I just want to see continuous density and street engagement from downtown out to Meredith on Hillsborough.
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Wouldnât an entrance on the roundabout be largely ceremonial?
I can see retail being around the entire parcel, but any actual entrance to upper level housing likely wouldnât work on the roundabout.
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Iâm not sure if the same group still owns that site, but the group that owned it ~2 years ago had pivoted to a hotel project with a rooftop bar. Heard them speak at an event in the area. Havenât heard any update on that though.
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Looks like NC State will be tearing down Lee, Sullivan and Bragaw dorms as well as fountain dining hall to make room for new dorms totaling 3,000 beds and a 1,500 seat dining hall. Projects starts in 2028 and estimated to cost over $800 million.
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I lived in Sullivan for a year and Bragaw for two. This was over 20 years ago, and those buildings were decrepit even back then and I canât imagine itâs improved.
3000 is a lot of beds (up from about 2200 today)⌠but $800 million is a LOT of money. Yikes. I get that thereâs a lot of infrastructure work and and theyâre including a dining hall. But talk about sticker shock.
Meanwhile, Hub On Campus is building housing for about 2200 students for $136 million.
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I also did my turn in those central/west dorms. They⌠have not aged well to say the least but Iâm pumped for the revamp. This area along with west campus/ES King village need some love. Bragaw takes up alot of foot print with its X pattern. At least thats what it seems like to me through my untrained, Google Maps eye.
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This has been in the master plan for years and kept getting pushed back. Glad to see some moves finally being made on this.
Considering theyâve been dragging absolute ass on the Doak Field renovations, I hope the baseball park gets some consideration for expansion/renovation during this process.
Side note - is there anywhere you can subscribe to things on the NCSU Facilities website to get alerts on items like this? Would like to get plugged into continued campus updates.
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You canât subscribe, but if you check this link once a month they update future projects they have planned over $1 million.
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Mm, delicious. Another PDF to check religiously. 
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Itâs a gift and novelty shop; the Maryland franchisee has an IG thatâs pretty indicative of whatâs sold there. The food offerings were mostly snacks, donât remember any fresh foods â unlike Toyo Shokuhin, which is a legit (tiny) grocery.
Even the recently adopted campus master plan only said âover 2,000â beds, so thatâs a significant increase in scope. The project budget also includes a ânew regional utility plantâ and, per the map, perhaps a new student health center building. Doesnât seem to include Witherspoon expansion, which is also contemplated in the campus plan.
This increase in beds is happening at the same time that enrollment is plateauing will lead to some churn at the outer edges of the student housing submarket. OTB student rentals always seemed questionable to me, for instance.
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The master plan shows the softball field being moved to be between Doak and where Lee currently stands, which seems like it limits potential expansion in the outfield. Doesnât stop them from overhauling the infield stands though, which is much needed.
Iâm working on one of these! Itâs about 6 months behind schedule haha.
Doesnât even take that much creativity to imagine a softball facility with a shared concourse to connect to an outfield bleacher section for baseball. Heck, even would help save money on building costs for bathrooms and concessions by combining the facilities.
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I guess someone is taking MLBâs directive that batters should face eastish somewhat seriously by mirroring the existing Dail Park arrangement. Though it seems that if the new softball field had home plate at the southwest corner of the current Lee Field, the orientation would be pretty much the âidealâ ENE, and the 3rd baseline stands could double as Dail CF/LF facilities.
Seems like the fields are more constrained in the E-W direction than the N-S direction.
I see the words you wrote, quoted above, and I do think I have a reasonably good grasp of what the word âplateauingâ would mean in this context. However, at the same time, when I click through to the link that does not appear to be what the numbers show for NCSU at all? Looks to me like a steady climb, 1.5%-2% annually on average and particularly a larger jump of 3.5% from Fall 2023 to Fall 2024.
Am I misunderstanding what the word âplateauingâ means?
If anything it looks like enrollment growth is accelerating?
I was about to add something about the most recent two years⌠Maybe it was a pandemic-era trend that 2023-2024 broke, but from 2019 to 2022 enrollment was flat at +/- 36,500. NCSU is insulated, but not exempt, from broader demographic trends that forecast declining enrollment.
Looking more closely at it, yes, undergraduates have increased pretty steadily (600ish per year) over that time period, with a big bump 2023-24.
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I see the broader demographic trends of declining enrollment. I expect that relatively affordable state run land grant institutions like NCSU, focused on practical disciplines like engineering, science, and agriculture, are probably the most likely to buck those trends.
And again, looking at the charts you linked. 10 years, meaning 9 year-over-year deltas. By both metrics (enrollment and FTE), only two of the 9 showed a decline.
I am just not seeing a pattern of stagnation for NC State and I think given the other well-known broad demographic trend of lots of people moving to North Carolina, the university is wise to continue planning for increased enrollment. (Even so, $800+ million is a hell of a lot of money to spend on one campus neighborhood!! Yikes!)
That said I donât think I would shed a tear if some of the more remote student apartment complexes were to âchurnâ as you say. I wouldnât mind if the complexes down on Tryon Road cycled over into the general market, nor would I mind if they stopped building so many cheapest-of-the-cheap student complexes out Hillsborough Street west of Jones Franklin, and instead built some general-market products instead.
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Also a plateauing enrollment doesnât mean a lack of interest. NCSU can only enroll as many students as it has the resources to support.
Cates West (among other new builds on campus) indicates to me that NCSU wants to increase available resources to support a growing student body.
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