How wonderful! IMO, these seemingly small things matter to a university and a city.
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Centennial Campus rezoning approved
On Tuesday, the council approved a request from N.C. State to rezone the campus as the university looks to position the property for its “live, learn, work, play” vision. The site covered in the rezoning totals 975 acres of the 1,000-plus acre campus and includes nearly all the land in the campus except for the property east of Centennial Parkway, also known as the Spring Hill District.
Development up to 28 stories will be allowed in this plot
The rest is zoned 3-7 (the golf course land is zoned 3, I wonder if they’re willing to eliminate it) with a plot zoned 12. This could be a really cool “other side” of Dix park. Now if only we could get the prison and hospital land, and it’d feel like an extension of downtown.
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What I’m honestly most excited about is the
7 story zoning at the corner of Avent Ferry and Varsity. The original 1989-era master plan for Centennial, which has evolved only incrementally since its original draft, called for the campus to be set apart from the city by a buffer of trees and (in some places) parking lots.
This sort of makes sense along Centenial Parkway, because it parallels a stream for much of its length. At any rate, this would be difficult and expensive to change now, because of the utility easement and high voltage power lines running through there today, including the parts that would not be constrained by riparian buffers.
But this never made sense where Centennial Campus touches Avent Ferry Road. This is where Centennial has an opportunity to present an urban face towards the city, and I hope this is the very next place that the university looks to for development. University-developed housing or offices here could be a cornerstone of the Avent Ferry corridor, which itself is long overdue for an urban remake.
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I read through the application and it turns out there’s something dumb that could keep that from happening.
There is a 50 foot wide tree conservation buffer along Avent Ferry.
This is not the place for tree conservation. Literally anywhere else within Centennial would be a better spot for it.
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I don’t think they’re going to get rid of their golf course, that wouldn’t be a smart thing to do.
They just built that course in the past decade, and it is actually one of the top courses in the area. There is no chance that they would remove the course.
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Interesting. CAMPO 2045 plan has an interchange right through it lol
I can see that happening, and I think that would be really cool to see! When I took classes at State a few years ago, I often felt like most of the campus was pretty well interconnected and alive except for the vet school campus (duh) and Centennial. Making the Avent Ferry corridor more active and walkable would go a long way to make Centennial better connected, and feel less like a pretentious, socially isolated island walled off from the rest of State’s campus by the Greek Village.
Then again, the current master plan intends each part of campus to be its own self-contained neighborhood; this means the separation of the Centennial and southern precincts by Avent Ferry is by design. State will have to backtrack and redo some of their old plans if they’re going to rethink and change this (which I hope they do!).
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I believe the golf course was designed to accommodate eventual addition of this interchange without major impacts.
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Looking further, I’d assume this is right. Just lazy GIS lineage work in the plan itself. In real life it could scoot in between here and have little ped culvert / overpass for the golf path.
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This is the master plan
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I don’t love the weaving this may cause with two interchanges on either side, and they probably had to pull some strings to get FHWA approval but I do like the Gateway feeling it gives as an entrance to the campus.
I do wonder how utilized it will actually be. Doesn’t seem like following that path offers much time savings to anyone really.
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I doubt it’ll be useful, too. Besides, there’s that idea of rerouting Centennial Pkwy. so it (not Lake Wheeler Rd.) runs up to the existing interchange with 40. Wouldn’t that make more sense as a gateway to Centennial, since it’s a wider road that also goes to the future Spring Hill developments and Dix Park?
(Also, I remember that popping up in random studies related to Lake Wheeler and the farmer’s market, but I can’t remember where it’s shown up in official city plans. Anyone know where I could find it or otherwise see how legit of an idea that is?)
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I’m not sure I’ve seen that, but do you mean kind of like this?
With DTS spanning both sides of the interstate and both sides of S Saunders I’m kind of intrigued by my fantasy possibility of extending Centennial sort of like this. I’m sure Kane wants ease of access to all three districts when (if) they get built out. I’m having trouble deciding how I’d tie into S Saunders though.
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As I mentioned in this other thread, I hope that NCSU realizes that those pink buildings between The Oval and Centennial Parkway will be just about the only truly urban, lake view buildings in Raleigh – owing to the boat ramp and a hillside. I wish StateView hotel were there, with a big roof deck restaurant / ballroom, but some other semi-public use would be just as well.
At some point recently, I’d heard that Centennial Campus had the region’s highest office rental rates (on par with the priciest high-rise submarkets in Charlotte), despite having only average-quality buildings. Hopefully, having this quantity of FAR on the table will (a) put it on the radar of bigger firms, like the national developers in RTP, and (b) get enough people there that it starts to feel like a place, rather than a suburban office park with a weird affinity for brick.
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If you scroll down to page 120 (as listed on the pages, not the pdf numbers) there are plans for a future tunnel under Western to better accommodate pedestrian and bike traffic between original and Centennial campus. The idea is to keep the feel different between the campuses, but still allow for interconnectivity.
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That’s the one that came out of Western Blvd. pedestrian crossing, right? Yeah I’m familiar with that (and feel like that could help with that culture/connection problem), but it also seems like that project hasn’t had a lot of traction lately.
That study came out to justify that tunnel eight years ago, but it’s still not on the university’s active to-do list of capital projects. 
Maybe it’ll move forward a bit if it gets packaged with TODs for the Western Blvd. BRT?
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The university is about to start working to update their master plan, so I think it will be most interesting to see how much emphasis is placed on connecting the two campuses in the new plan. A lot has changed on Centennial in the past few years and while it might slow down for a bit, I don’t see it stopping. Plus, now that all of the engineering will be relocated to Centennial there is more incentive for the university to improve connectivity to original campus for student experience.
I don’t think it will be happening immediately, but I can certainly see it happening eventually. I would imagine coordination with the city might be the toughest part.
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My only recollection of the early plans for Centennial (released when I was a kid) was that it was to include a monorail back to the main campus.
Well, it’s 2021 now, where’s the dang monorail?!
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@paytonc When I toured NCSU my senior year of high school (1997-1998) they mentioned a monorail to connect Main Campus to Centennial Campus. I’m not sure if it will ever happen.
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