Live, Work, Play: Developers Want People to Do It All

With its vacant storefronts, papered windows and faded signs, Waverly Place feels like a lonely place. By fall 2009, though, Zapolski + Rudd wants to give the 1980s-era shopping center at Tryon and Kildaire Farm roads a feel comparable to that of North Hills in Raleigh.

"By providing these goods and services, work and living within one footprint, we give them that variety they're looking for," said Luis Rois, Zapolski + Rudd's lead developer for the project.

On 28 acres of prime real estate, Waverly Place will encompass 40 shops and restaurants, a hotel and 200 residential units. The largest Whole Foods store in the Triangle will call the place home, and Cary-based Crescent State Bank plans to move its headquarters there.

Demolition and reconstruction work at Waverly Place should begin in spring 2008. The whole project will cost around $180 million.

More such multi-use developments could also pop up across Wake County by 2009.

Across from Crabtree Valley Mall, Crabtree Village will rise, with 160,000 square feet of retail, 749 condominiums and a hotel. In Cary, shops, restaurants, office space and more than 300 multifamily units are planned for the northeast corner of the High House and Davis Drive intersection.

In Morrisville, developers are planning Park West Village to include a hotel, hundreds of condominiums and 750,000 square feet of commercial space. Town leaders have not approved the plans.

Crews are grading land for another mixed-use development, North Hills East, on Six Forks Road across from the thriving North Hills.

"People are looking for a lifestyle where their time can be more efficient," John Kane, developer of North Hills and North Hills East, said.

Mixed-use projects are also more efficient for the developers, Rios said.

"If over the next year, the whole hotel industry crashes, we're not banking on that single piece to make the whole project work," he said.