Agree, as Morrisville, Apex, and Wake Forest are the NEW, NEW, NEW Cary…Lol
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Can you actually give some recent examples?I believe Shiny Diner has been open since 1997 according to their twitter page. So bringing stuff from over 20 years ago isn’t even remotely relevant.
It’s absolutely relevant to public perception, which has formed over the past few decades. Cary has a reputation of being overly-prescriptive and reactionary, and this reputation was built over time through publicized disputes, of which I picked the first few examples that turned up in a search. There have been other recent controversies about signage and color. And although I haven’t personally designed a building in Cary, my office has, so I also have the perspective of having seen Cary’s guidelines in comparison to other cities in the Triangle. Literally no one has positive things to say about it.
By the way, I agree with your criticism of the pretentious way people speak about Cary. I grew up in Cary, lived there until last year, and I love all the great things it gave me. My family’s house and businesses are there. The schools I attended are there. All the places that I have fond childhood memories of are there. Being critical of certain aspects of regulation and planning is not equal to hating on the entire city, or “way of life” as you seem to think.
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An example is literally every commercial building built in Cary over the last 20 years. When they did the recent upper level seating at WakeMed stadium they wanted to use metal panels instead of block for the building underneath the seating.
Cary Parks and Rec was the client on that job. It was Cary Planning who determined that the structure would be visible from Chatham street and was subject to the architectural guidelines. So instead of aluminum panels and glass materials on the addition we ended up with concrete block.
But it’s everywhere that the buildings are visible to the public. Articulation, Rhythm, Color, Materials, Transparency, Composition, Proportion and Scale are applied in specific ratios across Cary. It gives a base line of quality, but it stifles innovation.
For the record, I live in West Raleigh and I love Cary for what it is. It’s so easy to get around Cary and everything is so convenient. I think they have a great Mayor and some good council members. The interesting thing about the architectural guidelines is that they know how stifling the rules are, but they’ve had them so long that they own it now. That’s not a bad thing if you do it consciously and make it a part of your identity.
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All of this Cary discussion reminds me of an acronym for Clayton: Cary Like Area, Yankees Too. Oh No!
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I have worked on several buildings in Cary the last few years (churches mostly) and can attest to the pain in the a$$ that their standards are. The thing is, I believe the legislature has outlawed these types of design standards yet Cary keeps enforcing them.
Video from one of my favorite channels about new urbanism that’s built in the burbs.
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With the current and future growth at North Hills is it possible that it will be more densely populated than DTR per size?
I suppose that one can carve out a comparison any way that one wants to. If so, I suppose it’s then possible to create a comparison that would show it being more populated per unit of area.
That said, I don’t know how one would compare a planned development to a city center, unless there was an equally sized planned development downtown.
By Census tract, I would think that the one that’s centered on Glenwood South (503) will end up being the city’s most densely populated. North Hills appears to be split into two Census tracts (526.01 and 526.02), and those tracts include a lot of single family homes to the north of them.
Here is a presentation from the cities planning department on how we plan for growth https://youtu.be/wur1ZUYoQrs?t=264
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It’s nice to have someone actually present many of the foundational aspects of the city’s comprehensive plan to the Raleigh CAC to remind them of the context in which much of the current zoning variances exist. This is especially true for the growth framework map. Some takeaways for me are:
- All of the variances requested right now are in the DT Regional Center, as defined in the Growth Framework map. This includes Kane’s downtown south proposal.
- It’s loud and clear to me that the city’s planning office has no desire or plan to “come after” single family neighborhoods in the city, and there’s no reason for residents in them to panic or be controlled by a narrative of fear.
- The city’s thinking about how it grows by 200,000 people in the next 20-25 years.
- For the CBD, they are still mapping to a max of 40 stories for the city center in their land use table. Generally, they are looking for 12 story buildings, like Smoky Hollow phase 1, and recommend a max of 3- 4 stories on the CBD’s edges. The spokesperson even went so far as to say that they see 3-4 floors being the right height for much of the city that’s not a growth center.
- The city can apply zoning to its ETJ. I didn’t know that.
- The SW part of the ETJ is unlikely to ever be developed more densely than it currently is because it’s in a Swift Creek watershed that’s tied to Lake Benson (Raleigh’s back up water supply)
- Urban Service Area goes beyond the ETJ and is another mechanism by how services are extended. Apparently, all of the municipalities in the county have an agreement of how future services annexations will play out if they do, and most of the county is spoken for in a future full county build-out.
- The spokesperson said that heights can exceed maximums in the Central Business District to whatever the council would approve in a planned development. Interestingly, this was the first time that any CAC person chimed in. The spokesperson went on to basically reiterate that the heights could be taller if the council agreed to them. He actually went on to use an example of a 60-80 story request in a quality project that solved for many things, including parking.
- Earlier in the presentation, a slide recommend parking reductions for the city center (thankfully!), but the spokesperson failed to connect his comment about 60-80 story buildings and how they might relate to reduced parking requirements. For me, getting those parking reductions is key to the city center growing taller.
- Policy and transit plans encourage urbanization along cardinal transit corridors to the N, S, E, and W of the city center.
- 60% + of new growth should happen in the city growth centers, and that’s about what’s been happening over the recent past.
- The spokesperson was positive toward property owners that request rezoning in accordance with the growth framework map in the 2030 plan. Basically it sounds like he’s saying that 2030 comprehensive plan can be used to back up / justify those requests.
A couple of misses from him in my opinion.
- At the outset of the meeting, the spokesperson failed to show how Raleigh’s most recent population growth rates have fallen off a cliff in comparison to just a few years ago, and longer term historically.
- He failed to talk about how growth within the growth framework will help fund (through tax revenues) maintenance of our city’s suburban infrastructure.
- This is nit-picky, but he said the city had about 460,000 people, when in fact the last year’s Census estimate put us just a breath under 470,000. We were “about 460,000” 3 yearly estimates ago. I expect someone in a job like his to be on top of the latest data.
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Great summary @John! Very interesting that a PD can exceed DX-40!
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So, that begs the question: why didn’t Kane go for PD in all of Smoky Hollow in the first place?
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The Cabarrus project is PD but that’s the only one I’m aware of (since I’ve been paying attention). Not sure why not in Smoky Hollow. Guess didn’t need to. I think the process is more complicated?
Thanks for the write up! Probably too much of a video for most people to go through, but would be great for anyone who wants to speak intelligently about our growth plans (or lack there of) to see. On a side note, the guy who presented is IMO a very good city employee. I have met him about 5 times and he is very even keeled and able to put up with so many levels of silly/hostile community feedback :).
One of the big insights for me was this idea that our growth plans are really based on an old Atlantic Ave rail plan that does not exist anymore. So, with BRT starting in 2023 we are going to have to start making a new plan. That could take a while and will be very controversial.
Current Growth Map Plan-with circles for growth hubs
And places which will see some big changes in a new plan which we will need to make.
There was also a really good exchange on this question. “Does our current zoning and growth plan have enough room to accommodate those 200,000 new people?”. The answer was “yes”, but the explanation is where the BIG insight is IMO.
The answer was essentially that we had lots of “capacity” with our current zoning on commercial corridors like Glenwood (OTB) & Capital Blv. But, we are not seeing lots of demand, or financing to build there. <–paraphrasing the video you should watch!
I think this is funny to think about in the context of this forum where lots of us are frustrated that concentrating growth downtown is so hard, but the literal current plan is for mixed use stuff on major roads way out of downtown. 
So if you look at, for example, the Lowes on Capital Blvd. It is all zoned CX-3. You could put a lot of 3 story mixed use office & residential buildings there. But, no one seems in a hurry to take out the Lowe’s & do that. Anyone on this forum excited about moving to a new mixed use development up there? ← lots of sarcasm.
As I personally think about density & walkable places that Raleigh has a huge demand for, it is really hard to imagine a good version of that hugging Capital Blvd or Glenwood OTB. Those areas just commercial hugging highways. I bet banks & developers see it the same way.
Kind of aligns with my growing theory that in general lots of people don’t like change & development, so we only tend to encourage it in areas that no one cares about like Lowes parking lots. And in areas with less political capital.
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My takeaway was that growth centers OTB were in addition to the one in the core of the city. Maybe I was listening for what I wanted to hear, but that’s how I took it.
As for development OTB, I think that residents of the city would welcome their very own “North Hills” in their area if they could get it. This would especially be true of they could also get some good transit options with it that didn’t require them to give up their single family houses nearby. This is the reality of where we are (IMO) and I don’t think forcing a pill down anyone’s throats otherwise is a good move in our current context. Also, we have to think about affordability. As much as some altruistic people want to believe otherwise, more affordable housing (and I don’t just mean subsidized housing for the working poor) isn’t going to be coming to the center of the city anytime soon. We have to find ways to provide housing throughout the city that’s planned, and not just a result of being ignored/passed over by our more well-heeled residents. For example: A place like Brentwood is affordable to many middle income households & close to the city center, but it’s not affordable by design/planning. It is affordable because it isn’t as desired.
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This morning I was involved in a Twitter thread on the subject.
A good place to start IMO would be outparcels that are out in front of a strip mall with a grocery store. Being that close to a grocery store could be an amenity and would make car-free or car-lite living much easier.
3 stories may be too timid for that to work in many cases, though. Maybe when an existing fast food joint goes out of business, or when a building becomes fully depreciated and the owner is faced with the decision to redevelop, renovate (which is not always an option for an old outdated fast food building) or simply rebuild in kind.
Bumping the zoning to 5 stories would move things along more quickly. 7 stories might be a bridge too far for now in most places (Remember what happened at Ridgewood/Whole Foods a few years back? I am still bitter about that.)
I know West Raleigh better than I know any other part of town. I think Mission Valley is a prime candidate for this “outparcels first” approach. Given the Avent Ferry corridor plan, there seems to be some appetite for the upzoning that would be necessary to make it work.
The former Wicked Taco spot (now Biscuitville; can’t imagine that one will last long there given Bojangles, Cookout, and Popeyes are right next door) would be another candidate. Currently zoned for 3 stories but I don’t think you would get much opposition to a 5 or 7 story upzoning given the BRT.
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Those lots tend to be very small and it just seems doing those one at a time over years would leave a very disjointed and not well planned series of buildings. It just seems like a better plan to either do the whole strip mall or at least a larger portion of it and do something more significant and functional.
I disagree. Link Apartments is 204 units and sits on roughly 1 acre, which is a typical size for an outparcel (for example: the Burger King at Avent Ferry & Centennial). Wicked Taco/Biscuitville somehow occupies 2 acres. Meanwhile, 1301 Hillsborough is on under half an acre, and 2604 Hillsborough is on less than 1/4 acre.
Demolishing a strip mall is expensive, displaces established businesses, is a waste of capital, and puts oodles of materials in the landfill. Not saying every strip mall is a good candidate for this, and I do agree that a master plan would be needed for each strip mall undergoing a change like this in order for it to all work together - but this sort of incremental, smaller scale development is exactly the kind of change Raleigh needs to move to the next level, IMO
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I think the largish shopping center at the intersection of Six Forks and Strickland would be an ideal candidate. 1) it is huge, 2) it is a pretty busy intersection, 3) right by the Forum and Colonnade Center office parks, 4) if BRT is ever extended up Six Forks, it would be a good TOD location beyond North Hills, 5) it is approaching the end of its lifetime (and KMart is hanging on by a thread). Another feature is there is an apartment community, and a very large upscale (gated) retirement community located directly to the west. If we had a “North North Hills” or “North Hills - Strickland Edition” there is tons of land to work with… then once that strip mall gets built out, jump across Strickland and do the same for the Lowes Foods shopping center… then jump Six Forks and redevelop the Whole Foods strip mall. We could create a lot of density around a pretty major intersection that just happens to sit on the same road as North Hills. Tie it all together with some transit that continues on into DRT and there is room for many, many more folks/new residents to live auto-lite/auto-free lives without the premium pricing that is DTR.
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Definitely debatable…