Well not the whole site dummy, just the stadium, that’s we form an authority like PNC Arena!!!
Two things: 1) NCState did need a new arena. PNC was under construction when the hockey team announced they were moving to Raleigh. The foundations on the north west end of the arena had to be ripped out and re-poured to accommodate the hockey rink.
2) Let’s all remember to keep it civil. Not just on this this theme, but on several in the last week there is a lot of unnecessary antagonism. Petty insults and name calling are for the school yard. @dtraleigh generously runs this for us, let’s self-monitor our posts.
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Here’s the relevant piece of the email that came from my GSA rep. Maybe it’s less a matter of the full GSA coming out against it and just providing the mouthpiece for this person. I still don’t follow why the GSA feels it’s worth sending this out without any kind of rebuttal.
For reference I’m in Crop & Soil Science.
"Dear all,
Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak before the GSA reps regarding this particular issue. As this issue should be considered a major environmental injustice for the City of Raleigh, I believe that the students of NCSU need to be aware of it and take necessary action.
Please find attached the letter template for students to put in their name, then email to the City Council and the Planning Commission.
Link here to the list of contacts to the City: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y132cHHlsBeYKEys8JOxEZ3u82XW3kdxg8FcUZfV8oI/edit
Link here to the letter template: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t2dlbWYc43PXrdaVS_3T-dB7Vh52iV2mgwOV8DKkCUQ/edit
If it is possible for GSA to share this to the student body tomorrow, so that people can start emailing the city at least over the next few days up to this Thursday afternoon when the Planning Commission would have their meeting at 3:30 PM , that would be tremendous! The City, unfortunately, did not give enough time for the public to process all of this information as community engagement was kept to a minimum. We can only8 work with what time and resources were given, but I believe we can still give this our best shot!
I have also included the powerpoint presentations from Partners of Environmental Justice and SE Raleigh Engagement. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to me or to Tatiana (although Tatiana would have more info as she worked more closely on this issue).
Thank you again!
Best regards,
Hwa Huang"
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What are the environmental concerns - specific to stormwater or other?
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What is the GSA and what are the environmental concerns? I am generally curious as this site seems to be mostly a brownfield redevelopment.
Student governments are student-led organization recognized by a university as something like a point person for the needs and concerns, including appointing students to decision-making committees in the university.
The GSA (Graduate Student Association) is State’s version of that specifically for graduate students. Grad students have really different priorities than undergrads (many grad students are also employed by the university, being screwed over by the university is a more real, serious danger), so our student body has a separate representative.
People in student gov are often really politically active and/or are trying to build a resume in politics. This stereotype is less accurate for grad students, but you do have to go out of the way more relative to your “day job” compared to undergrads. So in my experience, it’s kind of similar to “real” politics: student gov reps sometimes embrace activist issues and position more than the general student body they represent.
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TIF is a tool, which can be used for good or ill. I lived in Chicago during the latter Daley years, when the mayor created dozens of TIF districts. By the 2009 budget crisis, many of them were broke – but a few had accumulated tremendous surpluses.
What it mostly came down to is that a TIF is a tool that can leverage and expand existing market interest, but it can’t create market interest where there is none. Lots of TIFs were created for political expedience – to create a pot of money that an alderman could use for capital improvements, and get some ribbon-cutting photo ops. The only TIFs that “worked” were in areas close to downtown that probably would’ve redeveloped anyways. That raises the opposite question – whether the TIF was necessary – but ideally, a TIF is written such that the surplus doesn’t stay within the district but instead gets redistributed back to the city.
Unfortunately, there TIFs have gotten such a bad rap that there’s tremendous opposition to them even where they’re the obvious way of funding the work. A TIF was finally recently created to help fund a CTA line rebuild, which has obvious property-value benefits for its immediate neighbors. That’s a fair use for a TIF – why should all city taxpayers have to kick in to fund something that mostly benefits its neighbors? Can’t they pay for it themselves?
It’s less obvious that a stadium without a team, or even a soccer stadium generally, would have a big impact on local property values. I say this as someone who lives close enough to an MLS stadium that I can hear when they’ve scored a goal.
Also: agreed with above that there’s no need for a gadgetbahn people mover. If you do the BRT right, there will be a dedicated transitway into downtown anyways, so just run supplemental shuttle buses on that if needed.
Speaking of shuttles: something the Dix Edges plan should consider is the extent to which this Caraleigh/Fuller area might be where Centennial Campus spillover development happens, and creating east-west transportation links to facilitate that. I’m bored with the “innovation district” buzzword, but Centennial is arguably a successful one with the region’s lowest submarket office vacancy rate. As it continues to grow, not all of the commercial demand will need to be On Campus – similar to how much of RTP-area business is clustered around I-40 east of the park, rather than inside RTP itself. But where will that go? A redeveloped Mission Valley is one option, but Caraleigh/DTS is perhaps better.
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I’m honestly not too surprised about this email, though (see above), especially since more State students live off-campus now and want to be good neighbors to the locals they live with. With that said, as weirded out as I am by the alarmist bend to Hwa Huang’s email, the actual letter template and attachments isn’t batshit crazy.
Click here for some key quotes from the letter template.
Click here to see the attachments in the email
SERCESS presentation to Kane et al. about Community Benefits Agreement (776.6 KB)
PEJ presentation about environment screening (3.4 MB)
Flyer for City Council meeting (1.2 MB)
TL/DR: the email lists out some ideas -many of which we’ve also talked about (and agree on!) here on this thread.
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Design Downtown South developments so they won’t worsen floods nearby.
The letter cites this letter from a Raleigh engineering firm to define what that means, and ask for “low-impact development and green infrastructure” to be a part of these plans. -
Downtown South should include houses that are affordable for existing residents.
The letter asks for 20%+ of new residential units to be “subsidized for low-income residents”. -
Kane must systematically ensure people are truly aware/approve of Downtown South.
“In a canvassing of Rochester Heights on [Oct. 22, 2020] led by St. Ambrose Episcopal Church and ONE Wake, the majority of neighborhood residents surveyed reported having little to no knowledge of the development.”
The last point is tough, since public outreach is really freaking hard (we have a thread for that now!). But the other two issues are not exactly stupid or pointless, right?
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I didn’t know Kane was a government agency. No banker would approve a loan for a project with 20+% affordable housing. Again, another group projecting fantasy than reality.
I want less parking platform towers in Downtown Raleigh but that’s the only type that gets funding.
If Kane was only building housing (and literally nothing else) in Downtown South, you’re right; it’ll be really hard to fund such a project alone. But Kane’s proposal is not that.
DoSo should have multiple revenue sources that should let him cover the costs of affordable housing and still make money, plus the City is looking into tax incentives to change that for places near future BRT stops. I don’t see why you’d want to be so dismissive of affordable housing being a practical thing you can do?
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What other projects like this have been done that are 100% private and have 20+% affordable housing? Let’s try to not re-invent the wheel, affordable housing needs to be a government service.
In the end of the day, if Downtown South folds the property will be sold to other developers for 100% luxury housing but since they’re smaller projects no one will care–for example, Earp’s Seafood property next door will be a residential project with no stipulations for affordable housing.
We really need another term than “affordable housing” because it immediately stirs up the most negative connotations of what ‘affordable’ means. What Kane is proposing is an ‘income capped’ offering…meaning people MUST have jobs (ie: the wait staff, bartenders, teachers, firemen, police officers, etc) who will work in the Downtown South area.
The ‘affordable’ that Kane is proposing is not the derelict & neglected stuff still scattered across East & South Raleigh… the drug dealers will not be living in this housing but the minute anyone uses the term ‘affordable’, that’s immediately what comes to mind.
I am in favor of providing housing options for multiple income levels for the simple fact that it increases diversity in an area…which makes the area interesting. If Downtown South was just filled with people earning $150,000+/year, I would not find that appealing. If that means creative financing is required such as via TIC or other public-private options, so be it!!
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How about “more affordable housing”?
I think it at least helps. “Affordable” is still subjective regardless.
BTW, @UncleJesse, I agree with your comment about affordable housing stirs things up.
I think that rephrasing raises more questions than it answers ‘em. When I first read that, it wasn’t clear to me if you said "more Affordable Housing’", or you said “more affordable housing”.
I don’t think any rebranding will help. Historically, people had the same complaints about “Working-class neighborhoods”, “the projects”, “public housing”,… it’s an endless rat race of finding new words, followed by richer people projecting wrongly negative images onto them. I think the perception problem Jesse’s talking about runs much deeper than just branding.
Wait, really? Do you remember where he said that? That sounds like the perfect rebuttal here, but I don’t remember anyone bringing that up…
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Workforce housing was the terminology raised previously, I thought…?
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Do you mean “100% private” as in “privately owned and operated”? Or “no tax benefits, no incentives, and no government involvement at all beyond permits”?
If you meant the former, here’s a paper about McCormack Baron Salazar (the most successful for-profit developer of affordable housing), a comparison of 3 projects across America and how they transformed their local communities, and several other detailed case studies from the HUD.
Maybe. Do you remember where Kane (or another presenter for the project) brought that up?
yes, “workforce housing” is one of the description terms that has been used as an alternative to “affordable”…mainly because it infers the intended residents must be employed. There are others where they actually calculate an income level based on “70% or 80%” average income in a region(for example)…which given Raleigh & our region in general have a higher average income than anywhere else in North Carolina creates a rate higher than many municipalities.
The point is the targeted audience for the income capped residential are EMPLOYED…not the stereotype of unemployed.
The problem with this “onewake” group is they want try to force Kane to provide “free housing”…which is NOT going to happen…nor should
it.
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Oh yeah no, I get that’s what “workforce housing” means, and I totally support it! I was asking if you know in which specific document or interview Kane committed to making workforce housing a permanent part of Downtown South. The closest thing I could find is this post from @scotchman, but I thought you knew about something less wishy-washy?
Is this something OneWake specifically said? Can you point to the exact moment or place they said that?
I watched the entire recording of their debut public meeting, the same one that spawned that N&O article @dbearhugnc posted. Click the dropdowns below for my observations:
I couldn't find anything about free housing handouts in Downtown South. ...and I tried.
OneWake talks about their goals and beliefs specifically for Downtown South starting at 44:41. The religious leaders in this meeting talk about the need for affordable homes for the people who live and work in Downtown South (i.e. workforce housing). …but no one said anything about guaranteed free housing. I have a feeling quite a few people would love that if it was an option, but what they say sounds much more grounded and realistic than that.
Kane seems to understand that OneWake genuinely wants to find common ground in his reply.
Besides, do you really think a storm of free housing handouts is realistic?
If you skip forward in the video to where OneWake talks about their other pet issues, it’s clear they have feel more comfortable talking about (and have actual track records on) more near-term, individual things like eviction protections or tenants’ rights. Even if this nonpartisan activist group went full-blown communist, I don’t think they could abolish real estate markets if they tried.
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I’d suspect that anytime an organized group is taking on a well funded machine like Kane, that their opening bid is going to push as much as possible. We all do the same thing when we are negotiating for things like new cars, buying a home, etc.
Even if this group asked for free housing (which I find really difficult to believe), I doubt that they expect that to happen.
Frankly, if Kane wants to develop more densely on the DTS site, it’s the perfect opportunity to ask the city to require workforce housing in exchange. In downtown proper, and unless there’s a deal to be had on land, making the numbers work with below market rate housing is difficult at best. The only way to make those numbers work on below market housing is go denser in development. At the DTS site, the land is already less expensive, and the rezoning will only allow it be cheaper per unit on top of that. Still, below market for this location isn’t going to be cheap. I can’t see how it would be. If they could get 1BR workforce apartments rented at $1000/month, that would be a huge win in my book, and that’s certainly not a give-away or free housing.
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The original plan for State’s new basketball arena, prior to the Whalers involvement, was a $66 million basketball only arena. NC State would provide the land and $22 million. The General Assembly would provide $22 million and Raleigh/Wake County would provide $22 million. When the Centennial Authority took control of the project in 1995, they didn’t want an all seater arena like the Dean Dome. They wanted luxury and corporate amenities, which raised the cost to around $100 million, and they started dickering around with delays.
But, as pBeez stated, the NC State basketball Arena was already under (initial) construction when Karmanos struck the deal to move the Whalers to Raleigh in May 1997. Which led to an NHL centric multi-use arena, costing around $160 million.
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