Platform and West End II - Development at W Cabarrus/S Saunders

I would love a grocery store here for those of us on the other side of the tracks! A Trader Joe’s would be nice. However, it’s probably wishful thinking to have two so close to each other with Weaver Street Market at the Dillon.

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Thanks Deb for your information ! I really like this project also !

Don’t forget Amazon grocery stores will be 'urban’ly placed.

Weaver St. is a very local store. A Trader Joe’s would work with out encroaching on Weaver St. market.

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How well is the DGX doing over on the east side of DTR? Rather than the large suburban sized grocery stores, I think we should encourage these smaller scale stores to fill the needs of the neighborhoods. Yes, the obligatory monthly trip to Publix may be necessary, but for the day to day necessities of life, I think these smaller, more compact stores can fit the bill quite well.

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Another excellent extension of the Raleigh skyline.
I wouldn’t have guessed that development so large as this would have picked up south of the tracks. The complex would take most of the lower portion of this photo.

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Is Kane going to install a zip line between this new tower and the Dillon over the train tracks?

Seriously, is Cabarrus St the only connection for pedestrians to the rest of downtown?

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It’s the only direct connection and it’s going away (at least for vehicular traffic.) Otherwise you either have to go up through Boylan or down to South/ Lenoir then in to downtown. The railroad tracks cut off most access into the Warehouse district from the South.

They’re going to connect West St under the tracks. And this will obviously help move that process along

Sadly, this isn’t happening for a loooong time because funding is now in question, and it’s going to be costly.

The West Street extension was supposed to happen in conjunction with Union Station, but the rules were changed for what used to be federal TIGER funding (now BUILD I think). The city had already secured bond funds for this project and was prepared to apply for TIGER funds. New federal requirements exclude the use of bond funds in conjunction with the federal funds.

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You don’t think Kane is gonna find a way to make that happen?

Yah, they could make it a concession to building 20+ for him to pay for part of connecting West.

He didn’t indicate as such during the neighborhood meeting. We’re hopeful that it could happen, but he didn’t make it seem like that was on the table.

Except it’s shut down now for construction at the tracks.

And I’m not 100% sure it’s going to reopen after the construction is done.

I haven’t heard that it isn’t reopening. It was my understanding that the closing here was a concession for tunneling under the tracks for the West Street extension. Since that isn’t happening anytime soon, I’d think the closure is also postponed.

From past experience at this crossing, the railroad tends to get their construction projects done pretty fast. I heard that their crews were all diverted to deal with hurricane issues (and it also appeared that they may have broken a sewer line around the same time), so that would explain why work here pretty much stopped for a few weeks and has taken awhile.

I still cross here on foot all the time despite the closure to vehicles. Not ideal, but oh well.

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Here’s the latest on what’s happening at the tracks on Cabarrus.

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Kane should extend the existing pedestrian tunnel under the platforms at Union Station into this development. That integrates it closely into Union Station, and partly mitigates the poor connection that the platform at Union Station has with the outside world.

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Unless Amtrak makes another ticketing booth/station entrance integrated into the development, I feel like that would be a major security problem… (or at least, the TSA and FTA wouldn’t be too happy about that)

If that happens (or the building even acts as a secondary mini-“great hall” for Union Station that’s more integrated into the neighborhood), that would be pretty cool though.

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Amtrak tries to limit access to their platforms to ticketed passengers wherever possible. I can see adding a connection to the future commuter rail platform in the future.

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