Agreed - Would prefer not to need cars at all. As far as I am concerned we can just do away with the car dealers all-together.
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Regardless of whether you want car dealers where they are or not, if they are private landowners you can’t force them off. I’m not a fan of acres of asphalt instead of cool engaging development, but this is 'merica and property ownership is a thing.
It’ll have to be financially attractive for them to leave or to improve their own property, regardless of the neighbors. It’s $$$ baby
Nobody is forcing them out if they own the land. They are SELLING out. If you follow what the dealers have done in Raleigh over time, they have all moved further out and expanded their footprints significantly.
Oh, and in larger cities, car dealers are putting their cars in multilevel garages when the land prices become too expensive.
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I agree that in some cities that new dealers are going vertical (or big indoor showrooms like Cary and Apex).
your comment that:
If you had a choice to lift up your revenue generating property to prevent it from flooding for the cost of essentially a parking structure (which you are likely to have to build on site anyway), you wouldn’t do that? okay…
made it sound to me that you thought car dealers ought to go vertical who are affected by the new “waterfront.” All I was saying is I didn’t think they would for economic reasons if they stay where they are. If they sell their land, that’s another story. Unlikely their sold land would be used for car sales at that point, hence you telling the car dealers to go vertical seemed to be a moot point…
I figured that our thought processes were crossed in that conversation. Nah, I wasn’t suggesting that. I was thinking about the next development of those properties after the car dealers sell out. I don’t expect that those parcels will remain as car dealers in the long term. The temptation to sell out is eventually going to be too great to resist.
In those cases, if a site were developed vertically and densely, they are all going to need lots of parking. In those cases, that’s where my suggestion comes in. It’s really interesting to me to imagine boardwalk experiences along the creek with parking below them…almost like a riverwalk.
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cool. we’re on same page.
as someone else pointed out, if these business owners selling cars are constrained with where they can relocate that’s appropriate/affordable due to non-competes or franchise territories (like someone pointed out up thread) I wonder if they’ll truly sell ? I hope they do, I just don’t see the eonomics unless developers make it VERY worthwhile to buy…if the alternative is they have to go out of business altogether due to their “territory” restrictions.
The way Cary has done their car sales area in a “park” on the outskirts of Cary (near Apex), is really a good way to do it. What doesn’t fit in the park is way way way off the main drag out of sight. You have to be in “car shopping mode” to even find most dealers. But Cary is WAY ahead of Raleigh in terms of zoning, planning, appearance restrictions, etc. Would be nice if Raleigh would have done the same, but that train left the station WAY too long ago. Here’s what I’m talking about. Just like everything else in Cary, you’d never know there were 5-10,000 cars among 20 odd brands/dealers back behind those trees unless you really wanted to find them. Raleigh Cap Blvd and Costco area…not so much!
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Well, the car dealers can always go vertical and expand in their current locations. They could even go for more of a retail/storefront type experience and change the game on car selling. Nobody says that they have to follow a legacy model for selling cars. Necessity is the mother of invention.
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We’re on the same wavelength.
Last time I was in Los Angeles I went shopping in the Del Amo Fashion Center Mall and they had a Tesla store inside second story of the mall.
Tesla or other car dealership can have store fronts (galleries) in Downtown Raleigh while the actual dealership and service centers are in the boonies.
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Saw the same type of set up in a Houston mall year before last.
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Okay very far fetch idea but:
You know Raleigh/Durham area doesn’t really have a luxury shopping center. Crabtree and South Point are not high end luxury shopping centers. I would be in support of a lux high rise shopping center in the Warehouse District.
If for example, the RUSBUS office tower is a no go then why not the Raleigh Union Galleria?
People are going to make the argument that malls are dead, sure, regular malls but high end shopping is still a very personal experience and people that buy Louis Vuitton and other brands still demand in-person shopping.
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This idea is nice but malls are not going to survive the next two decades, they are closing rapidly worldwide due to online shopping and now the effects of the pandemic. Triangle, the now closed Northgate mall, and Cary town center are good examples of what is coming.
I do believe that outlet malls with private pedestrian only streets, like the ones in Miami are coming back and should be built somewhere downtown but, I’m not sure.
“The malls being hit the hardest are the lower-end and middle-tier malls in b-list locations. However, the upscale, high-end malls with anchors, such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, seem to not only be surviving, but also thriving.”
The high end malls I visited in Los Angeles were always packed and that was in 2019. People buying $5,000 fitted dresses are not going to rely on online shopping due to the fact that you can’t try on dresses or see how a handbag looks on you.
Just saying, that’s huge sales tax revenue the City of Raleigh could be making if such options existed in CoR city limits. Obviously, most of us here wouldn’t be the target market however these shopping centers can support other services that might appeal to us such as more restaurants or other services.
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The real question is does Raleigh have the base to support a mall full of stores selling $500 hand bags and such. 
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Miami Beach used to have a Tesla Dealer on Lincoln Rd. pedestrian mall in the very early days. I think that they put it there for more global exposure. Now there’s a Toyota pop-up store there that’s been open for several months now. Not sure how long it’s going to stay.
Yeah for all the talk on here about wanting a society without cars or parking spots, I’d rather have a society where people don’t buy $5000 dresses and purses
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not trying to start something, just genuinely curious why you’d care how much someone else spends on a dress or a purse? i mean should we care? It’s not really our business in my opinion. Or of the type of house or car or vacation or career they have. Seems to be a slippery slope when we make everyone fit a mold…There’s a name I’m trying to think of for that type of uniform society 
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I doubt @GucciLittlePig is complaining about individual people choosing to buy super-luxury things. He’s talking about societies that encourage that sort of behavior.
To be fair, though, the cost of wedding dresses can shoot up to that order of magnitude.
In before anyone else says it: that’s not communism (which is about giving people equal means). You’re probably going for authoritarianism/dictatorships or fascism, which are different ideas.
Getting back on topic (y’know, for this thread about Five Points lol)… I agree with @John’s main idea: if you assume there will be more, denser developments coming up in the near future (followed by increased land values), maybe it’ll be tempting for car dealerships to sell off parts of their land (or air rights?) and densify the rest.
Sure, dealerships could always just pack up shop, sell off their current land, and build yet another sprawly lot farther away from downtown; that is the easier option, after all. But what’s the fun in that? Wouldn’t those dealerships be missing out on a potential opportunity (if the numbers make sense)?
Obviously, all of that depends on the East End Market’s master plan and how walkable those places will be. I guess we’ll find out in that neighborhood meeting that’s happening tomorrow…?
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In addition to the recent updates in the area, I received the neighborhood letter for the zoning meeting, also on the 6th, that will deal with the large area behind the Wegmans and abutting 440 and train tracks. To remind everyone, it’s 35 acres of currently IX-3, asking for a rezoning of CX-20.
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Double 
