Wells Fargo and Bb&T buildings are both 30 years old so the life expectancy is well beyond 30 years. City of Raleigh won’t need the 2nd building for many years, but they could go ahead and tear down the parking deck and allow the private part of the project to move forward.
10 Likes
Exactly. Plus the buildings were never meant to be built at once, anyways.
If you scroll up this thread, we’ve talked in the past about how the first building (I think that’s the one that should be built in much less than 10 years) needs to be complete before the civil servants in the current building can all move over and the 2nd tower can be built.
The 3rd building sounds more like a public-private partnership, which means a developer also needs to partner up (on top of waiting until we have $300 million or so in extra cash) to make it happen. In that light, 20-30yrs sounds… pretty reasonable?
5 Likes
20-30 years is a long time from now building a 3rd tower I thing this should be all done in a 15 year span.
Yeah Paul Coble was a horrible the definition of a NIMBY Qauint-town.
I totally agree. We should come up with a bunch of things to name after our “greatest disaster” civic leaders.
1 Like
The proposed city budget mentions one of the cost savings measures is to “extend design and delay construction of Civic Campus.” Construction delayed to FY 2023. It is in the “Investment in Infrastructure” and “General Public Improvements” sections.
A little disappointing, but that is the kind of move that makes sense with the tax shortfalls.
9 Likes
Great. Maybe we can scale it down again and start from scratch in another 10 years. SMH
I really enjoy this community but I have to say that there is an undercurrent of folks on here who really seem to have no tether to the reality of how things get built. It applies to a bunch of threads here which devolve into billionaires, 600 ft towers and other nonsense but this one, c’mon - it’s a municipal city campus that’s barely even hit the real design phase beyond some public private pie in the sky renders / massing - of course it’s going to get kicked down the line in a budget crisis.
Don’t like it - Donor Up! One lil, two little…piggie piggie…
10 Likes
Two cents here…
When everyone seemingly, possibly, moving to Working Remotely, it is going to put the breaks on this type of thing as well…but just my 
There is the counter trend appearing of spreading people out, such as individual cubs or offices in stead of group setting around tables. This will call for more space per person.
Not everyone will work from home. I know my company is looking a allowing some people to work from home full time, some split time between office and home and some full time in office. They are also re configuring office space to have lot more space per person. They have put hold on a planed expansion until see if will really need more space after new work plans are in place.
Think will be a couple of years to see which trend wins.
7 Likes
Yup, things will return to normal in the real estate sector also. I remember the gloom and doom from a couple of months ago. Investments from March not too shabby…
5 Likes
I didn’t mean any offense. I’m just bitching. I feel like this project has been pushed back for the last decade, which is my entire time living here. I know it’s reasonable and all that.
9 Likes
The money has already been spent on the design so at least we will get to see the design sometime soon-ish unless they’re keeping that hush until later.
3 Likes
I think you have a legitimate gripe.
Most of the cash that Raleigh rakes in is from sources with little impact from a short-term soft economy.
Property tax, water/sewer tax, etc should not have dropped at all but have grown. Parks & Recs user fees will be short by $1.4M. Sales tax at 10% of the budget will be short by $6M. Plus they’re proposing to raise waste services fees which provides some offset.
So for these slight hits to the budget, over just a few months period, the whole Municipal Campus plan is going to slide yet again? They’re already deferring some major roads projects (Leesville, Old Wake Forest, etc). This totally covers the shortfall. So where’s the problem?
Raleigh has already paid for the early design phase for the east tower and paid for site consultants to drill holes for ground tests. The next steps in the plan were to continue the design work and prepare for demo of the old police HQ.
They should move forward with the plan. The original pitch made great sense when the savings of dumping the 7 owned or leased buildings (space used: 394K sq ft) are factored in.
The minor budget shortfall doesn’t seem like a reason to stray from the slow but sure progress they were making. By the time they get the police HQ site cleaned up (ideally, by late in this year) they’d be ready to get the design finalized for Phase 1.
At ~420K sq ft, it would cover the consolidation from the current sites with only a 5% (~25K) margin for growth.
For a city that often tops out top 10 lists of greatness and desirability, and is known for a diverse and stable economy, the current leaders have to trust that the minor dip in the budget will recover soon and should provide cover to get keep this project going without delay.
18 Likes
Two words: Political Optics.
10 Likes
KenAA , If I’m reading between the lines right , almost all of the Council plus The City Manager will go for this project as soon as they figure how when & how early concerning the total budget situation .
6 Likes
The public sector, of which Raleigh hold three layers, is all already in offices or cubes…no open office environments that I am aware of anywhere. So it seems like public sector expansions of any type might get reduced or delayed while some private sector IT and other tech might need more for anyone who cannot increase work from home to offset that. My public sector office is looking at having some work station office space in lieu of permanent offices for people only sitting in them 15 hours a week e.g. We currently occupy 1 floor of the Archdale building and were about to creep down to 1/4 of another floor which now seems like it won’t be needed.
1 Like
Water and sewer definitely dropped because the City was not allowed to disconnect anyone during COVID. My office is working with local units who have requested debt repayment forbearance. Secondly, its in an enterprise fund anyway and can’t be used for anything else, therefore is not part of the general fund and should not be included in your pie for the points you are trying to make.
Thanks for the clarification.
Still, my point stands that Raleigh’s income is down a couple of points over a few month period.
It’s a complete over-reaction for them to change the schedule for the Phase 1 of the new campus when they won’t need a majority of the funding until construction starts. They should move on the demo to clear the site according to their already slow-going plan.
6 Likes
It seems like the Old Police Headquarters building has been vacant for most of the time since I moved back to Raleigh in 2008. What is the point of maintaining a vacant building for so long??
3 Likes