Lucas Holland is a homeowner near the St. Albans and Hardimont corner of North Hills, close enough that his Saturday routine has changed shape over the past year. Friends come over, they have a few cocktails on the patio, and then they walk. Not drive. Walk across to the restaurants and bars that have filled in around his neighborhood.
That single habit change is the story most coverage of North Hills has missed. The headlines this year have been about towers, unit counts, and dollar figures attached to Kane Realty's expansion. The more useful fact for anyone who already lives here is quieter: for the first time, the pieces of North Hills are close enough together, and connected enough by new paths, that you can move between them on foot instead of in a car. That is a different neighborhood than the one North Hills was even two years ago, and it changes what a normal weekend looks like if your address is anywhere near St. Albans Drive.
The Corner That Used to Be a Parking Lot
The Innovation District sits at St. Albans Drive and Hardimont Road, built deliberately around Big Branch Creek and the wetlands that run through it rather than over them. Kane Realty broke ground in January on Tributary, a six-story, 332-unit apartment building there, and the project includes something more interesting than the unit count: a private greenway with pedestrian bridges that ties directly into Raleigh's citywide greenway system. That link is new. Earlier North Hills buildings, Vine North Hills, Channel House, St. Albans Lofts, Tower 5, went up as freestanding projects with their own retail pads. This one is designed to connect outward.
The retail that filled in this spring reinforced that intent. Benchwarmer Bagels and Standard, a beer-and-food concept with 5,600 square feet and another 10,000 square feet of outdoor gathering space, opened as the district's first sit-down spots, and Makers Alley, the retail run below Channel House, is occupied by local artisans and small retailers. Kane Realty's own leasing team has said every tenant signed to date is local, which is a specific and checkable claim, not just a marketing line.
The expansion does not stop at Hardimont Road. In January, Kane closed on a $72 million, 28-acre site further out along Navaho Drive, pushing the district toward Interstate 440 and Wake Forest Road. Two projects are already filed there: Veranda, 207 units of housing for residents 55 and older, and Merit, 387 apartments over roughly 10,000 square feet of retail. A separate filing in April proposed a 15-story, 246-unit tower at 4000 Center at North Hills Street, with 18,000 square feet of retail and a 483-space parking deck, tucked between RH Raleigh and the One North Hills office building. That one is still in the city's technical review process, no construction date attached, so treat it as blueprint rather than groundbreaking for now.
Why the Street Matters More Than the Address
Here is the detail that ties this together. The Exchange, the $1 billion, 40-acre district anchored further along that same road, sits east of North Hills on St. Albans Drive. Peregrine, the district's first fine-dining restaurant, opened there in April 2025, and this year it picked up a James Beard Awards semifinalist nod for Best New Restaurant, one of three Triangle semifinalists named for the 2026 awards. Next door is Capulet Cocktail Club, a sidecar bar built around the same team, the kind of place servers at Peregrine will walk you over to after dinner if you ask.
Two large districts, same street, growing toward each other rather than away. That is not how North Hills expanded a decade ago, when each phase functioned as its own island with its own parking deck. The greenway pushing out from Tributary and the restaurant row filling in at The Exchange are both aimed at the same corridor. Whether the physical gap between them closes fully is still an open question, since the Navaho Drive parcels are filed but not built. What is already true is that residents on either end are treating St. Albans as one continuous stretch rather than two separate developments that happen to share a zip code.
If you already live here, the practical version of this is straightforward:
- Near the Innovation District (Tributary, Vine North Hills, Channel House, St. Albans Lofts): your walkable radius now includes a greenway connection and local retail that didn't exist a year ago, plus a construction site that will keep growing through at least 2028.
- Near The Exchange (Peregrine, Capulet Cocktail Club): you have a James Beard-recognized kitchen and its adjoining bar within a short walk, and Life Time's planned athletic club and a second tower are still to come.
- Near the older North Hills core (Tower 5, Midtown Park): you have the connective tissue between the two newer nodes, and the traffic that comes with being the pass-through.
That last point is not a footnote. Holland, the same resident who now walks to cocktails instead of driving, also pointed out that backing out of his own driveway onto St. Albans has gotten harder as more cars use the corridor. Neighborhood growth here has a real tradeoff attached, and it is worth knowing before you plan an evening around it.
The Rituals That Didn't Change
None of this replaced what North Hills already did well. The Midtown Beach Music Series, held at Coastal Credit Union Midtown Park on Cardinal at North Hills Street, just wrapped its 17th season this July, Thursday evenings of beach music, Motown, and oldies R&B running from mid-April through late July for a few dollars a ticket. It is one of the longest-running things in this part of Raleigh, older than most of the buildings around it, and it is still the reason a lot of people show up to Midtown Park on a Thursday regardless of what else has opened nearby.
The free Pop-Up Music Series runs on the same logic in a lighter format, acoustic sets on Fridays at The Commons and Sundays at Midtown Park, spring dates that wrapped in May and a fall run scheduled from September 11 through October 25 this year. Neither series needed a greenway or a James Beard nod to matter. They are the reason North Hills has felt like a gathering place for years, and the newer construction is filling in around that fact rather than replacing it.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
The easy read on North Hills this year is more towers, more retail, more headlines about Kane Realty's next move. The more accurate read is that the corridor along St. Albans Drive is becoming legible as a single place you can move through on foot, greenway on one end, a James Beard semifinalist and its cocktail bar on the other, a 17-year-old concert series holding the middle together. Whether that corridor fully closes depends on projects that are still filed rather than built. What is already different is a resident's actual Saturday, patio drinks that end with a walk instead of a car ride.
If you are watching this part of Midtown Raleigh because you are curious what a growing corridor does to daily life, or because you are wondering what it might mean for a property near St. Albans Drive down the road, Avalon Realty Group keeps an eye on how these corridors develop block by block across the Triangle. Reach out when you want a local read on what's actually changing, not just what's been announced.
