A new Hyatt Place opened today in West Raleigh near the RBC Center.

The developer of the 132-room hotel, the Atlanta firm Southern States Management, which also owns the North Raleigh Hilton, expects it to be the first hotel in the Raleigh area to achieve LEED certification. It has electric car charging stations, 30 solar panels and LED lighting, among other green features.

It also has 5,500 square feet of meeting space.

The Hyatt Place is the second new hotel to open near the RBC Center in recent years. A 99-room Wingate Inn & Suites opened in late 2010.
 

An entity that owns two office buildings and land near the RBC Center in West Raleigh has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.

Lichtin/Wade LLC, which is owned by Raleigh-based Lichtin Corp., owes BB&T Bank nearly $39 million, according to its bankruptcy filing. It also owes Wake County $290,870 in property taxes.

Lichtin owns two 100,000-square foot buildings, known as the Offices at Wade, that were built in 2008. It also owns adjacent land where three more buildings could be built.

The RBC Center won't be called that for too much longer, but the Raleigh arena just announced a mighty big show. Elton John will play there on March 16, right about the time the building's name change to PNC Arena is supposed to take effect. Tickets start at $37 and go on-sale Jan. 27.

Yes, it's that time of the year again: Real estate forecasting season!

One of the biggest, and longest running events in the Triangle, took place this afternoon at the RBC Center in the form of the NAI Carolantic Triangle Commercial Real Estate Conference.

Now in its 27th year, it featured comments by Steve Stroud, NAI Carolantic's chairman, as well as presentations by Jimmy Barnes, the firm's president, and Peter Linneman, an NAI global economist and CEO of the American Land Fund.

NAI Carolantic's space survey showed nearly 32 million square feet of the Triangle's 240 million square feet of office, multipurpose and shopping center space remained vacant at the end of the year.

The firm predicts vacancy rates across all sectors will continue to come down and investment sales activity will increase 40 percent in 2012.
 

Last week, Loretta Lynn's Triangle show was rescheduled to April because she's recovering from knee surgery. And now, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Jan. 27 show at RBC Center has also been postponed to the same month, also due to a lower-body surgical situation.

The Chili Peppers' new date will be April 4. In a statement, tour promoter Live Nation said the show was  postponed because lead singer Anthony Kiedis recently had to undergo surgery because of "multiple foot injuries," adding that he is expected to make a fully recovery. Also rescheduled are dates in Charlotte, to April 6; and Greensboro, to April 9.

Word came down on Thursday about the RBC Center's name change, which got me to wondering: Will the Downtown Raleigh Amphitheater have a title sponsor by the time its 2012 concert season commences next spring? Roger Krupa, who oversees the venue for the city, says he's still working on it. But it's pretty much stuck in the same stalemate ever since the Bud Light name got derailed last year.

"I'm out there trying," Krupa said Friday afternoon. "I have some targets, been out there talking to people. But it's a really hard environment right now to try and get someone to put $300,000 into something like this. We'll see how I do."

The Centennial Authority, the owner and developer of the RBC Center, has granted initial approval for the arena in West Raleigh to be renamed the PNC Arena.

The new naming rights agreement is expected to take effect in March, after Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Services Group completes its $3.45 billion acquisition of Raleigh-based RBC Bank.

The naming rights were included in the PNC-RBC deal. The arena is home to the Carolina Hurricanes and N.C. State University's basketball team.

RBC's naming rights deal expires in 2022.

PNC is used to having its name plastered on sports venues. The Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team plays in PNC Park, and PNC Field, outside of Scranton, is home to a New York Yankees minor league team.

Any costs associated with renaming the arena are the responsibility of the holder of the naming rights.

Lou Cestello, head of PNC's Southeast region, said the arena will provide a boost to the bank's name recognition in the Triangle and the state.

The 19,000-seat arena opened in 1999. It averages 1.5 million guests and 150 events per year.

With new year's eve in sight and 2011 winding down, 2012 beckons -- and the first big arena show of the year. That will be Red Hot Chili Peppers, just announced for Raleigh's RBC Center on Jan. 27, one of three North Carolina dates they'll play that month (including the U.S. tour's opening date in Charlotte on Jan. 25, and Jan. 31 in Greensboro).

The announcement did not include ticket prices, but Saturday is the on-sale date. And here's a photo gallery from their European tour.

Rick Martinez, the news director at WPTF-AM who writes a weekly column for The N&O's op-ed page, is pushing for an arena in downtown Raleigh. Click here to read today's column on the issue. I'll let Martinez and downtown-arena opponents duke it out (the play on words is intentional, as Martinez is a loyal Duke football fan).

But I did want to comment on a letter to the editor in Tuesday's paper. The writer states, "While there are some arguments for a downtown arena, has Martinez considered that it's impossible to tailgate in a downtown parking garage?" 

It's not. Go to any Panthers football game in uptown Charlotte on a Sunday afternoon. The tailgating is great. Same in Chapel Hill, where UNC fans go to the top of parking decks near Kenan Stadium to tailgate and admire the view.

Again, I'm not advocating for a new arena in Raleigh. The RBC Center works for most people and is only about a decade old. But one of the strengths of downtown arenas is that you don't have to build new decks because the downtown already accommodates tens of thousands of weekday workers. When the football stadium was built in uptown Charlotte in the 1990s, there was almost no new parking built. That's because the downtown already had enough parking to handle the 50,000 people who worked there Monday through Friday.

--John Drescher

The "American Idols Live!" tour has packed up and headed across the state to Charlotte, where a performance is scheduled for tonight. But here are a few final thoughts on the sold-out Raleigh show at the RBC Center on Wednesday night.

First, check out my colleague David Menconi's fine review, if you haven't already. He is dead-on in noting that Garner's Scotty McCreery, left, seems right at home onstage and that Haley Reinhart already seems like a seasoned performer. And yes, an appearance by Scotty a little earlier in the show would have been preferable.

But I tended to view the show from a slightly different lens than David -- was it an enjoyable, family-friendly night out for my wife and I and our 10-year-old daughter, a huge "Idol" fan who is not quite ready for a Katy Perry or Lady Gaga show? On that measure, just looking at my kid's face, it was a big success.

"Idols Live!" is never going to match, say, a Prince or Springsteen show. No one expects it to. But for what it is — well-produced, Disney-fied singing of popular songs, with something for everyone — it works.

Highlights: