We had put off going for awhile for fear it would be too crowded to play anything. When we finally went after Christmas this year with visiting family, it was quite the opposite. Despite nothing on Google or Instagram, they decided to open several hours late by putting a note on the door, despite a side door being unlocked. Also, the entrance for this is not conducive to being discovered by people at the rest of Iron Works.
When we did get in, it wasn’t clear to us or staff what we needed to do. Bowling games would just end mid game, you could only book by time not game, the pins on strings would get tangled and take forever to reset, and we were the only ones there for almost the entire time. The upstairs was closed, the place was not super clean, and their beer selection was very limited and very expensive. Most of their options were out or poured only foam. They comped us for some stuff but somehow I still spent 94 bucks on a few beers. It was also hard to find anyone working there, despite there being at least 5 different very young people on the shift in an empty building. I assume they were all just hanging out in the back.
I thought this was all just a weird one off experience, but so many comments on Instagram say literally all of those same things. I imagine they need that place packed to pay the rent. Hopefully a better execution and maybe a little more promotion would work there.
I just can’t imagine a place like that staying packed whilst so absurdly overpriced to do… anything. I get that they have expensive rent but like… if you price 90% of people out, you’ll never make anything close to rent. It’s my issue with the new parking price proposals - Raleigh wants so bad to be charging premium, Big League City prices for everything while still being a Minor League- at best- city with just not enough to do to justify spending more than what we’ve become used to.
You can already get drinks at Little Rey, Hunky Dorey, Ponysaurus, the wine shop (forgot its name), and Brodeto – all with different experiences. Do we really need a sixth place to buy booze at Iron Works? Personally, I’d love a big clothing retailer to move in there. Uniqlo would perfect. I’d take one of those mini IKEA stores too.
The difference is that with Jaguar, it was supposed to be about the experience - it was something actually fun to do that wasn’t simply “getting drinks” - something I would argue we need a LOT more of in this city… just not at NYC/LA/Chicago prices. Raleigh is nowhere close to being as premium a city as even Richmond, VA for that matter lmao
For @StreetviewRDU’s Question Mark: there’s simply a lot more to see and do in even a similarly sized city like Richmond than there is here in Raleigh. I love it here, don’t get me wrong. It’s just a LITTLE annoying to have lived here for nearly 20 years (will be 18 years as of July for me) and have BARELY more to see and do than when I got here lmao
@GucciLittlePig can echo this sentiment: for decades now we’ve been sold this idea that Raleigh was only a year or two away from BIG CITY (we’re talking Austin, TX) level boom - and I’m sorry but in my nearly 18 years here, that simply hasn’t happened.
I agree, we’ve been back in Raleigh for 18 years this month. It felt like a lot had changed between when I left college in 2002 and moved back in 2008, but since then… not so much. More of a slow burn and slow growth (most visibly at North Hills and a little in DTR). Sure we had the 2008 crash and covid in 2020 to slow things down, but when is the actual “boom” going to happen? All those proposals that have come up then disappeared. I wish I could SimCity DTR a bit and make those projects happen at llama speed.
I will also say that I don’t hate the speed of growth - Austin’s rapid boom has come with a LOT of problems, one of which being the rate at which it’s become practically unaffordable for many that had lived and thrived there long before it starting exploding up.
Raleigh is still generally pretty damn affordable - but that’s precisely why the more bougie, “premium city” priced establishments simply don’t make it here. We ain’t got time for that BS when we’re still living in, essentially, a big ass town lmao
I think that Raleigh and the Triangle are growing at quite the clip actually, except that the growth is just spread out among so many submarkets.
As you mention, North Hills has stolen a lot of thunder from downtown at the same time that a lot of daily government workforce has evaporated from our downtown sidewalks and businesses. This is why we have to continue to push more and more housing downtown to reinvent the future of the city. We can’t rely on past models to return. That said, the city has been making enormous progress by putting its thumb on the scale to increase the urban housing supply. It’s difficult to see it change when you are living it, but there has been so much change since I first became a downtown resident 30 years ago.
Funnily enough, last time I was in NYC we went to a similar sort of place, and I was really surprised how affordable it was for Brooklyn compared to Raleigh. It was a bar with a dozen or so petanque courts (kinda like bocce), reasonably priced beers and cocktails, and some very good food at prices comparable to Raleigh. It was right around the time Jaguar Bolero opened and I remember thinking wow that place looks expensive even by NYC standards.
Yeah I hit 17 here in May. I’m never gonna stop cheering for this city. It’s home. But I agree for sure. So many things that were about to happen, and really push Raleigh into that next level, but so much seems to fizzle out. I know I could move somewhere else, but until I am retired or we can both WFH exclusively, I am happy here. Still gonna be (maybe a little too) emotionally invested in Raleigh’s development.
Ever been to Philly? Infinite things to do and incredibly affordable. It’s my personal favorite American city I’ve visited and I’d live there in a heartbeat … if it weren’t also one of the coldest damn places I’ve ever been
The thought I keep coming back to, is that everything being new with the corresponding high rents makes everything more difficult. The developers need to pay for construction, so the businesses have to focus on maxing revenue, so a place like jaguar is mostly dedicated to food and drink with the activities almost just for advertising.
I went a few after it opened and while it was only busy-ish, there was a 2 hour wait to do anything besides eat or drink since that’s what all the space was used for.
Compare this to your NYC pentaque bar or a pool hall I think about in downtown Denver. Those places have probably had several previous tenants, leading to reasonable(for the area) rents. So they don’t need to extract every cent from their patrons.
Unfortunately, the only solution I see is time. Similar to the affordable housing discussion, tons of new builds push down prices of the older stock and eventually become old stock themselves. For example, I ended up at 1888 the other day and it was much better than the “billiards themed cocktail experience” I expected from my last visit several years ago.
So the best course of action for developers immediately after opening these spaces is… either letting them sit vacant for literal YEARS, bringing in exactly Zero dollars and Zero cents in revenue, or else leasing them out to risky new businesses and letting them get $800,000 behind in rent … effectively meaning they are still bringing in zero dollars and zero cents in revenue??? Someone make this make sense for me.
No, just pointing out some of the underlying reasons I think about for why we get a lot of fancy expensive places that (for my taste) kind of suck.
Of course, they’re going to get built. Some of them will be great, bunch will fail, eventually those buildings will be less expensive and cheaper/experimental places will be able to flourish.
Again this is based on personal tastes and resources. I have a lot of the same thoughts on housing. There’s nothing wrong with fancy expensive apartments either, I just don’t like them and couldn’t afford one if I did.
