On a Thursday evening in August, the busiest stretch of the North Hills Innovation District isn't the seventeen-story office tower. It's the footbridge.
Two pedestrian bridges span Big Branch Creek here, and by six o'clock they're doing something the original renderings never quite pictured: carrying people holding drinks from one side of a stream to the other, on their way from a bagel counter to a beer garden to a shop that rents out dresses by the week. Nobody cut a ribbon for this. It just started happening once enough of the buildings around the creek opened within a few months of each other.
That's worth sitting with, because the story North Hills residents have been told about this district since 2023 is a tech story. What's actually working right now, this summer, is a walking story.
The Pitch Was $1 Billion and a Tower
When Kane Realty first unveiled the North Hills Innovation District, the framing was economic development, not neighborhood amenity. The plan called for a 33-acre, roughly $1 billion build-out designed to pull in technology, life-sciences, and entrepreneurial tenants, anchored by North Hills Tower 5, an 18-story Class A office building. The language was all "innovation" and "collaboration," and the early images leaned on shared workspaces and corporate lobbies rather than restaurant patios.
Tower 5 delivered close to plan. It opened in 2025 with more than 340,000 square feet of office space, and it's still the tallest structure in the district. But if you've actually walked through NHID this year, the tower isn't what pulls people off St. Albans Drive. The creek is.
What Actually Finished First
The residential and small-retail pieces came online first, and mostly without fanfare. Makers Alley, a row of micro-retail suites tucked beneath Channel House Apartments, opened in spring 2024 with spaces as small as 350 square feet, built specifically for independent owners instead of national chains. The current lineup includes Green Rabbit Plants, the clothing-rental concept TrenLend, the permanent-jewelry bar Bofémme, the nonprofit retail studio Designed For Joy, and Dose Yoga + Smoothie Bar, which chose the space for its second Raleigh location. St. Albans Lofts, a residential mid-rise a short walk away, delivered in 2025.
Then the food and drink caught up, all at once. Good Graces, an all-day market, café, and bar at 540 St. Albans Drive, opened in August 2025 and has settled into a rhythm regulars now know by heart: breakfast from 7 to 11, lunch from 11 to 3, then a slide into shareable bites and cocktails until close at 8. Benchwarmers Bagels and Standard Beer + Food followed this year, both sited directly on the creek. Standard's second location, a sister to its original Person Street spot, is now open with a 150-seat dining room, a full bar, and outdoor tables set along the water near the two bridges. When Kane Realty first announced the space, it described 5,600 square feet indoors and more than 15,000 square feet of outdoor seating, the largest patio footprint of any tenant in North Hills to date.
That sequence is the actual story here. The buildings arrived first. The reason to walk between them didn't show up until this year.
The Bridges Are Doing the Real Work
Big Branch Creek, a tributary of Crabtree Creek, cuts the district in half, and Kane Realty built around it instead of over it. One bridge connects Makers Alley to Standard. A second connects Standard to Tower 5 and the Benchwarmers Bagels side. Kane has also been investing in the creek itself: a $450,000 riparian buffer project is stabilizing the streambed with quarried stone step pools, erosion control matting, and native plantings, part of what the company's design lead, Josie Reeves, has described as an effort to keep the district's outdoor space feeling rooted rather than paved over.
One caveat worth knowing if you live nearby: the trail along the creek is currently a private greenway segment. It's built to eventually tie into Raleigh's Capital Area Greenway system, but that connection isn't finished yet. For now, it's a loop for the district itself, not a through-route to other parts of the city.
A homeowner near the site, Lucas Holland, put the appeal in plainer terms to a local TV crew earlier this year:
"It's a super walkable area. We're 30 years old. That gives us something to do, and it's the best for hosting. All of our friends come over here, we have some cocktails and then walk across to all the places there."
He also noted the tradeoff that comes with it: backing out of his driveway onto St. Albans Drive has gotten harder as more traffic moves through. That's the honest version of what a finished, functioning creek loop does to a quiet street. It gets used.
What's Still Just a Rendering
It's easy to read Kane Realty's announcements and assume the whole district is further along than it is. A few things to keep straight if you're planning a weekend around this area:
- Tributary, a 332-unit apartment building that will add another 6,000 square feet of creek-front retail, broke ground in February 2026 and isn't expected to open until 2028.
- In January 2026, Kane Realty paid $72 million for 28 additional acres stretching toward I-440, where it has floated plans for Veranda, a 207-unit 55-and-over community, and Merit, a seven-story, 387-unit residential and retail building.
- A 20-story residential tower called Vesper, with a rooftop pool, and a hotel with a possible rooftop bar have both been shown in renderings. Neither has broken ground.
None of that changes what's already here. It just means the rooftop bar and the second wave of towers are a few years out, not a few weeks out, and the district you can actually walk today is smaller and more finished than the master plan makes it look.
The Part Worth Noticing Now
The interesting fact about the North Hills Innovation District isn't that it promises more office towers and apartment buildings. It's that the small, completed slice of it, two bridges, one creek, and three kitchens that all landed within about a year of each other, is already doing more daily work for the people who live around it than the office space it was originally built to justify. Tower 5 fills desks during the day. The creek loop is what fills the evening.
If you're in North Hills, North Ridge, or one of the neighborhoods just off Six Forks Road, this is the season to use it, while the walk is still short and the cranes for the next round of towers haven't shown up yet.
If you've ever wondered how a change like this actually moves home values on the streets nearest to it, that's a conversation Wall Real Estate Group has with North Raleigh sellers all the time. Reach out for a free home valuation report or schedule a private consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics about your own block.