Modern Apartments Replace Crumbling Warehouse in Downtown Durham

by Adriana Pop, Associate Editor

An innovative Class A apartment building proposed by award-winning real estate developer Roger Perry will soon rise at the site of the former Liberty Warehouse in the Central Park neighborhood of downtown Durham.

Perry’s Chapel Hill-based East West Partners broke ground on the project in February and expects to complete construction in the summer of 2016. Plans call for 247 multi-family apartments and 24,000 square feet of retail space on Foster Street across from the Durham Farmer’s Market.

The company, which also owns the site, has brought in Washington, D.C.-based Northridge Capital LLC as an equity partner in the project. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Meanwhile, debt financing is being provided by Fifth Third Bank. According to the Triangle Business Journal, the bank is offering $36.1 million with a cap set at $70 million.

The new building will preserve some of the architectural elements of the old Liberty Warehouse, such as the historic brick facades along Rigsbee Avenue and Central Park. Many interior features of the partially demolished structure will also be incorporated in the redevelopment. Raleigh-based Clancy & Theys Construction Co. is the project’s general contractor.

Both equity and debt financing have been arranged by Clark Jenkins, vice president with Capital Advisors Inc. of Charlotte.

Last fall, Roger Perry, founder and president of East West Partners, received the first-ever J. W. Willie York Community Builder Award, which is part of a new awards program organized by the Triangle district council of the Urban Land Institute. The developer has been active in the Triangle region for more than three decades.

Photo credits: Northridge Capital, LLC