Did you pick this up from here?
The blocks that make up Raleigh’s grid are on the big side. Adding some intra-block permeability is not a bad thing, especially when one of the adjacent streets is McDowell. I have never heard anyone complain that City Market has some internal streets that are off the grid.
The best approach would be to plan this ahead of time, and have these internal streets link together across multiple blocks and form corridors. It’s sort of a shame that the justice center block doesn’t have a street through it so that one of these corridors could link up with Gale Street, for example. But that is not a possibility here, oh well.
It looks OK so far but maybe I would rather see the garage entrances go on the internal corridor rather than on Martin Street. Martin kind of gets abused here IMO. The justice center across the street doesn’t really activate it either, but maybe they could do better?
When is this actually getting started? I at least want to see some demo!
Would not like to see streets, but walk-ways would be really nice. especially if have eating/coffee places with outdoor seating away from traffic.
I prefer the idea of making the streets as nice as possible so they are pleasant places to be, rather than focusing on making refuges away from traffic. Maybe that is naive.
MAN, I hope they still keep this pedestrian/retail plaza in the plans even though they removed the possibility for vehicle access… this just looks so great. I mean yeah I’m sure the only retail we’d end up with here is dumb expensive chain BS, but hey it’s gotta go somewhere, and this just looks so nice!!!
Just looking at those retail spaces I can guarantee one will be a starbucks 
cannot have a plaza without the Mermaid. 
I’m not saying permeability or alleys are a bad thing at all. Creating passthroughs helps pedestrian travel and adds to the granularity of development that is MUCH preferable to a super-block or typical podium building. The site organization is the strongest characteristic of this development.
However, I don’t think this should happen at the expense of activity on existing main thoroughfares, and I think that was the city’s concern too. If we could carve up large blocks AND have retail on all sides, great! But retail in an internal alley leading to back of house/service uses being pushed out to Martin is less of a win-win to me. It might need to be where it is for functional purposes though.
Like I said, I think this plan is balanced. Most of the retail still faces outward.
retail on streets is great, but can make really nice places if have outdoor seating away from streets. There are a number of eating/coffee shops in local town (where I live), there ones that do not face a busy street get a LOT more use.
For sure, those kinds of spaces are sometimes the best in a lot of cities – the ones that appear hidden behind a corner, or display just enough of a hint of activity that it piques your curiosity to venture into them.
I just don’t want us to have dead zones on the street, since it seems like most of our developments cannot sustain having retail on all sides.
My feeling is that Martin St is destined to be a dead zone with the Justice building having a giant blank wall on the sidewalk for the entire block. Two separate buildings facing Martin with Nexus office and apartments and mid-block entry to internal courtyard seems fine to me and would help break up the monotony. Site plan showed retail facing all different directions anyway.
In the old plan there wasn’t a pass through from Salisbury. Seems like they changed the orientation of the office building.
You’re right about the shifted tower; I think they’ve pushed the tower to the corner. The passthrough’s been there from the beginning though. Original design:
The aerial views are a little misleading because it’s hard to see the passthrough from Salisbury since it’s only 1 level tall.
Ok I see it! It’s easier to see in the more detailed rendering
That corner retail spot good for an Apple store. Red Hatters would love that.
Nashville getting a near downtown Apple store in the same area that was destroyed by yesterday’s tornado I believe.
Anyone notice in the redesign, the office tower is taller than the other 3 towers? Compare that to the old design where all the towers are the same height. I wonder if the office tower will break 260 feet?
Is it really taller, or is it just the perspective of that particular rendering? (Would love for this site to go taller. The taller the better for this location IMO 
)
Thinking about all the projects that are planned for DT is really mind blowing!! Imagine if most of them get started in the next year or two. Wow.
