Key Takeaways:
- Raleigh’s $2 billion Downtown South plan is a massive mixed-use urban district anchored by a professional soccer stadium, not just a standalone venue.
- The project has been approved but delayed since 2020 due to ongoing financing negotiations, specifically a Tax Increment Grant (TIG) and public-private partnership.
- Growing urgency from professional soccer teams and the city’s strategic desire to densify its urban core are driving renewed momentum for a potential 2026 construction start.
Table of Contents
- The $2 Billion Vision for Downtown South Raleigh: More Than Just a Stadium
- The Driving Urgency: Why Raleigh’s Soccer Teams Need Downtown South Now
- Six Years in Limbo: Unpacking the Delays for Downtown South Raleigh
- Community Debate and Economic Stakes: What Downtown South Raleigh Means for Our City
- What’s Next for Downtown South Raleigh and Your Real Estate Strategy
The $2 Billion Vision for Downtown South Raleigh: More Than Just a Stadium
Raleigh stands out as one of the largest metro areas in the country without a downtown stadium. However, a multi-billion dollar plan to address this has been designed and approved since 2020. My clients and I often wonder: why hasn’t a single shovel hit the ground yet? Today, I’m breaking down exactly what’s inside the Downtown South Raleigh plan, why it’s been stuck in limbo for six years, and what it could mean for our real estate market when it finally moves forward.
When most people hear about Downtown South Raleigh, they picture a stadium isolated off the highway. That image doesn’t even begin to capture the true scale of what’s being proposed. The site, strategically located just south of downtown Raleigh around the South Saunders Street and Interstate 40 interchange, is envisioned as Raleigh’s Southern Gateway. My experience tells me this isn’t just about dropping a single building on vacant land; the plan is to build a brand new, highly walkable, mixed-use urban district that extends downtown Raleigh further south. We’re talking about high-rise office towers, residential towers with apartments, hotels, ground-floor restaurants, retail throughout, and much-needed new entertainment venues. Plus, a significant 14 acres of green open space, pocket parks, and crucial Greenway connections that will seamlessly tie the entire development into Raleigh’s existing trail system.
The Driving Urgency: Why Raleigh’s Soccer Teams Need Downtown South Now
What truly excites me about the Downtown South Raleigh project is its design intent: to feel like a real, vibrant neighborhood where people live, work, and spend time every day. This ambitious undertaking is spearheaded by Kane Realty Corporation, led by John Kane, in partnership with Steve Malik, owner of both the North Carolina Courage (NWSL women’s professional team) and North Carolina FC (men’s professional club). These two soccer teams are fundamental to why this project exists and why the urgency around it has escalated so rapidly.
Currently, both professional soccer teams have effectively outgrown their existing stadium infrastructure before a new one has even broken ground. This critical situation is driving much of the renewed momentum behind the Downtown South Raleigh project. The core of Downtown South includes a soccer and entertainment stadium designed to seat between 12,000 and 15,000 people, with an estimated cost of around $250 million for the stadium alone. The design ensures the stadium anchors a full entertainment district, with restaurants, bars, retail, and other venues planned to keep the area active year-round, not just on game days.
The urgency became undeniable in 2025. The NC Courage drew over 107,000 fans that season, a franchise record, with an average of over 7,800 fans per game. The regular season finale set a new single-game record of over 11,000 attendees, also breaking the all-time North Carolina women’s professional sports attendance record. Steve Malik’s direct response to this success, ‘We broke the stadium. We have outgrown our infrastructure,’ perfectly encapsulates the situation. Furthermore, NCFC announced in November 2025 their application for USL Division 1 membership, a new top-tier men’s league launching around 2028. A non-negotiable requirement for this league is a minimum 15,000-seat purpose-built soccer stadium, which NCFC currently lacks. The stadium in Downtown South Raleigh is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’; it’s a competitive necessity for both clubs’ growth.
Six Years in Limbo: Unpacking the Delays for Downtown South Raleigh
Understanding how we’ve arrived at this point and why the Downtown South Raleigh project has taken six years to reach a potential construction start means looking back at its origins. The city council approved the project in December 2020, overriding the unanimous objection of the planning commission. Over five years later, construction still hasn’t begun—this gap is essentially the story.
In June 2019, Malik and Kane initially announced Downtown South Raleigh as a 55-acre site with a 20,000-seat stadium, making it clear from day one that public funding was essential. Their initial request was $13 million annually for 20 years from the Raleigh Wake Hospitality Tax Fund, a fund historically used for projects like PNC Arena. Both city and county managers did not recommend it. By March 2020, Kane Realty filed a rezoning petition for high-density mixed-use development up to 40 stories. The Raleigh Planning Commission denied it due to concerns about scale, stormwater impacts, insufficient project detail, and potential disruption to surrounding communities. Despite this, the city council overrode their decision, voting seven to one in favor in December 2020. This approval granted the entitlement to build, but crucially, came with zero funding commitment, no tax increment grant (TIG), and no formal public-private partnership agreement. The zoning was approved, but the critical money question was deferred.
After 2020, Kane Realty shifted its focus to pursuing a Tax Increment Grant, or TIG. From my perspective, it’s important to understand how a TIG works: the developer builds the project using private capital, and then, over a set period, they receive a portion of the *new* incremental property tax revenue generated by the development. This means the city isn’t spending existing tax dollars; it’s sharing future tax revenue that wouldn’t exist without the project. In 2020, Raleigh didn’t even have a TIG policy, and city staff were tasked with developing one. This framework still hasn’t produced a finalized agreement for Downtown South Raleigh. Further slowing the process, high interest rates and post-COVID commercial real estate headwinds in late 2023 pushed back the developer’s mid-2024 groundbreaking projection, which ultimately did not happen.
Community Debate and Economic Stakes: What Downtown South Raleigh Means for Our City
The debate surrounding Downtown South Raleigh has been significant and has shaped the project’s current standing. Supporters highlight strong arguments for new jobs—both during construction and permanently—and new tax revenue for the city and county without impacting existing budgets. It also promises new housing supply in a part of Raleigh that hasn’t seen this kind of investment before. The entire Downtown South site also benefits from an opportunity zone designation, making it highly attractive for long-term institutional capital, the kind of patient money that gets projects of this scale built. Steve Malik has effectively made the community case, noting that southeast Raleigh hasn’t received the same benefits from the city’s growth as other areas, framing Downtown South as a way to bring that growth southward.
However, the concerns raised during the rezoning process were real and deserve careful consideration. My clients and I pay close attention to issues like the original approval’s lack of binding commitments on housing mix. Early plans referenced only about 100 units out of the first 1,000 homes at below-market rates, which community groups argued was insufficient for a project of this magnitude. While a TIG framework proposed community benefits covering housing commitments, these terms were never finalized. Concerns about displacement in nearby neighborhoods like Caraleigh, Fuller Heights, and South Park were also prominent, with critics arguing the rezoning moved too quickly without addressing impacts on existing residents. Flooding is another critical point, as the site straddles Walnut Creek, and the city’s own watershed study focuses on this exact area. While Kane Realty proposed green stormwater measures from the start, this remains part of the ongoing conversation. The NC Justice Center also raised concerns that a large enough TIG could absorb most incremental tax revenue for decades, potentially limiting the net benefit to public coffers. From my perspective, these aren’t project killers; they represent the crucial negotiating points we’re currently working through. The community benefit requirements built into a TIG agreement are exactly where housing commitments, mitigation measures, and green infrastructure standards would get locked in, making the financing delay also a negotiation about what this project does for the people who already live in South Raleigh.
What’s Next for Downtown South Raleigh and Your Real Estate Strategy
After six years of approvals, negotiations, delays, and renewed urgency, everything comes down to one question: can the financing agreement get done in 2026? As of March 2026, the zoning for Downtown South Raleigh is fully approved, Kane Realty owns the land, it holds active opportunity zone status, and phase one site plans are already on file with the city. What’s still missing is a finalized public-private partnership, a formal TIG agreement with both the city of Raleigh and Wake County, and the construction permits that follow. John Kane’s public target is for construction to begin by the end of 2026, with the stadium opening in late 2028 or early 2029.
The urgency behind this target is more real now than ever before. The Courage broke their current stadium in 2025, NCFC cannot enter the top men’s league without a new facility, and six years of Raleigh’s significant growth have created market conditions that simply didn’t exist when this project was first proposed. This kind of urban densification is a crucial aspect of the broader Raleigh real estate market dynamics I analyze regularly. What I want my clients and local residents to understand is that Downtown South Raleigh isn’t just a stadium project; it represents a real decision point for how our city grows. Raleigh can continue pushing outward into suburban greenfields, or it can start extending and densifying its urban core. Projects like this are how metros transition from sprawling to genuinely urban, and that shift will permanently change values, commutes, and what it means to actually live in Raleigh for buyers, sellers, investors, and long-time residents alike.
When this corridor transforms—and based on everything I’ve seen in this market over the past decade, I believe it will—South Raleigh’s story changes permanently. The window to get ahead of that is right now, not after the cranes start going up and the Raleigh skyline transformation takes its next step. If you want a personalized breakdown of what Downtown South Raleigh means for buying or selling in the Triangle right now, or if you generally want to better understand our market and put a plan together, please reach out to me. I’m here to help navigate these exciting changes.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q: What is the Downtown South Raleigh plan?
The Downtown South Raleigh plan is a proposed $2 to $2.2 billion mixed-use urban district spanning 140-145 acres just south of downtown Raleigh. It includes high-rise offices, residential towers, hotels, retail, entertainment venues, and 14 acres of green space, anchored by a 12,000-15,000 seat soccer stadium.
Q: Why has the Downtown South Raleigh project been delayed since 2020?
The Downtown South Raleigh project was approved in December 2020 but lacked public funding commitments. Delays stemmed from the city’s need to develop a Tax Increment Grant (TIG) policy, negotiations for a public-private partnership with Raleigh and Wake County, and high interest rates in late 2023.
Q: What is the target timeline for construction on Downtown South Raleigh?
Developer John Kane publicly confirmed in February 2026 that construction on Downtown South Raleigh could begin by the end of 2026. The target for the stadium opening is late 2028 or early 2029, contingent on finalizing the public-private partnership.
Q: What makes the Downtown South Raleigh project urgent now?
The project’s urgency in Downtown South Raleigh is driven by the North Carolina Courage soccer team outgrowing its current stadium with record attendance in 2025. Additionally, North Carolina FC’s application for USL Division 1 membership requires a minimum 15,000-seat stadium, a standard only the Downtown South plan can meet.
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This article was adapted from our YouTube video: Inside Raleigh’s $2 Billion Downtown South Plans. Watch the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb7ng47Udpg
