A Washington, D.C.-area developer has filed plans for two new apartment buildings totaling 262 units on a block already reshaped by breweries, taco spots and a music venue in downtown Durham's Central Park district. Four Points submitted proposals to the city for an 84-unit building at 618 Foster St. and a 178-unit building at 715 Rigsbee Ave., with the two structures connected by a shared parking deck.
The filings mark the latest turn for a project that has changed shape considerably since it was first pitched. As reported by Axios, the new twin seven-story buildings replace Four Points' original plan for an 18-story tower that was meant to anchor the second phase of construction on the site. The project would also include a small amount of ground-floor retail space, according to the same report.
The developer's own project materials describe the second-phase expansion under the name The Rhyth, outlining 262 rental apartment units and 11,500 square feet of ground-floor retail spanning the block between Rigsbee Avenue and Foster Street, according to Four Points, LLC. That plan calls for café plazas and a central promenade linking to a cross-block linear park, per the developer.
A Site Years in the Making
Four Points has been acquiring properties along Foster Street and Rigsbee Avenue since 2019, assembling the land ahead of any formal construction. Between 2019 and 2022, the development partnership spent more than $6.2 million to acquire 2.37 acres along the block bordered by Foster Street, Geer Street and Rigsbee Avenue, according to Construction Equipment Guide.
Rheu Co. Sewing Studio remains an existing business on land included in the second phase of the GeerHouse expansion, per Axios's reporting. It is not clear from available filings what will happen to the studio as the project moves forward.
How GeerHouse Phase One Set the Template
The current proposal builds directly off the first phase of GeerHouse, which was built around Geer Street Garden and Motorco Music Hall. That phase was delivered in 2024 as a seven-story mixed-use building containing 220 apartment units, 13,000 square feet of retail space, and an expanded patio for the neighboring, 6,200-square-foot Motorco Music Hall, according to Four Points. Its first-phase retail roster includes Tataco, Nectar, Nanny Goat Market and Uwa Sushi, per Axios.
The block's transformation predates any of the apartment towers. The Foster and West Geer streets intersection evolved from rundown industrial parcels into a local dining and nightlife hub following the arrival of Fullsteam Brewery in 2010, Geer Street Garden in 2011, and Cocoa Cinnamon in 2013, Construction Equipment Guide reported. Independent business owners led that revitalization years before major developers moved onto the block.
Financing Still an Open Question
Four Points still needs to secure financing before proceeding with the project, per Triangle Business Journal. It is not the developer's first attempt at scaling the site: Four Points previously submitted a site plan in February 2023 for 178 apartments and 11,215 square feet of retail at 715 Rigsbee Ave. before revising its approach to scale down height and combine parcels into the current 262-unit design.
The planned expansion also qualified for real estate tax abatement under the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality's Brownfields Program and required city approvals to relocate a major municipal utility line running through the site, according to Four Points. Brownfield designations typically offer tax benefits to developers redeveloping urban sites that require environmental management.
A District Already Dense With New Construction
Downtown Durham's Central Park district has more than 1,000 apartments already and has been a major site of apartment construction in the Triangle since 2020, according to Axios. The new Four Points buildings would add to that total, with each of the two proposed structures standing seven stories tall.
Regional data suggests the market can absorb more units even amid heavy construction. Apartment absorption across the Raleigh-Durham region reached 10,200 net unit move-ins in 2025, bringing total absorption since early 2024 to over 21,000 units and surpassing the market's combined absorption from 2020 through 2023, according to Northmarq. Downtown Durham also led the regional commercial real estate market in multifamily property sales concentration in 2025, with 80% of downtown transactions involving older residential assets built before 2000, per the same Northmarq analysis.
The broader downtown has seen sustained investment for years. More than $2 billion in public and private capital has been invested in Downtown Durham over the past two decades, supported by a specialized Business Improvement District assessment established in 2012, according to Downtown Durham, Inc. Demographic profiles for Downtown Durham show a population of 6,304 residents with a 41.8% renter rate, while downtown asking rents averaged between $1,624 and $1,852 per month in late 2025 and mid-2026, according to Terra Nova Global Properties.
