Don’t Let Kane Realty Trash Midtown Raleigh!

We Must Have a Say About Threats to the Safety, Health and Well-Being of Our Neighborhoods!

When you’re a billionaire developer and want something from the public, why bother with obeying the law and showing due respect for your neighbors when it’s easier and more profitable to dispense with public review and successfully lobby the General Assembly to change the law?

This is a story about a betrayal of our Midtown neighborhoods, but there is a message here for all our neighbors in Raleigh. I urge all residents of all the diverse communities within the City to read and take note.

Do any of us want wealthy and powerful business interests to treat our community as their own fiefdom? We may disagree about many things, but can’t we all agree that we don’t to be ruled by such autocratic private interests in Midtown or anywhere else in Raleigh?

This past August Kane Realty was worried that a well-established legal process might derail its plans for continued irresponsible development in Midtown Raleigh - in this case proposing to deviate from City development regulations so it would be allowed to locate the known health and safety hazard of a loading dock/trash handling and transfer operation on Lassiter Mill Road. This road is a heavily traveled main thoroughfare as well as a residential street. Importantly, there is already an existing loading dock/trash handling and transfer operation in the same block at the Highland apartments (another Kane development). Midtown Neighbors United has well documented this very problematic blight on our community and has worked with the City to control it - with no help from Kane (see more below).  

On August 6 the Raleigh Design Review Commission held a hearing on Kane’s proposal. The members of the Commission are lay citizens duly appointed by City Councilors; by law most have professional expertise in design and urban planning. Receiving sworn testimony and bound by law to rely only on competent evidence presented by technical experts, it was the commissioners' duty to decide on behalf of the City and its people whether Kane’s proposed deviation was consistent with applicable laws and regulations. 

Equally important, neighbors who would be negatively affected by the proposed deviation were entitled to voice concerns and provide expert testimony in opposition. Midtown Neighbors United supported an affected neighbor and their expert who presented compelling testimony and evidence in opposition to Kane’s irresponsible proposal.

Sensing defeat, Kane requested a continuance. At the continued hearing on October 1, the Commissioners (and we) expected the Commission would decide whether or not to approve Kane’s proposed deviation. Unfortunately, the Commission was not allowed to make that decision. Before the hearing began, Kane’s lawyer advised the Commissioners that Kane was withdrawing its request. It turns out that in mid-August, Kane's lobbyists had cut a secret backroom deal with the NC General Assembly which then passed without public notice or debate a law effectively gutting the City's inconvenient review process and preventing it from being applied to Kane’s proposed deviation (see Session Law 2026-59, Section 9.(a), effective Oct.1, 2026). There would be no hearing on Kane's proposal. 

We were shocked but not really surprised by the tactic or the outcome. It’s pretty well understood that well-funded private interests routinely trump all others – especially the public’s interest.

“Money talks and the public interest walks.” In North Carolina as elsewhere, lobbyists for well-funded private interests work the legislature tirelessly to undermine our public interests and eliminate laws and rules protecting them. As a result our protective laws are constantly threatened with secret and selective trashing by the General Assembly, too often without public knowledge or debate.

For now, MNU has to leave it to other engaged citizens and public interest groups to find ways to effectively dismantle the unholy alliance of well-funded private interests and our elected representatives at all levels of government.

In the meantime, MNU will continue to actively oppose approval of any more urban blight on Lassiter Mill Road.

OUR CALL TO ACTION!

Kane Realty’s proposed Site Plan ASR-24-26 including the Lassiter Mill loading dock/trash handling and transfer operations has not yet been approved; it is still under review by the City’s planning staff.

We are firmly convinced that locating this private hazard on Lassiter Mill Road would be completely inconsistent with many applicable city laws, regulations, policies and disrespectful of our community and its established norms. Kane and the General Assembly have not yet trashed all the rules that could block the proposal. So MNU is redoubling our ongoing engagement with City staff, some of whom have consistently noted significant concerns about this proposed loading dock/trash handling and transfer operations in their public reviews of the ASR. See "Reviews" tab at https://raleighnc-energovpub.tylerhost.net/apps/selfservice#/plan/b7246980-2334-4643-92ee-e090b2f8d4c6.

We’d love for all who are able to help us convince the City that policies or practices that permit or allow irresponsible development anywhere in Raleigh are an affront to people everywhere in the City. We should all be secure in our belief that the City of Raleigh will always place our collective interest in the safety and welfare of the general public above the private economic interests of rapacious developers.

Toward that end we invite all Raleigh residents concerned about what is happening, not just in Midtown but all over Raleigh, to support MNU's cause by endorsing our comments on ASR 0024-26 submitted to staff on October 13. A copy of these comments is attached below. (Note we also included a brief comment supporting a traffic study for this area which is long overdue. That's a topic for another blog.)

You can do this by copying the text below and emailing it to the noted planning staff at your earliest convenience.  Feel free to submit your own comments if you wish. Please copy MNU as well.

A final, important note. In extending this invitation to exercise your right to speak out, we ask that you treat any City staff you may engage, verbally or in writing, with the utmost respect. Without exception, in our many interactions with staff we have found them to be interested, engaged, willing to listen, and to help if they can. They do often thankless jobs under often difficult circumstances. The City staff serve the public, but they are not servants. They are professionals. Please do your best to honor them for their service with an extra measure of courtesy and respect. Thanks.

Text of suggested email

To: Jessica Gladwin (Jessica.Gladwin@raleighnc.gov); Brandie Crawford (Brandie.Crawford@raleighnc.gov), Kasey Evans (Kasey.Evans@raleighnc.gov)

Cc: MNU (info@midtownneighborsunited.org)  

Subject: Comments on ASR 0024-26

Dear Ms. Gladwin:

I fully agree with and support the subject comments submitted to you by Midtown Neighbors United on October 13, 2026.

Regards

[Your Name}

MNU'S Comments on ASR 0024-26