Old chick-fil-a guts still there. What are they planning?
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The owner is actively looking for new tenants.
I think it was a B-Good.
No, b good was in a a modern building near 511 Fayetteville next to Haymaker bar. This picture is ground level Sir Walter Raleigh .
it seems like a read a post here by someone saying that downtown density in raleigh was now around 6500 persons per sq mile. would beefing up transit frequency/service (build back better the r-line?) in the core be a good palce to start with balancing resident interest in downtown sectors for dining , shopping and entertainment before adding far flung busses to OTB locations? if budgeting is that much of an issue, that is.
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I was just thinking about the proposed “social district” open container trial on Fayetteville Street and the property that used to be Pizza La Stella, Bolt, and many concepts prior to that. The street window that unit has would be perfect for a social district.
I’d love to let @Francisco design a concept to go in there. Most of his ideas around food make my mouth water. 
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Visiting Mexico City in two weeks for a taco tour. Would will be making my final decision on a concept I want to bring here.
Just glad I didn’t invest in 2019/2020 or I would have been bankrupted due to COVID measures lol.
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Absolutely molasses progress on the Social District. The pilot program maybe will start before summer ends. 
Red area is the likely boundary of the first phase of the program. Faye Street plus Moore Square/City Market.
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This could be a game changer for city market. Of all the area marked in Red, City Market is where I would want to be from a human scale and walkability perspective. With a beer in hand of course.
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Doesn’t this area seem big? Reason I’m saying is that I thought this would help Fayetteville St. S Blount St already has an active nightlife crowd. Extending it out to the Warehouse Option may cause a lot of complaints similar to what Glenwood South already has. Isn’t there going to be more residential buildings off Hillsborough St?
Based of the options (even the red one), it seems like Fayetteville St. may not benefit a whole lot.
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I love this idea of having social districts. But hope we see more public trashcans scattered in these social districts. Or otherwise we’ll see a nice influx of disposable cups/cans littered throughout the city.
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…so just like anything that isn’t being funded by a private developer? I love my city, but holy god damn hell do I not understand how a city growing as fast as Raleigh - with the amount of people and MONEY just pouring in - can’t get BASIC SH*T done in a relatively reasonable timeframe. Like @Boltman always jokes, it seems the city’s time and money is mostly spent on studying common sense ideas to death until it’s finally starting projects behind the growth, never getting out in front of it. Like… just start the Social District … simply enact it … NOW. What in the holy hell is the holdup???
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Tru dat! Do something even if it’s wrong
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And the second you try to push a project without asking the public 30 times for their opinions (which accomplishes, what?) and all hell breaks loose!
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Yeah, this is really what it boils down to. The current council already knows there’s a group of people who hate everything they do and are constantly looking for reasons to say “see, city council doesn’t care about you, they just care about money!” I expect the public feedback process will shorten as that voice gets smaller (and I do believe that voice will get smaller as the city continues to grow), but, until that point, councilmembers like Melton are trying to give them as little ammo as possible.
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I share a lot of what people are saying, even Boltman’s, cause I see inaction as sometimes worse than the wrong action. But to throw another viewpoint into this, it’s the public’s money here and when spending it, the city has to cover all bases and make sure it’s been thoroughly vetted. Government are in the business of spending money first, collecting second where a private company wants to collect money first, then spend.
I almost appreciate the process here when it’s with a large-scale project, like some $100 million bus-rapid transit line/study. So I think I’m fine with that. (getting old maybe) Even though I want it yesterday, would be best to do it right the first time, get those dollars allocated correctly.
However, there’s a lot of small-scale items, requiring very little new infrastructure or big money spends, that can adopt a pilot program at-first as a way to test it out. Social district? Why not pilot it with only implementing them on six Thursdays in the Spring. What did we learn? Adjust and then roll it out permanently with a follow up next year to see what problems we had.
I feel I would have liked to see that with a variety of things. Food trucks, scooters, popup events, I bet there are a lot of other things. Just TRY it at least, no need to commit. But I do understand there are more questions here that people may not be thinking about. What about enforcement? Permits? Etc.
This is what I’d like to see but that would take a culture change at the city which I just don’t see it right now, AFAIK.
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Yeah, I love that. Kind of like tactical urbanism: pilot it first and on the cheap, then get your feedback. Especially useful for minor things that are controversial when proposed but tend to be popular when implemented (like pedestrian-only streets or curbside pickup zones, both of which the City just kind of did without asking early in the pandemic). This is how the Boston area has managed to drop so many bus lanes in the past couple of years: they just started setting up cones and being like “let’s see how people react.”
Agreed though, bigger projects like new rapid transit lines deserve a lot more thought and process so we get it right in round one.
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was it raleigh that actually had some compressor trashcans? perhaps solar powered?
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You know, that actually reminds me of a counter-argument to the “move fast, break things” approach recommended above. The city did just that with the planting of large buried trash cans on Wilmington near Raleigh Times to reduce the multitude of stinky pedestrian blocking rolling carts and was forced (not sure by who) to tear them up within a few weeks. Should this have been studied more? Who could say. 
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