Downtown hotels

Damn, so much potential getting eaten up by that parking. Architecturally, this is the cleanest massing I’ve seen for any proposal recently. Good proportions, nice relief throughout to break down the scale, elegant ground-level condition. That parking deck tho…

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Is this going to approach the height of Charter Square?

Looks smaller. Charter Square is only 10 stories but all of that is office space with much higher floor size.

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I understand the need for parking decks, but just MUCH prefer when a developer at least ATTEMPTS to hide them in some fashion. Even the massive Block 83 deck is now hidden behind the Hotel on Morgan, and will soon be sandwiched (and thus barely visible from street level) when they eventually develop the surface lot on Martin.

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The city council and NIMBY are concerned with height but parking garages can be built freely without aesthetics considerations. I would require any new development contingent on getting parking underground or at least hidden

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Are there some sort of regulations about how much of a parking deck is exposed for safety reasons, etc? If not, why are they not wrapping more of them?

I guess if they wrap them, it takes space and since there are height restrictions they can’t go up anymore?

Obviously leaving them open allows for natural flow of air thru the structure. Otherwise they’d have to install air handlers to vent the car exhaust.

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Also helps with access from outside in case of fire.

Fine by me, the convention center is a big economic engine and it needs more hotel rooms in walking distance to attract big ticket events. I’m a little more lenient on the parking decks for the hotels than I am for residential/commercial TBH, just because we need the rooms and we need them now.

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Why does a person staying in a hotel downtown need a car? More than likely they are here for an event downtown or business downtown in which they can walk to. I assume most people just Uber/Lyft to and from the airport instead of renting a car.

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I live in western part of state and best time for a bus trip to Raleigh is almost 24hours and more expensive than driving. So I drive when I come to Raleigh and expect the hotel to provide a parking place even if I do not use car while downtown. Not ever visitor fles and takes uber.

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Does a hotel within walking distance to the convention center, and in service of the convention center guests, really need all that much parking? When I attend professional conventions and stay near the convention center, I never have a car with me.

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As a rule, I don’t either - if only convention hotel parking tends to be VERY expensive. But @scotchman makes a fair point. You do need parking. Man, it seems nearly every post I’ve made here today involves parking - see the General Parking Discussion for reference!

You can’t build yourself out of either road or parking demand. The more you build, the more the demand grows. We have to train people to think about choosing not to have a car. Increasing daily parking fees is one way to make that happen. If an uber ride to and from an evening event is cheaper than renting and parking a car daily (and it will be), then more people will choose to not have a car with them. With a growing option of things to do downtown, even those evening Uber rides can often be replaced by using ones feet.
As for events like weekend home shows and car shows, etc., we should be leveraging the existing daytime parking supply before thinking about always building more!

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I do get what you are saying. I think hotel developers should be allowed to provide as much parking as they want, but there shouldn’t be minimums either. If they think they can fill their rooms without parking (or with less parking) they should be allowed to do so. This should be the case anywhere, really, but certainly downtown.

Not sure where in WNC you live but Greyhound between Asheville and Raleigh is about a 6 hour ride. Did it a few times. Not too bad.

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Reminder that the minimum parking requirements for hotels is 1 space for every 2 rooms. That was lowered about 2-3 years ago. I wonder if that is really doing anything.

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While I understand that developers are more likely to provide the minimum requirement due to their costs to develop, and you know, profit, I think that there also should be a maximum.
For the new minimum you mentioned, does that apply to all hotels, or just downtown hotels?

Understood. Nobody is suggesting taking all of the parking requirement away. That would be silly. I’m sure that hoteliers have the data on their guests’ use of parking, and I would bet that the 1 space per 2 rooms is still a generous amount for hotels near the convention center.

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At least the hostels/cube hotels. Currently, hostels in Raleigh must provide parking. I don’t think foreign youth tourist will be using cars much and having parking increases the cost of offering accommodations.

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Thinking back to the Revisn hotel plans, they were claiming to be providing (I think it was) 48 units and half as many parking spaces. Does this mean that, while they were lying about the project being apartments, they were calculating and providing their parking as if each unit was a hotel room? :roll_eyes: