Dorothea Dix Park

Definitely a lot to absorb. I believe the draft plan is newly released as of yesterday.

Final Dix community is February 6th, 6-9pm in the Convention Center, Ballroom B.

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As a lake wheeler rd. corridor resident, the proposed realignment of the lake wheeler/440 interchange to direct traffic onto centennial parkway instead of Lake wheeler, reserving lake wheeler as a low volume, multimodal corridor, is AWESOME. I doubt this will happen, but man what a great recommendation.

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If i missed it please forgive, but, how long will it take for this project to be complete( all four phases)? 10 years?

I think it’s all going to depend on how they structure the development rights for private sector. If it becomes a massive development opportunity for investors to fund development projects on 99 year leases from the city, then I think the built aspects of it will take off rather quickly, like converting the buildings into businesses, building new structures along lake wheeler… the land bridge and massive landscaping involved will likely take 10 years minimum I’d guess

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Interesting. I used to live near there too. I had long wondered why Maywood and Centennial weren’t aligned. Never thought about making Lake Wheeler essentially a neighborhood street. Maybe they can rename that section Rhamkatte Road like it used to be.

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Seems like Phase D would/should actually come first. Get the attractions in there to start then build out from there.

I believe they want to start by improving the connections between the park and surrounding areas, which is why they are proposing to start at the edges.

Also, some of the buildings of the buildings on the ridge are still occupied by the State and likely will be for years.

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Agreed. I am hoping they will continue the walkway from Centennial to Saunders st in the meantime.

On page 150 of the report, they lay out 3 options for programs. They are: 1) Art Hill, 2) Community Incubator, and 3) Regional Attraction.
My question is why do we have to pick one of those? Why can’t we have all three, or at least parts of all three? They each have merit and offer the city something that would be terrific.

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Whatcha mean? There are already two connections at S Saunders, one for Rocky Branch and one for Walnut.

I think he means just continuing the sidewalk along lake wheeler all the way till it ends on saunders. Amen! I biked this treacherous stretch on Tuesday. It’s scary

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Yes. That stretch is scary and if you avoid it you either have to go up Cent. Pkwy and cut across Dix or go down the greenway and end up on Fayetteville.

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Oh right. Yeah it’s still a country road through there. The City won’t even have to acquire ROW if they put it in on the west side. I always biked in in front of Ray Price. But Daladams, Mercury, Moring and Prospect all being disconnected from each other, made getting over to Ray Price an unnecessary pain. Talmage has 4 cul-de-sacs that straight up ignored the ROW already set aside for connecting to Prospect and Moring. Effing stupid. Daladams could still connect to Prospect though. That’ll be important type stuff if the New Horizons development gets going.

I have mixed feelings about the suggested lake wheeler/440 interchange. I think it makes sense to keep lake wheeler low volume and multi-modal along the park and farmer’s market. But I live just south of that interchange and was hoping to see some suggested infrastructure that would make accessing the park on foot or bike an easier/safer proposition.

Looks like they’re still expecting/requiring people south of 440 to access the park by car, which is disappointing.

Of course, it may never happen.

To be fair to the park planning, they have no control of anything that happens South of 440. Hopefully the city responds to the investment at Dix with an investment of bike/ped infrastructure over the 440 bridge at lake wheeler. And I don’t think these are mutually exclusive : cars would be shuffled down centennial to Western, bike/ped/transit would be oriented down lake wheeler toward Dix and downtown.

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Yeah, I agree. The fact that the planning team looked outside of the park boundaries and made as many recommendations for those areas as they did is a bonus.

Would love to see a bike/ped way to get across 440 in our area.

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As much as I agree with you on this, I have to say that because we call DIX park a “park” for the whole state of NC, it probably makes sense…?

I walk from Lake Wheeler Rd ( Sierra Dr. ) to DTR everyday to catch the GoTriangle Bus to get to Work, it is very narrow path with no sidewalk, would be great if they widen it all the way to S,Saunders .

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The city should have a goal to provide sidewalks throughout every double connected road within its limits. I purposefully say double connected roads because I don’t think we should waste our money on cul-de-sacs.

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If they could just get to downtown that would be great. 2 blocks of Lane and 2 of Harrington are missing some sidewalk.

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