Yeah, that’s disappointing. But they still provide a lot of opportunities for increased density. Non-HOA neighborhoods are the ones closer to downtown, so it almost better targets the areas that need density. Those who own small lots will have the opportunity to provide more density than otherwise. This also goes for commercial property owners all over the city, not to mention making RTP 3.0 easier to implement for the office parcel owners there.
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I also live about a 10 minutes walk from Stonehenge (on the other side of Creedmoor). I’ve always wished it had a few more amenities like an independent coffee shop or an eatery. The covered walkway between Starbucks and the yoga studio feels like a model for what a mall could be.
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Indeed, and it’s been this way since the 1960s. Many (although not all) employers continue to work from RTP because they want to draw talent from Wake County, Durham County, and Orange County.
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I tend to think about as pissing off all the cities a little rather than making one city really happy and pissing off all the others a lot.
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I’ve always been in favor of all the medical research/pharmaceuticals to be in Durham (City of Medicine) and the research/technology companies should be in Raleigh. RTP (besides being a job generator) was a huge mistake to put so many workers in the middle of nowhere. Now 50+ years later, we’re figuring it out. Now they are trying to make RTP a “place” of its own. But that will take another generation before it actually happens with much success.
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It’s required by state law for any planned community with more than 20 lots.
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It’s what people and companies wanted back then, and it’s one of the key reasons the region is booming now. I’d go crazy working out in a bland office park (I did it once in Massachusetts and it was sheer misery. Centennial Park here was a pretty close vibe, honestly), but it’s clearly worked out.
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I would just make one small adjustment. I’d change No Parking Required to No Parking Provided.
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cool. Now do income per square foot of leasable space (the building itself) for a hypothetical Raleigh location.
I would about guarantee that in somewhere more dense and busy walkable place like Manhattan, the upper left No Parking Required store generates a 
ton of sales, way more than the other 3 probably (which are less sq foot for store since there is instead more room for cars)>
In RALEIGH however, the 1 per 500 or 1 per 250 sq foot certainly makes more $ per foot than the No Parking Required NPR place. After all, there are plenty of empty storefronts with NPR. But they’re EMPTY. If they made enough $, they’d have tenants.
With as many drivers and passengers in cars in Raleigh, there is way more $ per foot to be made in the other versions, just with ease of higher volume of people passing by, quick in and out, more churn, in and out. Just different here. Maybe someday NPR will be more profitable, but not in any of our lifetimes.
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You should know that there are lots of shopping centers with empty spaces, it’s not just downtown Raleigh that has empty store fronts.
I could take Little Native Coffee, Ajja, Second Empire, or Sir Walter Coffee + Kitchen as examples which would demonstrate viability for no parking businesses.
I would challenge the assumption that a business generates more revenue per square foot when it has parking compared to when it doesn’t. Restaurants in downtown Raleigh with comparable pricing to those in strip centers typically achieve higher sales per square foot. This is precisely why they choose to operate in their location. If the notion were correct that businesses consistently generate higher revenue per square foot with parking, there would be no incentive for them to open downtown.
I shared the visual to illustrate how eliminating parking on a parcel allows for greater building density and volume, creating a compact and efficient use of land that supports walking, biking, and access to mass transit. When a city adopts policies that encourage density, it generates the foot traffic needed to sustain retail, as is currently happening in Raleigh. This approach not only fosters a continuous streetscape, but also cultivates spaces where businesses thrive through increased visibility and accessibility. By reducing reliance on cars, it lowers infrastructure costs associated with sprawl while fostering a vibrant sense of place that attracts residents, workers, and visitors.
Small businesses, such as those occupying 500 SF, can more easily establish themselves in walkable areas, where smaller spaces are viable and accessible. In contrast, car based centers are unlikely to support retail spaces of this size due to challenges in profitability and justifying the investment. As a result, fewer local businesses emerge, and niche industries struggle to take root because the financial demands for success are substantial and uncertain.
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Strip shopping centers are a red herring because very few new ones will be built in the Raleigh ETJ anyway. There simply isn’t enough raw land for that, if we exclude the flood-prone tracts. The new sprawl has moved into other jurisdictions. I’m fine with removing the parking requirements. It will have negligible effect in the 440-to-540 donut where life will go on as it was envisioned. If developers choose to go parking-less, it’s a free market. Likewise if developers choose to redevelop strip centers as residential… although we haven’t seen that yet on a large scale.
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has raleigh passed the ‘big box reuse’ mode of some of these empty-er strip malls? i recall DOT in a kroger on Atlantic years back? last time i was there that strip mall where char grill is at strickland and six forks…was crowded seeming. i wasn’t sure of its financial health.
The old Atlantic Ave Kroger is a Sec of State training space now, it was Div of Revenue space for a while, and I think DMV before that. There was a time when it was ninth grade space for Millbrook high school years back.
The Philly Steak and cheese truck has been parked there for about 30 years now.
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That is all fascinating to learn. Thanks for sharing!
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As I watch the city struggle with financing of infrastructure projects from the widening of Six Forks Rd, to possibly tolling US1 North to Wake Forest, to making BRT a reality, etc., all among an inflationary environment where time is truly money, I keep coming back to how downtown can be a key player in these issues and more.
I think that it’s pretty common knowledge that downtown is the most revenue generating part of the city vis-a-vis its land area, but it also has the potential to add another benefit to the city as it grows. Unlike these challenging infrastructure projects that rely on funding from the Federal and State Goverments, plus local revenues generated from bonds, downtown can be the financial gift that keeps on giving if the city had the will to allow it to fully become the dense walkable place that it can be.
Not only can downtown generate way more revenue per acre through property taxes, it can grow disproportionately to the amount of infrastructure that it takes to support it. Meanwhile, it can do both of these things while adding fewer miles driven per year per downtown resident by taking more people out of their cars for more things that typically require a car in Raleigh. As we add people to downtown, the more retailers and services will respond to it. The more the retailers and services respond to it, the more people will access those stores and services by foot or bike. The good news is that these are things that the city can enable now without worrying about whether or not the money will be there to create infrastructure to move people from one car dependent part of the city to another. We just need the political will to block out the NIMBY noise on downtown’s edges that works to suppress a dense, walkable core.
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This is exactly the reason - Why deal with COR incompetence/red tape/bureaucracy on a project that no one around here has experience building if you don’t have to. Contractors have been in a position where they can be choosey on what projects they take on. Maybe a silver lining to Trump’s intentional sabotaging of the economy is that builders start running out of work and start bidding riskier stuff.
I lack the infrastructure/planning knowledge a lot of people in this forum have, so I’d love to hear your specific suggestions as to how the city can enable denser downtown infrastructure, greater tax revenue, and less NIMBY noise. What is the city doing currently it should do more of? What isn’t it doing that it should start doing? And so forth.
Thanks!
Just pay attention to the West St. rezoning. You’ll get answers to both questions here soon.
im all for the going up from the center out…but as a longtime SFH dweller in Raleigh (not any more), i can sympathize some level of NIMBY. i dont mind deliberation from council and SFH preservation from those that desire it. if some premium on SFH preservation (tax issues) somehow need to happen i so be it. do non SFH areas have more crime than denser areas despite longer pipes and road maintenance? i dont know all the metrics.