Gonna be really funny when Raleigh turns Fayetteville st into a mall again in 20 years. I honestly couldn’t tell you why it failed as a mall and then succeeded more as a pedestrian environment after reopening to traffic. But that’s life.
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The opening ceremony and street festival was in July 2006. 30 years it was a pedestrian mall. See you at the party in 2036? 
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I am a firm believer that the mall would have worked if the city just gave it a few more years and let the energy associated with downtown catch up to it. IMO, It could have been renovated in such a way to open a view corridor from the capitol to the performing arts center, allowing for occasional use as a parade route, and still be primarily a pedestrian zone. It also could have stopped at Davie, allowing for cars between there and Lenoir to service the hotels.
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Boxcar is a blast to go to…But there’s not enough hand sanitizer in the world that would get me in that place touching all those buttons right now.
After I’ve been vaccinated, yup, all over it
Not a chance in hell before then, But I’ll go to lots of other places while I’m not vaccinated
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You are correct sir, it sucked!
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I feel very fortunate to have been fully vaccinated for a few weeks now. But inertia is still making me skeptical of some things… Like Boxcar. Working on it. I tried to be responsible for the past year but I also wasn’t hiding in my bunker either. Boxcar is still just… a lot of dirty young people touching everything in a confined space.
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Agreed. Boxcar would fit really well in the old downtown Kimbrell’s Furniture spot.
Boxcar did well on size at their downtown Durham location.
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…and each other most likely.
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LOVE this idea, would do insanely well there, and would be able to fill two split stories - and as a bonus, it would probably help to reinvigorate Fayetteville St as a fun nightlife zone.
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Meant to post about this here! I stopped in on their opening day. What a beautiful space; much larger than their former space (which was essentially across the street, in the front half of an architecture firm), and the new space was formerly an art gallery so there’s tons of lighting which makes it very bright and inviting inside, and allows all the colors of the books to really pop. They did an excellent job on display too. As a bonus, they are reusing the beautiful handbuilt check-out counter from the Nice Price Jr (RIP) 2nd location that was in Oakwood for a little while, and rumor has it Nice Price may set up a small pop-up record stand in So & So at some point soon, too!
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I haven’t seen it mentioned here yet, but the former Oakwood Cafe is undergoing transformation to BBQ. IT’s opened weekends until they get the renovations done, but looks like it’s going to be a great addition to the neighborhood.
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This isn’t the most exciting news, but it’s better than the poop slinging going on in other threads.
Burial’s Expansion opens tomorrow Saturday 3/13, I’ll probably take an afternoon walk and check it out, since I’m finally in town for the weekend. From WRAL “The new space will feature new murals, more seating, new two tops, twice the number of existing taps and a bevy of updates”
Boulted Bread and BenchWarmers bagels both won recognition from Food & Wines “best bagels in america”
Also looks like Gov’t Cheeseburger now Fine Folk has landed in Union Special in the Gateway area, their cheeseburgers are pretty good too.
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Idk, that’s pretty exciting to me!!! Puts us in the spotlight, always great.
I’m still mad at them for closing Postmasters, but I wish them well! 
I’m excited about Burial! I’m planning to stop by to check out the expansion tomorrow afternoon, too.
(Also, poop slinging? Uh oh… I haven’t seen much of that. I guess I’ve muted the right people/threads…) 
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Sorry just reminiscing of old times with the original DTraleigh.com comment section, where it was mainly content and substance based. People’s back and forth assertions they know more about a certain topic than everyone else sometimes gets old.
This is by far the most visited website for me, it just takes some selective filtering.
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Fayetteville Street Mall had several problems. First, even today it has a few spots with nightlife but it’s a little desolate after dark. Towards the end of its life especially, there was not nearly enough activity to be a successful ped mall, pretty much even during the day when all the offices above were full of workers.
Second, back before it was torn out, its design was poor. Too many big planters (trying to occupy a lot of its 100’ width to make it feel not so empty). In addition, the planters were filled with oak trees that had become rather overgrown in the ~30 years since they were planted. They were basically allowed to grow as big as they wanted and not adequately pruned, so they wound up making a canopy that stretched almost wall-to-wall, blocking adequate street lighting, visibility of store marquees, and such. It made it feel dark and scary, even during daytime and especially at night.
Lastly, it was broken up: the old convention center was plopped across the Fayetteville Street axis where the Marriott is today.
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Fayetteville Street is just a disaster and the city has no direction with what to do with it. We can 100% give up on the street for the next decade or two.
I blame the city’s district system especially since it marginalizes downtown Raleigh by placing different parts of downtown into different districts where the needs of much larger suburb portions of a district have greater district importances over the chuck of downtown they ‘represent’.
Downtown will continue to suffer the consequences until it separates itself from District C and D and forms its own representation.
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New bar opening tonight on Glenwood. I think this is the former Xoco spot.
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OK now I’ve got to add this to my list to check out tomorrow, along with Burial’s expansion, Killjoy (which I haven’t been to yet), and the reopened Aunt Betty’s Gin Bar. Someone send out a search party if no one hears from me tomorrow night…
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Let the Gucci Pig bar crawl commence
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