-story Kress Condos at 162 Ramseur Street–a six-story mixed-use building with 26 condos, retail space, and a high-tech parking system–from Raleigh developers White Oak Properties and CityPlat. 

While these projects are sure to be expensive, Laurel Street is also planning two mixed-use affordable housing projects near the Elizabeth Street Apartments project. 

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Jane Porter is Wake County editor of the INDY, covering Raleigh and other communities across Wake County. She first joined the staff in 2013 and is a former INDY intern, staff writer, and editor-in-chief, first joining the staff in 2013.

One reply on “New Apartments, Retail Space Proposed for Downtown Durham Along Rigsbee Avenue”

  1. There is a huge block of buildings one block away up the street from the Blue Note Grill that are EMPTY!!! Get tenants in there before approving anything else. Downtown Durham is being obliterated.

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