create vibrant mixed use neighborhoods where people can live daily lives car free
greatly expand the network of “blocks”
The end result was roughly 7500+ potential units and 100 or so new blocks all within shouting distance of planned BRT or frequent transit service and a thriving medical district mini city adjacent to Wake Med
IMO one of Raleigh’s greatest drawbacks is the lack of urban type neighborhoods surrounding downtown since we grew so fast later than most cities. This goes a long way into trying to enhance that.
I know this is a passion project for you, but has any of this been sent to the city officials or anything? These are great plans that the city should really start to think about. They can’t expect to just be able to sit back and let the market figure it out itself.
Other than sharing on LinkedIn where I do have a lot of city connections, I haven’t officially pitched anything toward them. My job does do a lot of this type of work, but I’m still sort of learning the ropes and trying to decide what would be the most effective way to pitch stuff to them.
I will say, we talk often about the obscene waste of land that is the prison on Western, but here you are also addressing the NCCIW, which is going to be the harder sell but is at least equally important.
It is really something of an equity issue, because it is in that quadrant of the city where less desirable land uses were parked to keep them out of the way of the white neighborhoods. It is a massive chunk of property with access onto two major thoroughfares; it backs up on nowadays-desirable greenway and wetland property, has quick access to the beltway, and nearly surrounds the MLK memorial park (which is honestly, given its location, something of an afterthought and nearly inaccessible without a car, but which the city really took the time to make into a nice park that deserves to have a spotlight shone on it that frankly will never shine with the NCCIW surrounding it).
Care should of course be taken to manage and enhance the wetlands in the area and provide substantial public access green space both around the MLK park and also fronting and connecting to the Walnut Creek Wetland Center and trails (with two huge speed bumps on State Street across from the WCWC). And this would be a fantastic area to enforce a genuine mix of housing values (not 80% of the median, like, real affordability). Moving the prison and developing this area wisely would significantly alleviate price pressures in the historically black neighborhoods, and should absolutely include a meaningful retail component for these underserved areas.
I definitely encourage you to keep going with these ideas. Corey Branch is your city councilor for the area so maybe he’s the person to start with. I know the state will howl about what to do with the prison, but… there’s a lot of empty land and buildings down at the old Cherry Farm in Goldsboro that would be a good site for it (there’s already another prison on the grounds). The state owns plenty of property outside of Wake County and could manage to move both prisons by the end of the decade without any serious budgetary pain, they just, you know. The state legislators for the most part hate Raleigh, and hating Raleigh (because “Raleigh” means the state government, so disconnected from you, my valuable constituents whom I chose by drawing a district I wouldn’t have to compete in and who I have no particular interest in as long as you continue to vote for me to represent my, I mean your, interests to) means preventing Raleigh from developing as a city in its own right and according to its own needs and plans because that gets votes.
But nice work, and thanks for giving me an excuse to babble on about my part of town because I really do love it here, brownfields and prisons and scrap metal refineries and all.
im still wondering if all the densification downotwn will result in brt level spenidng of medical professionals flocking to the wake med area from downtown or doing bus connections. i can perhaps understand lower income from the core using a brt for perhaps quicker bus service to the hospital and some county services and the wake tech thing their now. but maybe just more frequent bus service, better-covered bus stops along the wake med route and a few bicycle cubbies for the few bus riders in the large SFH home neighborhodds that border new bern? in teh early 200s i worked at a medical place out on gresham lake road. we had an employee in one of the early downtown buildings commuting to gresham lake every day…and barhopping in cary.
More 3 floor townhomes coming to Gregg st. This seems to be the new model for maximum return, purchase 1 single family home with a decent sized lot, demolish it and build as many townhomes as possible.
Overall I’d say it’s a win. Increase in density vs SFH, big developer profit so they’re likely to build more, decent looking, get more residents into the city which will hopefully lead to more neighborhood mixed use possibilities.
Interested to see how the text changes will impact these. Maybe we’ll start to see smaller units / small condo and apartment buildings on these type of lots.
Agreed. Raleigh’s grid system is tight though so I’m not sure it’s possible. Most larger cities at least have some of their block structure setup with alleys but I don’t think we have any at all.
The one that I shared does go through an entire block, and the ones in Boylan Heights are full block and pretty common there. I think that there’s also alleys in Cameron Park, or whatever the new name is.
