For the Wednesday hearing: “There will be opportunity to speak, no sign-up required. However, the chair might call a vote to impose time limits if there looks to be a lot of people in the room.”
How stupid is this… The hilarious part is the stock photo they used of the group home owned by the Helping Hand Mission. Which basically ties their whole premise together. They know everyone who drives by this house and sees the transient occupants then figures this will be the home demolished which will then displace all the residents. When in actuality this home won’t even lose their sidewalk and not one single person will be displaced by the BRT. But unless you did your homework, you’ll just start reaching for assumptions and assume the article was factual.
So let’s break this down, low income people who would benefit the most from the BRT, shouldn’t get this sort of investment on their side of town, because the property owner whom they rent from, might sell their property due to the rising values they would receive due to the city’s investment… GOT IT
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Now that I look at the Oakwood historic district and the rezoning case, I don’t think this house or anything in oakwood is proposed for rezoning. Can I get a double check here?
The rezoning is INSIDE the purple lines.
See it here: https://ral.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/lookup/index.html?appid=5a0da17620d24057a85c283546e17837
And you can add the historic overlays on iMaps to check.
https://maps.raleighnc.gov/iMAPS/index.html
Need to step away but I think this petition is unnecessary.
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I was intending to show up to this to speak but I got held up at a job in Angier.
Give those livable Raleigh people respectful, well informed, hell.
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I am just now realizing that I have been misreading this the whole time and thought the rezoning was happening this afternoon.
I will try to be there Wednesday.
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Yeah, Wednesday at 4pm.
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Do you think there’s any chance the planning commission doesn’t have a majority vote in favor of this? Due to work obligations I’ll probably choose between showing up to speak at this one or the city council meeting when it gets there. Not sure where my efforts would be better spent.
I don’t have a good pulse on the PC to be honest. However, if you are asking me, I’d put your efforts once it goes to council. From my perspective, planning commission is more of a technical review and my guess is that since this is a staff-initiated rezoning request, it’ll be more so than usual. (no lawyers present)
Therefore, if you want to dedicate some time, I would say save it for the council portion. I could be wrong but I feel council, being the final yay/nay on these matters, gets more political, more emotional. Therefore, we need to show up, email, whatever, more at that stage than anything else.
How does that sound?
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Looking at this map again, it seems anyone worried about changes to Oakwood specifically can rest easy as there is no overlap from what I’m looking at. However, there is big overlap between some of the NCODs. The New Bern TOD overlaps New Bern - Edenton NCOD and King Charles NCOD. Here’s where I think people will come out and fight this case.
This is complicated zoning, base zoning + NCOD + TOD = ?. This is probably why you’ll see people concerned over things that either aren’t true or concerned over things that won’t happen. This is going to be a fun one! 
Also, a blog post from myself and @ADUsSomeday still holds up here. For some background reading on NCODs, see here:
https://dtraleigh.com/2019/09/the-unintended-consequences-to-conserving-raleighs-neighborhoods/
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Seems like the resistance is def 98% don’t change our character and 2% concerns about affordable housing.
There are actually 4-5 different affordable housing project going on or planned in the corridor now. So actually looking pretty good on that front. And their is the density bonus for affordable housing going on too. So seems like it’s pretty much all about stoping change at this point.
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Therefore, if you want to dedicate some time, I would say save it for the council portion. I could be wrong but I feel council, being the final yay/nay on these matters, gets more political, more emotional. Therefore, we need to show up, email, whatever, more at that stage than anything else.
I would tend to agree, with the caveat that it’s good to have a presence at the commission; council pays attention to these meetings and having a consistent presence in support would be helpful.
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The meeting yesterday went about as expected. We have two items, one being a comp plan amendment, and then there’s the rezoning, which touches over 700 properties. There were few in support, as expected, and a majority against.
From my perspective, I honestly think the top 3 concerns were:
- Historic preservation (Oakwood doing their thing of course)
- Gentrification
- Existing business support
There was discussion about public safety, as in addressing crime, but without the police department there, not sure it went anywhere. This was a land use discussion after all.
I was only partially correct that Oakwood is not included. Oakwood is not included in the TOD rezoning but there are some adjacent rezoning outside the TOD areas. So for example, some of the parcels that reside in Oakwood proper would change from office mixed-use to downtown mixed-use. The Helping Hand house at 501 New Bern would also increase the height allowance to 5 from their current 3.
Existing business support - Basically, you have car-oriented businesses with drive-thrus, such as auto shops, car washes, and fast food. If these properties wanted to do any extensive reno, they would be non-conforming to the TOD. This seems fine with me from an outsider but I can sympathize a little as this may be messing with people’s livelihoods. Maybe if the property changes hands, then the TOD could apply? I feel there’s a balance here.
For a rezoning that impacts over 700 properties, so far the turn out seems low but maybe it’ll get more attention once it hits council.
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I watched a good bit of the public comments yeterday. Is it me or do people seem to think the TOD area is bigger than it is? Lots of commenters described it as a huge change to everything in the area. When I look at the map it seems like a tight band around New Bern.
There was one commenter who was really against the idea of not being able to build Single Family Homes in the future in the TOD with the idea that it would stop the African American community from building wealth through home ownership. I don’t know if I have some strong feeling on that, but looking at how small the band is around New Bern, and price of building a new Single Family Home on New Bern today, it feels like anyone building a new home would already have lots of wealth just to be able to accomplish that.
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I watched a portion of it. Were you there to speak in support? Some of the public comments about crime and derangement along the corridor were compelling, but unfortunately that is outside the scope of this TOD, as you mentioned. The comments about the buses being filled with looters and prostitutes were out of touch, as there are buses there currently that have been free for years now. I do sympathize a bit with the optics of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a corridor that has a lot of sociological issues, and hopefully we can work on those issues side by side with better transportation as a city.
But nevertheless BRT is public infrastructure for decades into the future, and we have to keep an eye on the long term planning while doing what we can for the short term issues.
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So: “Gentrification bad” but also “the busses are filled with looters and prostitutes” … ???
What do these people WANT??? 
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I did speak up for the comp plan amendments. I live close to the TOD but not within it so thought supporting the thing in general was the way to go. East Raleigh is complicated because if the city spends money in that area, they face criticism for wanting to change it completely. Then, if they don’t, they get criticized for not doing enough to help them.
Critics are calling this plan the next urban renewal wave. On one hand, I’m trying to ignore all this noise, as zoning is the tool for protectionism. Historic preservationists and NCOD advocates must LOVE zoning, they almost have to by their beliefs. In a way, I think they are just trying to protect their way of life. (sound familiar?)
On the other hand, I do want to hear valid concerns over displacement and the unintended consequences related to these projects. There’s going to be collateral damage I think but I hope that if, for example, a small business gets forced to close, the city can do something to assist. How that looks like, I’m not sure.
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This has a weird Bishop Arthur Brazier getting Chicago’s Green Line cut back vibe going on.
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Idk what this means, but I clearly don’t hold either of these views. I’m remarking on the incompatible complaints these kinda NIMBYs seem to give - “gentrification is bad” being their shallow, virtue signaling immediately followed by “busses are just for the poors” that they are pretending to care about in the same breath. Of course, there may be some that hold one view and not the other, but when both are being hurled as reasons not to increase bus service - it becomes apparent they are both empty complaints that hold no water.
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I asked GPT-4 why we see residents do things like this. The specific situation I gave it was residents that bring up affordable housing when million dollar townhomes are being built in their neighborhood. Funny enough, it agreed with you on virtue signaling in its first point:
Virtue signaling: Some individuals might use the affordable housing argument as a way to appear socially conscious and concerned about broader societal issues. By asking developers to build affordable housing, they can create the impression that they support housing equality, even if they would not want such development in their own neighborhood.
Shifting responsibility: NIMBY residents might use the affordable housing argument to shift the responsibility for addressing the housing crisis onto developers. By questioning developers’ motives and actions, they can divert attention from their own resistance to affordable housing projects in their neighborhood.
Redirecting development: In some cases, NIMBY residents might bring up the affordable housing argument as a strategy to redirect development to other areas. By advocating for affordable housing, they may hope to stall or derail the construction of million-dollar townhomes in their neighborhood and push developers to build elsewhere.
Genuine concern for affordability: It is possible that some NIMBY residents do care about affordable housing and genuinely believe that developers should focus on creating more affordable options. These individuals might be willing to support affordable housing projects if they were better designed or integrated into the community.
Misunderstanding of the economics: Some people may not fully understand the economics of housing development and assume that if developers can build million-dollar townhomes, they can also easily build affordable housing. They may not realize that factors like land costs, construction costs, financing, and regulatory requirements can make it challenging for developers to build affordable housing profitably.
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I feel like the 5th point is the most impactful and yet least understood. I feel it took me years of doing this online blogging thing, asking questions, and talking to people to feel like I at least had the “development 101” understanding. So if you aren’t there yet, and the city says, “Let’s rezone things to try and create incentives for the things we want. Trust us, it will help. (maybe)” then you might only believe that things either happen or they don’t.
If you listen to a lot of these comments, a good portion of folks want guarantees. They remember plans in the past that planned for this or that and it never happened. Therefore, they don’t trust the government and any future plans that they make.
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