The state parking lot where I usually park on weekends is about a mile from the Martin Marietta Center. Not a bad walk when the weather is nice, but without a detour it does take one past the GoRaleigh station and there’s a separate thread about that on the forum. Some folks just aren’t willing to do that at midnight.
If Mitchell is advocating pro-suburbia, stop the presses! It will be the first time in his life he’s done so. Nobody gives Whitney Hill any chance of being elected, so Mitchell can do whatever he wants. Conventional wisdom is that he settled in District A simply because it was an expedient way to get elected and to keep a suburban zealot from A off the Council. The district most likely to elect a suburban zealot is A, and it has done so in the past.
According to the NC OSHR, the average pay of a state employee is $62,997. Not easy to live at that level inside 440.
I don’t really disagree with any of this. This is what I want this side of downtown to be too.
I just think we’re not there yet. The Wilmington corridor is still at 75% of pre-pandemic numbers. It’s still car-dependent in a way that Glenwood isn’t. There just aren’t enough residents and hotel guests over here yet to absorb a change like this the way the other side could.
So the free parking program is kind of a moat right now while we get there. Not forever, just until the fundamentals catch up.
And I’d separate the employee piece from the customer piece. The people using those free passes overnight aren’t the flakey crowd you’re describing. They’re the dishwashers and servers that make downtown worth coming to in the first place. In some cases they’re people being responsible and not driving home drunk. That feels like a different conversation.
Once this corridor is where Glenwood is? Fully on board. Charge for parking, invest in the public realm, let the experience carry it. I just think we have to get there first.
It does seem that the low 2019 labeled bars actually reflect 2020 events.
All districts are down from Q2 onward (Spring 2020 COVID outbreak) in what is labeled 2019.
Also note that the Moore Square district in the 2019 portion of the bar graph is particularly compressed which would reflect the boarded-up storefront months after the May 2020 vandalism incident.
I have heard that same statement since 2006 when I moved into the Paramount. I got tired of the promises of it will be better and left 2015. Best thing I ever did. Fayetteville Street has been down ever since March 2020 and this will not help.
Look, I get the skepticism, but the data tells the story. If you compare Raleigh today to where we were in 2015, the growth is actually impressive. We’ve doubled the downtown population from 8,000 to ~16,000 residents and that’s backed up by thousands of new for rent/sale product, along with new hotels, retail, and office.
As for Fayetteville Street. Yeah, it’s struggled post-COVID, but that’s because it was designed almost entirely for office workers. It’s in a pivot phase right now. Shifting that area into a true mixed-use district takes #1 capital and #2 time. The new Omni Hotel, Red Hat Theater, the Convention Center expansion are real time current proof that the investment is happening.
Raleigh’s story isn’t something that happened overnight, it’s success isn’t a single event or location, it’s the result of thousands of small wins stacking up over a long time span.
If you’re looking for a city with an established transit system and most everything already figured out, there are larger cities that can offer that immediately, but remember those places were once exactly where Raleigh is now. You just have to decide if you want to be a character in our story while it’s being written, or just show up to another city for their epilogue.
what do you think of the downtown Raleigh parking rates being changed upward and reducing the free parking to just 1 hour at certain decks? This may cut my visit short downtown and I wont have time to eat for sure just walk around a bit. I think the 2 hours should continue otherwise people will not come downtown for lunch meetings or meetups.
i know the decks require maintenance…and that costs, but what is the cost of dining downtown? is mecca the cheapest place to eat? are the increased parking charges of real consequence based on the price most DTR dining establishments?
better advertised and functioning park and rides for major events…even private participation? collecting (even paid) parking at triangle town or other large asphalt acerage?
While free parking is going away and parking costs are planned to increase in downtown Raleigh. Downtown Cary just opened up a brand new free parking deck.
Exactly. It’s their choice to offer free parking as a means to support economic development. To me, I don’t see that as a sustainable path. 300 spaces will fill up and then what? Build more parking decks? No thank you.
Raleigh is in a position to offer alternatives and is set up to handle tens of thousands of people coming into/out of downtown. For me, I don’t want us to have free parking. It’ll be interesting to see if paid parking lots start to pop-up in and near downtown Cary.
The formerly free lot outside Pro’s and the vacuum store near Bond Bros is now over 9 bucks an hour, with strict enforcement. Just started a couple weeks ago without warning. Interesting timing.
What’s really funny to me is that there is a giant parking lot for A Perfect Piece (not a gun store, ironically) that is often empty. But they won’t let anyone park there. I feel like the city could’ve leased space there for a lot less than building a deck that doesn’t generate revenue. But the deck at least has ground floor retail.
oh that is interesting timing. So my prediction is that Cary will have a scenario where, on the busier times, the 300 free spaces will get swarmed. Everyone will try to go there first, realize it’s full, and then complain that they can’t find parking, there will now, “not be ENOUGH free parking”. Seeing that market overflow, more lots are incentived to flip to charging at rates like that.
