Progress is being made at the old K-Mart location on Raleigh’s Western Boulevard, with developers filling nearly all of the spaces inside the building.
The site has stood vacant for nearly a decade. But the long wait could soon be over.
CityPlat, the owners of the property, have announced several new
tenants to fill out the spaces in the building. The first is expected to open within a few months, likely in spring or summer of 2026. Once everything is open it’s expected to have various entertainment, dining and exercise options.
Gold’s Gym will take up one of the larger sections of the
building at more than 30,000 square feet.
In a roughly 20,000 square feet facility, a basketball
training facility called Final Score is opening.
Other tenants include Nail Lab, 810 Billiards & Bowling, Vavela Café and Mythic Golf.
“We’re excited,” Vincenzo Verdino
with CityPlat said. “We want this property to become a fabric of the community
here which is why we’re curating active-entertainment locations to kind of
become additive to the community as well.”
Verdino anticipates the first business to open in the second quarter of 2026 with everything up and running by late next year.
WRAL previously reported the site has zoning approval for buildings up to seven stories. But if there’s demand for more development on site, the owners could seek permission to build even higher.
Verdino showed WRAL around the
building. The former big box store is more like shoe boxes now. Metal dividers
split the massive building into a number of different spaces for tenants. Even
with the amount of work left, it’s hard to see the history of the K-Mart there,
if not for the stained façade emblazoned with the former Big K logo that’s
since been removed.
“We hope people aren’t going to
recognize this space,” Verdino said. “It will still have the footprint of the
old building. We’re really hoping it looks modernized, but we’re still using
the old bones of the dinosaur.”
But the progress won’t end there.
Verdino says there are plans to redevelop around the old box store that will
truly make it hard to imagine it was ever there in the first place.
“The plan is to go vertical to some
degree on the parking lot,” Verdino said. “It’ll largely depend on what that
rezoning case comes out as far as the flexibility we would have. Certainly what
makes the most sense is some form of mixed-use. If it were being developed
today, it would certainly be a mix of residential and retail. We’re leaving
options open.”
So if you’ve driven down Western
Blvd. over the last decade plus, you may not give a second glance to the
graveyard of a big box eye sore. But give it a third look soon, because big
things are on the way.
“Maybe I’m an eternal optimist, but
I see that as an incredible benefit,” Verdino said. “It’s been largely
forgotten when people are driving by and you don’t notice it at all after a
while and then, you can see life here now. It’s a blinking light.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.wral.com ’
