Office and apartment tower coming to North Hills

North Hills' main shopping district, home to a Target and movie theater, is getting ready for a much denser future.

Driving the news: On top of what was once a JCPenney department store, Kane Realty is building office-and-apartment towers — completing a striking transformation of what was once the site of an indoor mall.

• Kane has long had office towers on the opposite side of Six Forks Road. But its original shopping district has never featured them.

Why it matters: Kane Realty is one of the most consequential developers in Raleigh. The moves they make have a huge impact on the city, from North Hills to downtown.

• Kane has around $900 million worth of projects in construction across the city, the company's CEO, John Kane, told WRAL.

Details: Kane is scheduled to complete three new projects on the former JCPenney property:

• One North Hills, a 10-story office tower with 266,000 square feet of office space. (Limani Grille, a Mediterranean restaurant out of New York, has signed a lease for a space there featuring a large terrace. One floor has already been leased by an unnamed tenant as well.)
• A five-story office building;
• And a 12-story apartment building called Highland that will have 287 units. Ruth's Chris Steakhouse and Village Tavern will open on the first floor.

Plus: Adjacent to Highland, Restoration Hardware, the upscale furniture retailer, is opening a gallery and rooftop restaurant.

State of play: The office market in the Triangle is in flux. Vacancy rates jumped up to 14% in the last quarter of 2022, according to JLL research.

• But Kane believes there will be a strong desire to move into offices in amenity-rich locations, whether that is downtown or at North Hills.

Offices nationwide were around 50% occupied by workers over the past four weeks, according to a 10-city sample by Kastle Systems.

• Comparatively, offices in North Hills were around 80% worker occupied, Stacey Buescher, managing director of operations at Kane Realty, told Axios.

What they're saying: "[Companies] want to be in an amenity rich location that make employees want to come back," Buescher told Axios. "So if you're looking somewhere that doesn't have a Target underneath it and doesn't check all those lifestyle boxes, it's not going to be as attractive as what we're building here."

• She added that its new apartments have proven extremely popular with newcomers to the region.
• "It's not just people moving from Georgia. I'm talking like London, New York and California … cities where you're used to being able to walk outside your apartment and go do all these things."