In a city without a river, bay or lake, one of the most common views of the Raleigh skyline has a road in the foreground, where U.S. 401 snakes from the south into downtown.
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Now that view is changing, as several private and city construction projects alter the landscape of Raleigh’s southern gateway.
Perhaps the most obvious difference is the acres of bare earth just beyond where McDowell Street passes under Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard — until recently covered with trees. This is where the developers of a project known as the City Gateway district are building a 228-space automated underground parking garage and extending Kindley Street to create a new intersection with MLK.
Both are expected to be finished sometime this winter and are early steps in the development of 6.75 acres the city rezoned a few years ago to allow office, hotel or residential towers up to 40 stories tall.
The southwest corner of downtown Raleigh has been evolving for years, with more coming.
Here are some of the projects:
Peeking over the trees as you drive north into downtown is the steel canopy of the Red Hat Amphitheater. The new, permanent home for the city’s downtown concert venue is expected to be finished in time for the 2027 season starting in the spring. The amphitheater’s move a block south frees up room for the city to add about 300,000 square feet of space to the Raleigh Convention Center.
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Construction has begun on the 29-story, 600-room Omni Raleigh Hotel on South Street between the convention center and the Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts and a block from the amphitheater. Scheduled to open in late 2028, the glass and steel hotel will include a rooftop pool and restaurant, a coffee shop, a steakhouse, a 20,000-square-foot ballroom and 61,000 square feet of meeting space.
City leaders say the hotel will help attract events to the larger convention center and will complement existing downtown hotels, including the current largest, the Marriott City Center with 401 rooms.
The conversion of the Dorothea Dix psychiatric hospital into 308-acre Dix Park has helped draw new residents to the southwest edge of downtown. That’s led to new high-rise apartment buildings, beginning with The Row, with 335 apartments off South Saunders Street that’s part of a bigger project called the Rockway, and The Weld, twin 20-story towers going up off Lake Wheeler Road.
Heritage Park, a public housing complex of 122 apartments off South Saunders built in the 1970s, will be replaced in the coming years with a much denser affordable housing development with more than 1,000 residents of various incomes. The Raleigh Housing Authority, which owns and manages the 11.6-acre site, will break ground early next year on the first phase, 51 apartments for seniors and 112 rentals for families.
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