From Parking Lot to Midtown: Why North Hills Is the Right Place to Build Tall
A local history lesson on growth, delay, and the limits of saying “maybe later”
North Hills is one of Raleigh’s most visible examples of how cities actually change over time. It’s also one of the clearest lessons we have in how our planning system and political instincts shape what ultimately gets built.
In the 1960s, North Hills Mall opened as the first indoor shopping mall between Atlanta and Washington, D.C. It was a regional destination, anchored by department stores and surrounded by acres of surface parking. People drove long distances to shop there because that was the dominant model of retail at the time. The site was designed for a Raleigh organized around driving, single‑purpose trips, and the assumption that retail would continue to concentrate into large, centralized malls. By the late 90s, that model was breaking down. North Hills, like malls across the country, struggled with vacancies and declining consumer spending. What remained were large expanses of asphalt and aging commercial buildings tha…
