Charlotte has the Museum Tower, built on top of the Mint Museum. That’s a nice 43-story beast. If a developer could work with the state to put a nice 18 story residential as a part of this project… Kane?
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While the Art Museum will never come back downtown, couldn’t there be an annex/rotating/special gallery downtown? That would make a nice addition. By the way, I got to go to the new gallery and it really was nice. What a contrast to the original building, huge improvement!
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We’ve got CAM though!
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The Museum of Natural Science already had a Reptile & Amphibian Day every year. It’s great! Look’s like this year’s event is on March 16: https://naturalsciences.org/calendar/reptile-and-amphibian-day/
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I agree with the sentiment about bringing the art museum downtown.
Only reason to keep it where it is is the nice natural area and trails around it, which is admittedly a good reason, and probably the reason this will never happen.
We have a natural science museum but what about physical science? That would have to compete with the one in Durham though.
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Could you imagine the NCMOA as part of DIX?
I imagine a “close” to complete glass structure allowing some art to be viewed from the outside in…and talk about walking paths and trails…sigh…
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That does sound appealing. Unfortunately, museums usually are not well-suited to glass facades. Thomas Phifer went to great lengths at NCMA to create a sophisticated ceiling system that filters light in a controlled way… If you’ve ever noticed the coffered ceiling, it’s made up of elliptical oculi that filter out damaging rays to bathe the galleries in soft, diffused Northern light. The filters are actually controlled to respond to the art (i.e. marble sculptures can tolerate more light than paintings. Works on paper or wood need more protection).
On that note, I’m not sure Raleigh residents give our art museum quite enough credit! It really is an architectural marvel of minimalism. Architectural Record even named it in its list of 125 most important works of architecture built since the magazine’s founding in 1891. Yes, it would be great to have another downtown attraction, but I’m happy and proud of what we ended up with.
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Agree with you I do…
Sad though, as you could add at least hundreds of thousands for extra people in DTR 
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I do love the current NCAM, the park that’s developed and the new gallery. Its a truly special combination and great addition of the city.
My concern with a History Museum expansion is the bridge over Wilmington. One of my favorite driving vistas is coming up Wilmington as you rise up to Union Sq and can see the Peace Coll building at the end of the street. Raleigh, indeed most American cities, lack these sorts of punctuation points that give context and scale to a good city, and this a fine one. The expansion needs to happen, a connection will be necessary, but a poorly done bridge could wreck this long view. Properly done it could actually provide a beautiful frame.
A second point is the use of this space - facing the capitol on one corner and the executive mansion on the other, the legislative bldg on the 3rd. It connects these three and could be a very important public space - enclosed or not. It would be nice to have a space that visually was open to at less the Capitol and Ex Man, both fine buildings, but blocking the traffic as it races along Edenton. I can sacrifice the view of the Legislative Bldg!
One last thing, this might provide the opportunity to move the Confederate monuments off Union Sq. Provide them with a respectful retirement, with the needed historical context and open up the square for whatever we can build a consensus around. Hahah, so open ground for my life time. Thank you for your indulgence in this long post.
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Interesting they can build this amazing all new Downtown Stadium for $150 million.
Yet a mere expansion of the existing History Museum is going to run $200 million.
Which one would have the biggest impact?
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I’m pretty sure the soccer stadium’s cost was underestimated somewhat, to try to sell the concept. I am skeptical it could have included removing all the existing buildings and infrastructure to make room, as well as building replacements elsewhere to cover the lost office space. The history museum expansion has to use real numbers based on the costs of its current facility. It also doesn’t generate any revenue, while a soccer stadium would.
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Well, we should be clear that they’re renovating the current building and expanding into a new space. However, I agree that it’s certainly a lot of money.
Regarding your question, I assume by impact you mean total new visitors? That’s a reasonable question. When the Nature Research Center opened the science museum’s attendance jumped about 70%. If that held true for the MoH, it would be about 400k new visitors. That’s about the same as MLS attendance for a slightly above average franchise. Assuming only soccer and assuming Carolina FC is just above average. My assumption is that the first few years would see very strong attendance and then start to decline unless the team really comes out and starts to win a lot. With the museum’s attendance we would see a big initial jump and then steady increases YOY.
But, I think we can probably assume that the MLS stadium would attract more visitors if it were used for other events, but the museum adds to the cultural richness of the city. Cultural richness is impossible to measure so it depends on how much you value it.
Personally, I’d love for Raleigh to get an MLS team and I’d obviously love for this expansion to go through.
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An interesting tidbit buried in the new Invest NC Bond proposed by Gov. Cooper. Most of it is for education, but there’s $100M earmarked for the NC Zoo and NC Museum of History. I’m not sure if that means it’s a 50/50 split or what exactly. https://files.nc.gov/governor/documents/files/Invest_NC_Fact_Sheet.pdf
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The Zoo is targeting a pretty large expansion; adding Asia and Australia regions so the financing needs there are pretty large.
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True, but the Connect NC Bond that passed a few years ago had like $25M for that expansion as well. It’s possible that this could be another incremental round of funding with more planned in the future. Even a 50/50 split of the $100M would be relatively small for both projects ($200M for the MoH and probably more than that for the Zoo).
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Not history museum expansion but a pretty neat expansion for the NC Science Museum
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That’s actually pretty freaking cool. This T-Rex skeleton will be the first complete T-Rex in the world. Excited to check this out in a few years.
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NC Museum of History has a survey open through tomorrow which is intended to inform the creation of their “new expansion and strategic plan.”
As we move forward with planning for our major expansion project and creating a new strategic plan for our museum, we would like to ask for your help.
The link is here: https://www.ncmuseumofhistory.org/public-survey
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They should start by changing the little blurb about how slaves “helped” Plantation owners farm their land…
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I’ve been waiting for this expansion for ages. lol Hopefully this happens in the next 10 years.
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