Yeah, perception is huge when it comes to attracting businesses, visitors, customers, etc.
Some people on here think anything that isn’t blind cheerleading of downtown is foolish negativity. Hence the former thumbs down and now red question mark reactions. Fortunately this is a discussion forum, and we can discuss all opinions and sides of issues.
No, the thumbs down/question mark is because I disagree with most of your takes. Some are downright distasteful and I don’t think you even realize it, which is scary for how often you chime in here. Thank you for the validation though, I had no clue you noticed or cared!
You’re entitled to your opinion. 
If mine are too much for you to handle, there’s an Ignore feature on here. I certainly use it for a few posters.
Yesterday, I attended an event that had Kane and Highwoods leadership as panelists. One key point they raised was that media coverage has been negatively affecting the perception of downtown, distorting the reality of its vibrancy and appeal.
The Kane director highlighted examples such as the 2023 LS3P relocation, emphasizing that it remains within downtown Raleigh. This move reflects a typical business cycle, where firms relocate to updated spaces as their leases expire. Businesses, as office tenants, often prefer not to endure renovations; instead, they lease new spaces, customize them for about a decade, and then relocate. This trend is evident even on a larger scale, like JP Morgan constructing a new headquarters in Manhattan. While outdated spaces may be repurposed for certain uses, such transitions do not indicate a decline in downtown’s attractiveness to business tenants.
FWIW, our company moved our office from NH to downtown (well, Smoky Hollow) because it’s a more interesting environment with more housing options. We love it.
North Hills is and may continue to be a synthetic place due to their heavily pre-planned nature and reliance on major catalyst developments for their initial momentum. Over time, North Hills might evolve into a diverse, self-sustaining urban hub as it achieves the necessary levels of diversity and density. In truth, all cities follow a similar pattern of growth, and it’s the element of time and natural evolution which makes established cities so attractive for continued development—it’s often more practical to enhance an existing city than to build anew.
Downtown Raleigh thrives (for many, at least) because it balances economic activity, cultural vibrancy, and community well-being. Its mix of businesses extends beyond offices to include retail, dining, and entertainment offerings that vary widely in price, type, and scale. Most areas of “downtown” Raleigh are mixed-use and I would say the city is trying to avoiding the “9-to-5” stagnation, which I believe we can see though new businesses emerging in response to increasing foot traffic.
The city is walkable, not to the extent of New York City, but it’s possible to navigate certain areas without relying on a car. As Raleigh expands its public transit options, accessibility and car-free mobility will only improve.
North Hills, under Kane’s stewardship, features mostly new, Class A spaces. While efforts are being made to diversify offerings through initiatives like micro retail shops, farmers markets, and other programs, it’s unlikely to see something like a dive bar in this area. Apartment rents are on the higher end, as expected for such developments, but in long-established cities, there’s a broader range of building lifecycles, resulting in more varied rent options.
Ultimately, Kane is an exceptional place maker who continues to energize Raleigh through transformative projects like Downtown South and smaller-scale developments like Smokey Hollow. However, the essence of a resilient and thriving city lies in the combined efforts of multiple developers, diverse approaches, and organic growth over time.
I would not vote against downtown Raleigh continuing on its path of success!
Well today it was announced a software company downtown is doubling its employees and taking 6000 sq ft in 150 Fayetteville tower aka Wells Fargo. It is going from 12 to 30 employees and from 1000 sq ft of coworking space to 6000 sq ft in the tower.
[https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/inno/stories/news/2025/03/12/atomic-object-app-developer-raleigh-office-hiring.html]
From Yardi Matrix end of 2024 market reports about apartments and jobs and looking at our peer cities. This figures are for combined Raleigh and Durham metros (as it should be) but look at the Triangle’s job growth compared to other cities.
2024 Employment growth in percentage
Number of Apartments absorbed in 2024
Metros with more apartments absorbed in 2024 than in the previous year Charlotte, Raleigh Durham, Atlanta, Austin but cities with less apartments absorbed would be Nashville, and Tampa St Pete
The Nashville “it city” story is a ruse.
I don’t think it’s going anywhere on these lists for awhile, but that is the downfall of building a city identity based on tourism. Eventually people don’t want to live there. Which means, outside of the tourism industry, they don’t want to work there. Friends I know there are tired of the tourism and negative impacts that come with it.
it might depend on taste…i lived in quail hollow for 7 years. if you are on a lunch break at NH and just want to walk through a rather quiet neighborhood at lunch or hop across six forks for shopping…NH might have some appeal.
I love that neighborhood. I grew up in Raleigh and I was a teenager when that neighborhood was built so a lot of my friends lived there. We did not walk to north hills though. I agree personal taste is powerful.
Raleigh is one of the safer downtowns compared to most big cities, but I think the point of people discussing these things here is that a shift is taking place and as an (online) community we are trying to make sense of it.
There was a moment when the downtown grid was the “it” spot to be as a business/bar/restaurant, but as we can all see, that’s not really the case anymore. These more insulated developments meant to mimic the downtown grid are becoming more popular. The most recent of these are Iron Works and Fenton, but North Hills was really an early indicator of the movement in this direction IMO.
I think the reason for why this is happening is up for debate, but my theory is that COVID and the riots/protests have something to do with it. That few weeks showed businesses that there is a fine line between order and chaos and one event could have a huge impact on your business/livelihood.
On top of that, there was a surge in downtown crime for a bit coming out of COVID that had many business owners downtown team up and head to city council to be heard. That meeting really convinced me that there were bigger business impacts to the rise in crime than I had realized.
These are kind of harsh realities and not great for public perception, but isn’t this the place to discuss these things?
I think businesses seem to be flocking to the Iron Works/Fenton/NH models where parking and security are dealt with by private companies instead of local government. It costs them close to the same and I believe they feel it gives them a sense of safety and predictability with their investment (their business). I’m not saying those businesses are right or wrong, I’m just stating an observation.
But maybe this theory is wrong. I actually was just having this conversation while drinking at Iron Works the other day and discussing this exact thing. I’d love to hear the rebuttal to this or a different take, as I’m open to other theories… but I do think it’s a worthwhile discussion for this forum.
No need for a rebuttal. Your assessment is correct. Compunding the perception of safety downtown his a “political correctness” of recent city councils.
The bus station downtown, along with Taz’s, & white guilt churches constantly coming down from North Raleigh giving handouts of food then racing back to North Raleigh create a recipe for the issues we have seen downtown over the last 5+ years.
If for instance, if the City would simply implement a “No ticket…get the hell off the property” approach to the bus station…that would at least help reduce the constant loitering but these Councils are so fearful of being called a racist or some other nonsense they do nothing. Instead of saying no more handouts on Moore Square they just let it happen…along with all the trash dumped all over the park afterwards.
North Hills, Iron Works don’t have these issues because they won’t allow it to happen in the 1st place.
This is certainly a topic to discuss and I thought you presented the issue well. I am not a business owner but I do believe people respond to incentives. Therefore, as a business owner, why wouldn’t you pay attention to the indicators coming from your customer base?
If they are saying they want easy parking, you fight for that, and not a bike lane out front. If your customers are telling you they want bike lanes and bike parking out front, you’re more likely to advocate for it.
Safety may be trickier cause it means different things to different people. Real safety is also different than perceived safety. Let’s say crime doesn’t happen downtown but there are still poorly-lit corners and foreboding parking decks that people feel wary walking by. These are subtle queues to us humans that may budge people to another area versus downtown, even with a clean track record. The RPD may be doing their job but who is looking at the public realm?
I’ve talked to a few business recruiters over the past years, just casually while attending networking events. The general thinking is that businesses and companies tend to already know where they want to go when looking for space. You have the “companies want the suburbs” crowd (ex: a Cary office park or RTP) and the “companies who want the urban style” crowd (Downtown, North Hills) and it’s hard to convince them otherwise.
From a city POV, it’s good that we have all these options so that no matter what, we can land these companies, whether it’s outside Brier Creek or in the downtown core. For downtown’s sake, I’m hoping we can distinguish ourselves a little more to make recruiting more appealing. I’m assuming recruiting is a little tougher these days, I certainly could be wrong.
It feels like North Hills has “caught up” to downtown over the last 10-15 years. Downtown needs another boom time to distinguish itself from the pack and then I think we could see office leases filling up again. I HOPE that the catalyst that was the 2000s Fayetteville Street/City Plaza/Convention Center can be pulled off again here in the second half of the 2020s with the new Red Hat/Convention Center Expansion/Omni Hotel projects. I hope too that they don’t phone it in with the Fayetteville Street makeover and especially this “magical connection” to Dix.
I wonder if the Fayetteville Street makeover can be more of a district-wide thing and include some love to Wilmington Street and GoRaleigh Station.
I think you’re absolutely on track with that last sentence. Fenton, Iron Works, etc are new shiny things. North Hills isn’t, but they’re constantly adding new shiny things.
Once the shininess wears off, we’re left with what is. And Fayetteville Street is just not designed very well. There’s intrusive planters and newspaper bins that don’t need to be there. The entire stretch is almost completely devoid of color. There’s very few interesting things to see or look at.
I walk that stretch pretty much every day. It’s got a lot of nostalgia, but until we connect the north and the south side of Fayetteville street and update it, it’s going to continue not being very interesting.
If we want the GoRaleigh station to be approachable, the first thing we need to do is make it look approachable (with colors and design)
Agree with all of this.
I think the biggest concern for me is seeing Crawford expanding to Fenton and Iron Works instead of Fayetteville St or City Market. Or Bhavana opening in Fenton instead of spawning off a new concept downtown. I mean I get it, but these are the homegrown talents that you’d hope would be bullish on downtown and not these newer, suburban developments. Again, no blaming them. They’ve given downtown a lot and I dont think they owe downtown anything else, but I’m just stating that fact.
For instance, early on it was Hatem and Niall really opening one thing after another in downtown. Then you had the next wave like Ashley Christensen who opened Pooles, Beasleys, Chucks Foxes, Death and Taxes, Van and Vanvisa with Bida Manda and Bhavana and the Trophy guys who did Busy Bee, Trophy Pizza, Young Hearts, State of Beer, etc
None of these big names are expanding downtown anymore it seems. The ones that are opening new things are doing so on the outskirts of downtown or in these larger planned developments.
Fayetteville St. seems to need a full on rethink and Moore Square/City Market needs to find a way to balance things out and becoming a little more business friendly (if they want to draw some of these people back downtown).
Just my opinion of course.
One interesting thing about the Kane approach to filling North Hills is the combined approach to reinvesting / building new spaces and evolving along the way by filling those spaces with a combination of national, regional and local retail / hospitality business enterprises. Certainly one might argue its ‘easier’ with a concentrated focus / single developer (*this also applies to the RIW, Fenton approach of curating the experience from a place of control) where downtown obviously has a more hodge-podge reality with multiple devs.
Ultimately, still feels like DTR will cycle back to front-runner status but it’s going to take some of these ‘big swing’ projects ( Moore Square East would certainly be a linchpin and dare I mention the 
nexussshhhh) lining up. Hopefully the Red Hat /Convention Center / Omni cultivates some momentum and Faye Street continues taking ‘steps’. Look out two years when the resident population downtown settles this next phase of onboarding and fingers crossed the pipeline is loaded up for the booming 30’s. Bring on the Artery / Gondola and the slow March DTS…
odd one. i was born in raleigh in the late 60s and somehow through bits of truth, or myth or newcomers hearing stuff…somehow downtown raleigh got a crime tag. since i rode the bus from the 70s there was some element of vagrancy downtown, surprise (think many cities). even as a child i saw it but was never badly worried about it. in the late 80s when downtown tried to get a redo with city market i was down there at night often and never felt fear. in the late 90s i worked second shift at the then F Union Bldg and never felt fear going home…often via bike back to Quail Corners. and in the early 2000s i regularly was downtown at night taking pics from parking decks. no issues. so im a bit perplexed that open crime is going on now to such a degree with so many new expensive units just above it on the street. i dont get it. i wonder if stats show glenwood south as being worse?
Perception is reality…& there is more than some truth to the perception…
Bus station, Taz, & constantly allowing random churches to come in from the burbs & feed the homeless, vagrants, drug addicts…every day creates a problem for the center city. The City has to get serious about these ongoing issues & be willing to do something about them if they want Downtown’s perception to change.
