The irony here is that CV was built and promoted on the basis of there being so much more parking then DT. You could park in front of the store you wanted rather then having to walk from wherever you found a parking spot!
As a side note, if you’ve never read Southern Ladies and Gentlemen by Florence King, check it out. It is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. Several of her chapters deal with Raleigh and the “Dear old things/blue rinse set” that dominated CV when I was growing up. I guess that is part of Old(e) Raleigh that is lost to time now.
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IMO, one of the things that makes CV a nice place is because it’s not overrun with endless acres of parking. That said, save for very specific holiday rush days, I’ve never not found parking at CV when I have gone there, Have I always found parking in the block where I was going? No. did it bother me to have to walk to the next block? No. I enjoy the walk in CV because, wait for it, it isn’t all about the parking.
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Right on. Cameron Village is stuck in an old-school mindset about embracing more parking and not enough transit. They resisted the new bike lanes (AKA parking lanes) for Cameron Street. They ticket mopeds when parked there. (according to a moped rider I know) They have very little bike parking. They have a MONEY location and are actually surrounded by denser development compared to most of Raleigh. It’s older density but its denser, relative to most Raleigh neighborhoods.
Yet, they continue to fight against the city when they try to suggest bike lanes. I wouldn’t be surprised if more bus routes nearby would be seen as a negative by them.
I just don’t have a positive opinion of Cameron Village right now and am hoping I just not seeing the whole story. By the way, its York Properties I’m talking about specifically. (they run the place IIRC)
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Do y’all remember when they tore down all the parking decks at Cameron? That eliminated about 1/3 of their parking. Plus the addition of more trees and such also took a cut. Its funny even with Penny’s, Kerr Drugs and Boylan-Pierce back in the 80s there was never anyone but employees parked up there.
So we are back to the conundrum - how much parking is too little and how much is too much?
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Yeah, you beat me to it. There used to be a second layer parking deck that they thankfully eliminated. There also used to be these white translucent tube type canopies put on the center during the 80s that are thankfully now gone as well.
When the Smok(e)y Hollow/Peace project opens, it will take pressure off of CV grocery shoppers, and I am hopeful that some of the retail activity will move eastward as well. As it stands now, CV is supporting an enormous geography of shoppers from NC State through to the east side of downtown.
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Some cities / developers are working on designing parking decks that can be readily converted to other uses (apartments, retail, office space) at a later date. Can we have our cake and eat it too? Does anyone know if there are plans for anything like this in Raleigh / the Triangle?
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I believe the Dillon deck was designed with the possibility of a conversion in mind.
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Yeah, we’ve been talking about that issue here in the community. Thanks for the link to the story!
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I have been thinking about this for a few days now and wanted to put it out there on the forum to see how others feel…
I really don’t like the “office box on a parking pedestal” design that we keep seeing proposed in DTR and North Hills. There has been a lot of discussion about building parking structures for future reuse as office/residential space. But that isn’t really my cup of tea either. So here is my idea, and yes it costs more money, I understand that…
What if developers built parking structures independent of the buildings? Adjacent to or on the next block over. That way it isn’t a part of the actual building, it checks the box for meeting the parking requirements, and in the future I would much rather see a parking deck torn down and redeveloped than a bunch of buildings on pedestals sticking around all over the city. Again, in the immediate future, we would see more parking structures, but perhaps in another 50 or 100 years, as society finally gets away from privately owned automobiles and hopefully transit options improve, these parking decks can meet the business end of a wrecking ball and become new office/residential buildings as density and land values increase in the urban core.
Just my ten cents.
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This model is already in place with OneGlenwood and will soon be replicated with TwoHillsborough. Both buildings require crossing the street to access parking. Both would have likely been “20 story” buildings had they incorporated the decks in the building like PNC.
Oh, the entire Edison block development is also this model with the parking garage serving all the development on both the north and south side of the block.
50~100 years is the lifespan of your typical (sub)urban building, though, so I don’t think it makes much sense to design a building around what happens after its useful life. Costly or not, I don’t think that’s really a smart way to use land and resources -especially since that’s too slow to get the results we need in our region.
I think repurposing parking decks and designing around them is a great idea, in that it’s cost-effective, practical, and smart in the long run. But if the whole “box on a parking pedestal” thing is that concerning, it shouldn’t be too hard to make it look better so that it’s more pleasant to the eye. Just make sure your architects aren’t lazy, and keep complaining about it to city council if you need to (like in the UNC Hospitals Eastowne extension project). That forced UNC to make a bland slab of concrete to instead build this:
If that’s still not enough, then… honestly, I think you just gotta live with it. It’s a necessary evil that could probably be corrected in the future, just like how brutalist concrete slabs from the 70s can be made to look prettier:
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It’s not all lazy architects. There’s a lot of cheap developers out there that don’t want to spend the money to make a garage look nice. If we don’t want ugly garages, it’s really in the hands of the city to force the issue if they wanted to.
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How about putting the parking on top of buildings, like this suggestion for rebuilding Notre Dame
This is from Deezen, if you’d like to check out some other crazy proposals for the cathedral.
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I think removing those decks brought back some cache though. The pendulum is swinging and appears to be hinged on parking…too much kills it and too little sounds like in our minds it killing it too. What is the sweet spot? I have gotten to know the ups and downs there pretty well…never go at lunch. Never go Sunday or Monday nights. Never go near the ABC store Friday night. Never when school is letting out. Never ever on a holiday or a day with perfect weather. I suspect Publix will divert enough Teeter shoppers to have an overall effect on CV but that is tbd. The business mix seems to be the saving grace there as all of the different things are not in peak demand at the same times of day. Almost everything is highly successful so while its a pain, maybe adding more parking isn’t imperative yet…? Maybe if we could the under employed housewives in full sized SUVs to carpool or walk it’d free up some spaces.
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@Mark I recall as well the deck removal being part of the re-invigoration of CV, and honestly I don’t ever recall those upper decks ever being more then a quarter full. It is a more inviting place with out those decks looming above you. That is the million dollar question, where is the sweet spot? Because I think it largely comes down to perception, its impossible to answer precisely. One person’s convenient spot is to far away for another.
I lived in the apartments between CV and Broughton HS when I was a student at NCSU. I walked through CV every day. I always thought I would love to have seen them rebuild the buildings against the sidewalks, with 2 or 3 floors office/residential above, and put all the parking in decks on the interior portions of the block. In retrospect, some of those blocks are pretty big. Maybe a potential redesign would be to split the two biggest blocks into smaller blocks and build the infamous “Texas Donuts”. Add density, “hide” the parking, and bring the buildings out to the sidewalks. Win, win, win.
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I don’t think most of this group wants to force anything but I do think the general feel is that we do need to provide alternatives in the more dense areas. Raleigh can’t cater very well to those that don’t want to drive and that needs to change. There’s a big difference between that and “forcing”.
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Here here! That has long been my position, going back to my support of rail transit in the 80s. I wanted the option not to drive! If we can go deeply in debt to build roads so people have the option of living and driving as far as they want, why the heck can’t we spend some of that on transit for people who can’t or don’t want to be car dependent?
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Don’t worry once property value gets so expensive that none of us can afford to work or live near downtown, the land will be too valuable for parking structures to make sense on a pro forma!
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If you wanted to get into the DT market, and you can get in, get in now. It doesn’t have to be your forever investment, and it doesn’t have to be new. The costs per square foot in the new projects is upwards of $500/ft or more, and nearly all of the existing properties are much less per square foot. Also, continue to look on the edges of DT because it will surely expand in the future.