I was in Raleigh for Thanksgiving, and it was great to be back in the place I consider my home town. I live in a Alabama version of Mayberry now. I was on Glenwood Ave during rush hour (don’t ask) and it was every bit of the nightmare of traffic multiplied exponentially since I grew up and Oak Park/The Peddler were the end of town. This experience confirmed for me that I will never live in a metropolitan area where I can’t walk or depend on reliable mass transit. Suburban traffic would kill me early. Bless you all who are trapped in your cars.
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For this very reason, this community has a passion for creating the walkable, urban, car-independent DT Raleigh of the future.
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I think the destination restaurants pull in people fairly well too. I was having dinner at the Pit one night at the bar, and the couple next to me had flown down from New York City for the night just to eat there. I was like, wait, what? AC probably pulls in similarly as well.
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Agreed about destination restaurants… such as Chef & The Farmer in Kinston.
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I wouldn’t say Paris but over 100 French citizens attended the Blue Grass Festival this year.
The biggest non-American international bluegrass festival is in France and there were many of them in Raleigh this year.
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That’s actually really cool! I didn’t know either of those facts!
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When we were there Friday Night , we met people from Chicago , Oregon , & NYC that
were there attending as a BG Fan ! I thought that was Super Cool!
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I was going to add a new topic in regards to the Firestone site now closed, But I will add it here, Between S.McDowell st. and S.Davie st. you have a good chunk of property there, It would be a Golden Opportunity to Build One huge hotel there, that will add at least 300 rooms and within One block to the Convention center. Between the enterprise lot next to the R.C.C. the lot at McDowell/Davie…and the N&O site there Developers can Build a Project that will make Raleigh stand out, then you can build all the 20 story buildings that the city wants. If You look at it…or think about it it would be pretty amazing to see. building under 20 is not going to cut it if the demand for Hotels is needed…
I / we can only wish or hope for something great. 
https://lobsterink.com/archive/design-trends-how-hotels-will-look-in-2017 Note: I thought this link maybe of some interest.
I’m not even one of the height obsessed people here, but the Courtyard proposed at the enterprise lot needs to be a lot bigger. Double or triple the height there. And maybe look less like a hospital. Rough rough rough really rough ms paint edit looking at the height should be…
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This is one proposal in DTR that I would like to see disappear. It is really bad to be in such a prime location.
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Has any rendering fit the 18 story hotel by Crabtree been released, just wondering what it’ll look like?
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Wow your paint rendering made the original look even that much worse. With such a strong need for hotels I can’t believe that stubby little box is what will be built on such a prime location downtown. It’s amazing to me that they can’t/won’t make it 20-25 stories. Especially since it isn’t a luxury brand. Courtyards are nice but the price doesn’t seem like it would make it impossible to fill rooms even at that larger height.
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I have observed that almost all of the recent hotel proposals are adjacent to Dawson or McDowell. I think it’s a tough sell for restaurants and residential to face those streets (I know, District, Whiskey Kitchen, Dawson, Hue, Park Devereux all do…) and hotels at least use up that real estate.
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The Hilton Garden 13 story hotel has started their building permits with the city & will be the first hotel to be built . These permits have not been approved yet .
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Finally. Hopefully they go back to the original design and not the beige brick second rendering.
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I wonder how long it’ll take for them to get started once approved? Early spring maybe
I’m not getting my hopes up. My assumption is that it’s going to really suck. The rounded glass corner would’ve been amazing.
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If I hear any time line on this , I’ll post .
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The construction bid had an estimated start date of January 2019.
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Like in a couple weeks??? Seems doubtful.