Court clears way for 27-story Raleigh tower near downtown

A Wake County judge has dismissed the lawsuit that tried to stop a 27-story tower near downtown Raleigh, handing a clear win to the rezoning backers and leaving nearby Glenwood-Brooklyn residents without a court path to block the project.

The disputed site sits along Peace Street and West Street, near Smoky Hollow and the historic Glenwood-Brooklyn neighborhood. Neighbors had argued that a tower of that scale would overpower the low-rise homes nearby, create major shadow impacts and speed the shift from 3- and 4-story residential buildings to high-rise development.

The case followed a fast-moving approval process inside City Hall. Raleigh’s Planning Commission unanimously approved the rezoning in August 2025, and the City Council later signed off in October 2025 by a 6-2 vote. With the judge’s dismissal on May 20, 2026, the rezoning now stands and the project can move forward.

For residents who organized against it, the ruling closes one of the last avenues to slow a project that had already survived both planning staff review and elected-official approval. For the city and development interests, it preserves a path for taller infill close to downtown, where housing demand and pressure for more density have pushed Raleigh into repeated zoning fights.

The tower has also been described in earlier coverage as a 30-story mixed-use proposal, a reminder that the building’s height was debated in different forms as the project moved through the approval process. However it is labeled, the outcome is the same: the site near Smoky Hollow is no longer tied up in a legal challenge, and the neighborhood has lost the fight to keep the building off the block.

The ruling is likely to reverberate beyond this one stretch of West and Peace streets. Raleigh has already seen a widening clash between neighborhood preservation and redevelopment near downtown and North Hills, and this decision signals that courts may be less receptive to efforts to unwind zoning approvals once the Planning Commission and City Council have acted. For residents living closest to the site, that means the city’s growth machine just gained another foothold, and the skyline around downtown Raleigh is likely to keep climbing.