What's Actually New In Midtown This Fall, And What's Stuck In Review

Developers have been targeting a summer opening for Standard Beer + Food's second location inside the North Hills Innovation District, where the patio alone will run 15,000 square feet, the largest stretch of open-air space anywhere in North Hills. A few blocks away, on a one-acre corner where Lassiter Mill Road meets The Circle at North Hills Street, a proposed 15-story building called North Hills Tower II just failed to get a vote. Not a rejection. Not an approval. The Raleigh Design Review Commission spent close to four hours on it earlier this month and decided it didn't have enough information to decide anything at all.

That's the honest state of Midtown heading into fall: one calendar is full of confirmed dates you can put on your phone right now, and another calendar, the one that actually determines what this corner of Raleigh looks like next year, is on hold until at least September. Both are worth knowing before you plan your weekends.

The calendar you can already put on your phone

A handful of North Hills traditions have known dates this season, and they're worth having in one place:

• Midtown Farmers Market, in its 16th season, runs Saturdays from 8 a.m. to noon through November 2 in the North Hills Commons, with more than 35 vendors sourcing from within 100 miles of Raleigh.
• Pop-Up Music, the district's acoustic series, returns for its fall run from September 11 to October 25, Fridays at The Commons from 6 to 9 p.m. and Sundays at Midtown Park from 2 to 5 p.m.
• Wellness Wednesdays, which typically runs Wednesday evenings on the Midtown Park lawn through September and into early October, is back for its fall session with fitness classes on the grass.
• The Fall Festival in Makers Alley and the Iron Chef Challenge, where chefs from Foxcroft Wine Co., Good Graces, Leo's Italian Social, and Tamasha cook head to head using ingredients pulled straight from that morning's farmers market stalls, both return as annual fixtures of the season.

None of that requires a zoning hearing. It's the part of North Hills that runs on its own schedule regardless of what's happening two blocks away in a design review meeting.

The Retail Wave, Arriving In Stages

The retail and restaurant side of the district is moving fast this year, though not all of it has landed yet. Jubala Coffee has confirmed plans for a fifth café in the Main District, tucked between Alo Yoga and Gorjana, which would mark its second location inside North Hills alongside the original café overlooking Midtown Park. Benchwarmer Bagels, also targeting a summer opening, is set to bring a standalone spot with an expanded menu that includes pizza, wine, and beer. South Block, the acai and smoothie chain based in Arlington, Virginia, has signed a lease in the Main District next to Bartaco, with an opening projected for the first quarter of 2027, its first location anywhere in the Triangle.

Makers Alley, the retail strip inside the Innovation District, has already filled in with a run of locally owned shops: Amelia's Flowers, Green Rabbit Plants, Bofémme, Dose Yoga + Smoothie Bar, Hellbent, Ky's Kandles, TrenLend, and Designed For Joy, a nonprofit retail concept that trains artisans while selling leather goods and jewelry made in Raleigh. HomeTurf has signed on for space in Tower 5, the district's 17-story, roughly 340,000-square-foot office building that opened in 2025, where Millennium Private Wealth also leased space this year for its first North Carolina office. Office demand across North Hills has been strong enough that One North Hills Tower, a separate building that opened in 2024, is now fully leased.

Kane Realty, the developer behind all of it, has made a point of the leasing mix.

"Every single person that we've signed is a local tenant to date."

That's Stacey Buescher, the company's EVP of commercial operations, describing the retail strategy inside the Innovation District. It's a fair claim as far as the storefronts go. The harder question is what's happening one project over, where the city itself is asking Kane to slow down.

The tower that didn't get a vote

North Hills is actually expanding on two separate fronts right now, and they're easy to confuse because they share a developer and a name.

The first is the North Hills Innovation District, the 28 acres between Navaho Drive and I-440 that Kane Realty bought for $72 million in January. That land is zoned for buildings up to 20 stories, and it's where Tributary, a six-story, 332-unit apartment building with 6,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, broke ground in January and is expected to wrap by spring 2028. Two more residential projects, Veranda (207 units aimed at residents 55 and older) and Merit (387 units with roughly 10,000 square feet of retail), are the next projects filed for that same stretch of land.

The second front is the older core of North Hills near Six Forks Road, Lassiter Mill Road, and The Circle at North Hills, where the Raleigh City Council approved a rezoning in January that permits buildings from 10 to 37 stories, capped at roughly 3 million square feet overall. North Hills Tower II is the first specific proposal to come out of that rezoning, and it's the one currently stuck. Kane Realty is asking the city to waive a rule requiring street-facing buildings to include windows and glass, arguing the loading dock design improves pedestrian safety. The commission wasn't convinced, and asked for a shade study before it will revisit the plan, a request the commission said it needed before moving forward. One resident, Dr. Sherine Ibrahim, hired legal counsel over the proposal.

"I chose my home because it had a nice view of North Hills. I could see the sky."

The earliest the commission can take the matter back up is September, meaning the tower question will still be open when the farmers market season wraps and the last Pop-Up Music show plays.

Confirmed vs. Still Pending

Why the pause matters more than the patio

It's tempting to treat the tower fight as background noise to the restaurant news, but the two are more connected than they look. Kane Realty has described the Innovation District's long-term goal as a more connected, walkable, nature-integrated place, and the new greenway boardwalk segment linking Makers Alley to Standard and Tower 5 is a real, physical step toward that. But walkability inside a single development doesn't solve what residents actually flag when they're asked about growth.

Lucas Holland, a homeowner near the Innovation District, told a reporter he likes what the greenway and the retail mix have done for his block, but admitted the daily reality is getting harder.

"Backing out of our driveway is tough because you're always backing on to St. Albans. I think it's going to get busy."

Kim Hanchette, who has lived in the North Hills area for nearly four decades, made a related point: she'd rather see the district invest in properties the public can hold onto long term rather than more apartment buildings where residents tend to be transient. And Emile Hartman of the Midtown Raleigh Alliance confirmed that the city's Walkable Midtown Plan, approved by council back in 2020, still has no construction date, with officials waiting on state and federal funding to move it forward.

That's the actual shape of the season. The farmers market, the music series, and the new coffee shop are the part of North Hills that shows up on a banner. The tower vote, the shade study, and the funding gap on Six Forks Road are the part that decides what the neighborhood looks like once the banners come down. If you live here, both calendars are worth watching, because only one of them is finished being written.

For a closer look at how North Hills fits into the broader Midtown Raleigh picture, including the walkability question residents keep raising, our guide to walkable living around North Hills goes deeper on the ground-level experience.

If this fall's changes have you wondering what they mean for your own property, whether that's a question about resale timing, the value a new patio or a paused tower might add or subtract, or simply what your home is worth in a district this actively in motion, Michelle Mundra and the team are glad to talk it through. You can also request a luxury home valuation any time you're ready for the numbers.