Not enough parking pedestal towers for the Planning Commission to vote yes on.
Irony is that the Fenton and other Cary developments are on the same flood plain and will affect the same people as this project but they get a free pass because it’s not Raleigh. If people were really concerned about these issues–why aren’t they pressing hard on these issues with Cary? ONEWake is based in Durham county so clearly everyone in the region has their fingers in Raleigh’s cookie jar but not the other way around it seems.
Up the road, northern Henrico County has stolen an arena-driven development that had been proposed for central Richmond. The old site included rebuilding the Richmond Coliseum, just northwest of downtown; the new proposal reuses the BEST Products office near I-95/I-295.
As silly as politics in Raleigh is, I think we can agree that at least Raleigh and Wake County are in together on arenas, rather than building competing arenas.
FWIW, I suspect that two things have driven the (IMO, too-hasty) approach to getting entitlements via rezoning rather than a Planned Development – which takes longer, but has more public involvement touchpoints:
assuming that the city/county meals tax revenue and the MLS team would fall into place
a 12/31/2020 deadline for some Opportunity Zone investors to maximize their tax savings, and therefore to close their deals
Just some thoughts for context:
A couple of years ago, the general narrative on Raleigh as we pursued HQ2 was that we were a metro of 1.2M. As of last year, our “half” of the Triangle clocked in at 1.39M. If the Raleigh MSA stayed the same 3 counties, and only grew at a decelerating rate of say 2% a year (down from 2.29% average annually since 2010), we’d be at 1.73M by 2030.
At our CSA level, if we grew only 1.8% annually (down from 1.95% since 2010), we’d be at 2.53M by 2030. Wouldn’t one think that the Raleigh and the Triangle would be getting more “looks” from professional sports at those sorts of numbers? Charlotte was smaller than 2.53M when it got both its basketball and football team. I think it’s wise to expect some sort of serious interest from major league sports.
Put another way, NC is gaining on Ohio in population, and by 2030 will be nearly equal to it. They’ve had successful dueling franchises in both Cincinnati and Cleveland for years, not to mention that the Triangle will be a larger market that Cincinnati in just a few years from now.
Fenton and CTC/Carolina Yards were approved by Cary as PDs with complete, committed master plans in the zoning conditions. The full street grid, building height ranges, general layouts, use mixes, etc were all planned in advance and presented to Cary’s planning commission and council before zoning.
Just sayin’.
My guess? Kane has found his PD/Master plan for North Hills East to be somewhat constraining and was aiming to get (a lot) more flexibility here. But for as much as I respect Kane and like a lot of his developments, the city can’t just hand a developer the Keys to the Kingdom like this, especially when he is asking for TIG incentives that could eventually cost the city $3.5 million a year in lost tax revenue.
Perception, Charlotte has done a good job at presenting itself as the principal city of both North and South Carolina. It maybe only sub-3 million people but there’s 16+ million people in the Carolinas and people that don’t know the Carolinas will see that number instead.
Raleigh needs to market itself as Dallas-Forth Worth, or Minneapolis-Saint Paul. As the metroplex as the most sports aggressive town, the chamber of commerce is to weak we keep marketing ourselves as a quaint, sleepy, quiet town that needs to stop!!!
FWIW, center of city to center of city, Raleigh and Durham, which basically don’t border each other, are almost as far apart as Dallas and Fort Worth, which don’t border each other at all. Raleigh and Cary, which do share a significant border, are almost exactly as far apart as Minneapolis and St. Paul, which also share a significant border. So the correct analogy depends on who you’re considering Raleigh’s junior partner to be.
I’d be curious to see some examples of Raleigh actively marketing itself as a quaint, sleepy, quiet town. I realize some people have that perception, but I’d be really interested to see some examples where the city has actively leaned into that as a marketing strategy, because I’m not aware of any instances where the city has done that.
@John yeah, plenty of reason to think both the Triangle and Charlotte could support pro sports teams in the same league some day. Historically I think there’s been some concern that college football and basketball in the Triangle would crowd out interest in pro football or basketball, and there just aren’t a lot of hockey fans in Charlotte. So that leaves MLS (which is, I keep pointing out, not even remotely as popular as the NHL, let alone the others), and MLB. It seems kind of weird to think about given that there are currently zero MLB teams in the Carolinas, but you could absolutely support one in each city, I would think, at least in the very near future. But as @Francisco correctly pointed out, Charlotte has a huge leg up because of its proximity to South Carolina, which is a pretty significant market in its own right. Cities can do their best to improve certain things about themselves, but Raleigh can’t control where South Carolina is.
Raleigh is different…and the same as many markets across the country in certain ways.
Seems like there’s folks who wish it’d stay the same and folks who think it’s changing too fast.
I’m of the opinion that it’s come a looong way from where it was and it doesn’t need to try to be anything else but it does need to figure out what it wants to be - and lean into that…
That’s pretty difficult to vocalize and more difficult to distill into a marketing mantra.
Downtown to downtown as the crow flies:
Dallas to Ft. Worth: ~ 31 miles
Raleigh to Durham: ~ 21 miles
Raleigh and Durham actually do touch each other, though I think I understand what you mean by they basically don’t border each other.
I totally understand that that nature of ACC sports is a barrier to pro football and basketball, and I really couldn’t care less about those two. The visibility that the Triangle will get as it grows will garner interest. I also agree that MLS still makes the most sense, and it sets up a natural rivalry with Charlotte. If we ever do get a team, I want it called Raleigh FC, not North Carolina FC. You can bet your bottom dollar that Durham would name their team Durham FC if they got one. I’m sick of Raleigh sacrificing its own brand for regional cooperation that never seems to pay off.
You’re right, I was using driving directions. My bad. And, yeah, they technically touch other at small points, but not in the way that Raleigh and Cary (or Minneapolis and St. Paul) share a significant continuous boundary line.
I’m actually really surprised that no city councilor has harrumphed over the name of the team. Obviously as long as the team is physically based in Cary it makes sense to call them North Carolina FC (although I know their successor was called the Raleigh Railhawks), and maybe there’s too much goodwill now built up in the Carolina Courage name for the women’s team, but, yeah, I’m surprised nobody has tried to leverage the city’s position here to convince them to change the name of the men’s team. (I know we’ve talked a lot about why they are the Carolina Hurricanes rather than the Raleigh Hurricanes.)
There are a lot of pro teams, named for the largest city, that aren’t in the actual city. The aforementioned Dallas is an example of this. The Cowboys play in Arlington. The Meadowlands isn’t even in the state of NY.
Malik renamed the team for his failed MLS aspirations, to reflect the Carolina Star the Triangle, among others but no one was coming from Charlotte, it really was a Raleigh things an imagine if we were in MLS with the name North Carolina FC that would’ve been weird. Maybe Raleigh Triangle FC
Ahh i take it to the bank it won’t happen!!! By 2030 if we’re all here by then!!! I fell like the world won’t exist after 2026. So the goal is to get MLB here Major League Baseball here let’s get Raleigh a second team before the End of The World!!!
