I absolutely love that Downtown’s districts are rapidly connecting to one another through key development, and that the city isn’t hindered by having a freeway plowing through it or by it. It makes being on foot in Raleigh a pleasant people-oriented experience!
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Generic article about events in DTR this summer. My big takeaway was that hotels reported 79% occupancy last weekend which seems great to me.
Maybe the hotel block and other planned hotels will happen soon! That’d be huge for filling some of the holes downtown.
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Oh yeah. I fully anticipate hotel developers to be scrambling to be the first to get something going vertical in DTR proper as soon as large events come back. Personally, I really want the Nash hotel to break ground first, the firestone lot hopefully gets temporarily converted into a pop-up taproom or something similar, then the enterprise lot hopefully gets reintroduced with a much taller proposal.
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That, and where in THEE hell would you find that much space for not a billion dollars lmaooo
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I’ve lived in a lot of different cities and urban environments, from NYC to the ultra-suburban Orange County, CA. I’ve visited most of the major cities in the U.S. as well. That said, when I moved to Raleigh I didn’t know what to expect, but it feels to me like a very close-knit small town that had some skyscrapers integrated into it. Maybe not the level of hustle and/or bustle (Homestar Runner joke…anyone?) of a major city, but definitely enough to know that this place has stuff going on.
A lot of this has already been mentioned, but:
We have a ton of local businesses downtown. There’s only one Starbucks and it’s in a hotel lobby. There’s only a few national fast-food chains (even less now that Chick-Fil-A is gone). The only chain store I can think of CVS. Yet, the majority of storefronts are filled.
When I talk about my favorite restaurants, people have heard of them. Definitely not the case in every major city. Yet, every palate is accommodated in some way downtown.
The museums: we need to lean into the Smithsonian of the South big time. The Natural Science museum, State History museum, and Marbles are all world-class (so is NCMA for that matter).
The tree canopy is amazing.
The connectivity to the residential neighborhoods and neighborhood retail corridors is great, no doubt aided by the lack of freeways in the immediate vicinity (another plus).
Hopscotch and live music in general. Even Red Hat, for what it lacks in acoustics and protection from the elements, is made up for in spades with location and backdrop.
That’s just what I can think of off the top of my head.
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I forgot about this in my earlier post, but I have a real soft spot for the Sir Walter statue that gets decked out for various events. It cracks me up every time.
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I had this idea to run an Instagram account for it, maybe ask the convention center for a heads up every time he’s dressed up.
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