Kane Realty is officially rolling out the next big piece of the North Hills Innovation District, with site crews now at work on Tributary, a mid-rise apartment project tucked along a wetland by Big Branch Creek in Midtown Raleigh. The six-story building is set to bring more than 300 rental homes and street-level retail to the district, while plugging into a new web of planned greenway connections. Work on the site ramped up this winter as Kane pushes into the latest phase of the NHID buildout.
According to Connect CRE, Tributary is planned at 332 apartments with roughly 6,000 square feet of ground-floor retail. The outlet reports that construction began in January 2026, with delivery targeted for spring 2028. Connect CRE also highlights two interior courtyards, a digital content creation studio and an elevated wellness center, and identifies Hickok Cole as the general contractor and John Moriarty & Associates as the architect.
As detailed by Kane Realty Corporation, Tributary is one component of the 33-acre North Hills Innovation District, designed to weave new public open space and greenway access into the larger North Hills footprint. Earlier Kane project materials described a six-story building with roughly 320 apartments and the same 6,000 square feet of retail, underscoring how the program and team have evolved as NHID has shifted from glossy renderings to active construction.
Design and amenities
The sales pitch here leans hard into nature and flexibility: outdoor courtyards, creative work areas and wellness spaces oriented toward the creek and surrounding green space. Raleigh Magazine has broken down the amenity package and the live-work angle, sketching how Tributary is meant to serve residents who might split their time between home office, shared workspace and the greenway.
Contractor documentation backs up the scale and team on the project. A project list from Power Design cites John Moriarty & Associates as architect of record and pegs Tributary at 332 units, aligning with other public materials on the building’s size and layout. Local coverage and those contractor listings together help fill in the picture of how Tributary fits into NHID’s broader design language.
Where it fits in North Hills
On the map, Tributary will sit just south of St. Albans Drive and east of Tower 5, right next to new pedestrian bridges and future greenway extensions that district leaders say will link offices, retail and residences throughout the site. Marketing materials for the North Hills Innovation District show Tributary alongside St. Albans Lofts and a proposed high-rise residential tower, part of Kane’s ongoing effort to load Midtown Raleigh with more housing, shops and public gathering spots.
The vision for all of that connectivity, including how people will move from one side of the site to the other without getting back in their cars, is laid out by NHID. Tributary’s creekside location is a key piece of that story, since the planned greenway links are meant to run right past the new building.
Timeline and what’s next
With site work reported to have kicked off in January 2026, the project’s delivery target in spring 2028 leaves time for Kane to line up retail tenants and coordinate the greenway connections with the rest of the district buildout. As Axios Raleigh has noted, Tributary lands in the middle of a crowded North Hills pipeline that includes a planned 20-story Strand tower, signaling that Kane has no plans to tap the brakes on its Midtown expansion. Axios Raleigh has also called attention to the construction schedule and the larger district program.
As the dirt keeps moving, the spotlight will shift to which retailers claim the roughly 6,000 square feet on the ground floor and how the new greenway access might reroute daily routines around North Hills. Kane has already published master-plan materials and is expected to roll out more specifics on leasing and additional partners as construction progresses. For now, the developer’s NHID and North Hills portals remain the go-to spots for tracking phasing and tenancy updates, with Kane Realty continuing to post district-level information.
