Integral targets 907-unit Durham start with affordable fast lane

Connect CRE reports that The Integral Group is targeting an early-2027 start on Tribute Rising, a 907-unit apartment and retail project in Durham, North Carolina, with a total estimated development cost of $343 million. The site is the 15-acre Forest Hills Heights public housing community on West Lakewood Avenue, and the Durham Housing Authority selected Integral for the redevelopment, according to the Triangle Business Journal. The project hinges on a condition: at least 100 of the first phase's 332 units, Connect CRE says, will be dedicated affordable, qualifying the development for expedited review.

The first phase, with a mix of studio, one-, two-, and three-bedroom layouts, is scheduled to deliver in late 2028. Phases two and three add 250 and 325 units, and the full program includes a grocery store and a childcare center alongside the housing.

Connect CRE lists anticipated funding of $19 million from the Durham Housing Authority, $19 million in equity, and an $80 million loan. Those line items cover roughly a third of the $343 million budget, leaving $225 million unaccounted for; a $19 million equity layer is thin at this scale, so the construction loan is the critical near-term piece.

The schedule adds a second dimension to the capital plan. With a delivery date only for the first phase and none for phases two and three, Integral has room to time the remaining 575 units against how the first 332 lease. If Durham absorbs the initial block, the later phases can follow in sequence; if the market cools, the developer is not locked into delivering all 907 units on a fixed clock.

The affordable set-aside does the work here: it unlocks expedited review and a public-sector source of capital. As this publication has argued, the open question for multifamily capital is whether today's pricing extends to workforce product. Tribute Rising answers with a structure rather than a price—a housing authority contribution, a covenant for 100-plus affordable units, and a fast-track approval lane. Whether private capital would have moved the project without those pieces is a question the deal does not answer. The late-2028 delivery of the first 332 units will provide the first evidence.