Raleigh’s Exchange development adds rooftop beach club, expands downtown nightlife

Raleigh’s Exchange project is betting that a rooftop beach club can do more than polish a luxury address. The new amenity, planned for the top of an 18-story residential tower at the $1 billion mixed-use development on St. Albans Drive, would give Midtown another high-end gathering spot and push the site farther toward destination status.

The tower is set to hold more than 250 apartments, with units ranging from about 650 to 1,550 square feet. The bottom three floors are planned to include an 80,000-square-foot Life Time health club, and Life Time would also operate the rooftop beach club. Dewitt Carolinas has said the tower could be completed in early 2027, after construction was expected to start in 2024.

The broader Exchange site covers 40 acres and includes a planned 4-acre central park with greenspace and a water element. That combination matters because the project is not just adding apartments; it is building a place designed to keep people on-site after work, after dinner and late into the evening. The first phase, a 12-story office tower, was expected to finish in spring 2024, and the newer hospitality additions suggest the development is becoming a larger entertainment hub, not just a workplace.

Among those additions is Peregrine, the flagship restaurant at The Exchange at 1000 Social Street. Chef Saif Rahman and artist Patrick Shanahan are opening the restaurant, and WRAL reported they were aiming for a February 2025 opening. Axios described Peregrine as the first fine-dining restaurant at the development, a sign that The Exchange is trying to attract diners who might otherwise head to Downtown Raleigh, North Hills or other established restaurant districts.

The rooftop beach club also raises a practical question for Wake County residents: is this a public-facing boost to Raleigh’s nightlife economy, or another perk aimed mainly at luxury tenants and premium members? Life Time memberships at its current Raleigh gym start at $179 a month, a price point that suggests the rooftop club will be built for a higher-income crowd. Raleigh already has rooftop nightlife downtown, including Urban Oak, which opened in February 2025 on the 14th floor of Tempo by Hilton and bills itself as the city’s tallest rooftop bar. The Exchange now looks set to expand that market farther north, with the clearest impact likely on where people eat, drink and spend their evenings in Midtown.