Forty-five years in the making, a construction project is underway on Hillsborough Street that will include a parking deck, apartments, retail, healthcare and more.
The project will envelop land between where the restaurant Time Out and the recently closed comic book store currently stand. Demolition of buildings on that block began with the bar Farm House last week. The Brewery will be torn down Monday.
Developer and landowner Val Valentine has been working to acquire the land necessary for decades. Up until last month, he owned all of the property on the block except for the land that The Brewery sits on. ValPark, a student parking lot formerly located on the property, bares Valentine’s name.
All building on the site is contingent on state zoning approval.
Kerr Drug will have a flagship location on the site, according to Valentine and Mark Berger, former Farm House owner.
“I have no hard feelings,” Berger said. “Val is a smart businessman, and he is doing the students a good years.”
A proposed 82,000 square feet of space will occupy the area where Time Out, Katmandu and The Brewery reside at the corner of Hillsborough Street and Friendly Drive. Tom Yountz, an N.C. State architecture school graduate, designed the building and a walkway that will connect the parking deck to the space.
The building is planned to house a healthcare facility for N.C. State students and faculty, as well as classrooms for students of Wake Tech and Phoenix University.
“We have thought this thing out entirely. It’s meant to last and be built upon for the next 100 years,” Valentine said.
Atop the five-story building will be a restaurant similar to Top of the Hill, a Chapel Hill restaurant that sits three stories above Franklin Street. Valentine plans on letting students vote on what to name the Hillsborough Street restaurant.
“I got the idea [to build the five-story restaurant] while eating at the Capital City Club,” Valentine said. “Patrons will be able to see much of N.C. State’s campus and downtown from the vantage point. We want to be the biggest and the best on Hillsborough University.”
The 225-unit apartment building will be named after Valentine’s father, and the development as a whole will be named Courtland after his grandson Court.
Valentine grew up on the third floor of Fincastle – an apartment building a block away from his project. He worked on Hillsborough Street as a child on the land that he now owns.
