Redeveloping Durham’s former police headquarters will have to wait a little longer.
The four-acre lot in downtown has sat vacant since 2018. The Durham City Council heard a presentation during its work session Thursday, where city staff recommended against pursuing redevelopment of the full site, citing costs. Instead, staff recommended the city subdivide the lot to sell the historic Milton Small Building to a preservation nonprofit, and explore interim uses—like open space that could host public art, pop-up markets, or events—while waiting for economic conditions to improve.
For the lot’s neighbors, Duke Memorial United Methodist Church, (and many others in Durham) building affordable housing is a priority. Rev. Mick Raynor, a pastor at Duke Memorial UMC, said at the meeting his congregation wants to see affordable housing on the lot as soon as possible. The church sits directly across from the former police headquarters.
Raynor said rent and utility assistance requests from church members have increased from seven or eight a month to 18 to 20 a month as the need for affordable housing has continued to grow.
“We are in an affordable housing crisis,” Raynor said. “At Duke Memorial, at 504 West Chapel Hill St., we are seeing people being turned away each month for rent assistance as they look at 505 West Chapel Hill St. directly across the street from them, at a vacant lot that could be used for safe, clean, and affordable housing for 100 or more families as soon as possible.”
The city council, back in 2018, identified affordable housing as its top priority for the site. Since then, the site has been through several false starts with developers amid poor market conditions and high construction costs; most recently, in June, the council voted to end its negotiations with a development team led by The Peebles Company, saying the parties were “not able to reach mutually agreeable terms and conditions for site redevelopment.”
On Thursday, the council heard from city staff and development consulting firm HR&A that, due to high construction costs and interest rates, options for developing the full site now would require “significant subsidies,” HR&A said, noting multiple downtown projects are facing similar economic headwinds. What’s more, building what is feasible on the site would underutilize it and undermine its future development potential.
HR&A presented council with three short-term options for the site: Preserving the Milton Small building, preserving the building and adding open space for interim uses, and creating affordable housing in addition to open space and the existing building. They also presented three long-term scenarios, each preserving the Milton Small building: One maximizing open space, one creating a “commercial hub” on most of the site, and another creating a dense, mixed-use development.
But the affordable housing option could hinder how the site can be used in the future. Building affordable housing would likely require a competitive 9% low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC), said Mark Kubaczyk, director of community development company HR&A. And using the tax credit would come with conditions on how the site could be developed, such as requiring surface parking that would limit other uses of the site.
Council members said they want to see more affordable housing options for the lot.
“This site has seen numerous attempts to go through full redevelopment in a hot market, and it hasn’t happened,” council member Nate Baker said. “And we know that affordable housing is in demand. I think it would be worth our time to do a deeper dive and explore what is possible around affordable housing.”
The council asked staff to come back with more information on affordable housing and parking options for the site by the end of March.
To begin rehabilitation of the Milton Small Building, which previously served as the Durham Police Department’s headquarters, the city will likely have to subdivide the property and sell the building to Preservation North Carolina. Rehabilitating the building is estimated to cost at least $25 to 30 million. The building could be used as market-rate or affordable housing, a hotel, or an office, but the longer it deteriorates, the more costly it is to repair.
“If we can help problem solve this portion of the larger site so you can focus on the complexities… of the other portion of the site, that’s what we’re offering to do, is to try to get this ox cart that’s been stuck in the ditch for a good long while,” said Cathleen Turner, Piedmont office regional director of Preservation North Carolina.
But before any decisions on the site’s future, council member Chelsea Cook said she wanted more information about what affordable housing and parking could look like.
“For me, I’m like, ‘100 units now is better if they are done more cost effectively’ and then in 10 years we find that we literally are out of the market for building any units at all, right? Like what might happen, which has happened on this site, is that we’ve changed direction three different times and we have no units. Whereas if we had built eight years ago, there’s the possibility that we would already have people housed.”
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