Sounds like they have someone for 3,100 square feet of the space on the ground floor and have another 4,900 square feet of the first floor available + the rooftop. I think its just weird wording from TBJ. There’s no basement its all gravel under there.
Well this is unexpected good news! That site just bothers me every time I go by. I don’t really care what they put there, as long as it’s not the eyesore that it’s been for the last decade
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I think the new render looks great. This is a college campus not a downtown office or residential building. It would look strange and out of place if it was 7 stories. Hopefully that open air bar is cool for State students. Their campus bar and food scene is one of the worst I’ve ever encountered.
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I guess it wouldn’t look completely out of place since there’s some of these new giant blocks of apartments. I wouldn’t care if it was a little taller, but agreed that it’s fine for a college strip.
About the food and drinks, that’s a huge peeve of mine. While Hillsborough St there is a thousand times better than the area around my college, I feel like it could be so much more. It just seems like it can’t keep good restaurants and bars. Frazier’s was like fine dining that I visited on my first trip to Raleigh, and I was impressed that there was good food down here. It helped verify that the “New South” was real, and I would be happy living here. And then they closed, and each successive restaurant in that space has been worse. The same with Porter’s and a few other spaces. Just because it’s across from campus doesn’t mean other Raleigh residents wouldn’t stop by. It just needs that critical mass of stuff to do/eat/drink and a change in the public consciousness. Kind of like Fayetteville St honestly.
I figured the original 7 story plan was impossible as soon as the tower crane came down, but I was kind of hoping they’d still go for 4 or 5. Oh well, this is still honestly better than tearing it down and starting over. Plenty of other opportunities for density on Hillsborough Street.
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I ate a lot of dinners at Two Guys. 
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Yea I agree. I’ve been here 10 years now and I still can’t really figure out why Hillsborough is not more of a college scene than it is, because it is laid out to be pretty cool.
I think a lot of their residential areas (to my knowledge) are on the Western Ave side of campus, so maybe that is why. It was also a disastrous decision to move basketball and football off campus. I don’t know when that happened but it was very short-sighted.
Of course, most schools don’t have a major downtown within walking distance either so I’m sure that plays a role, but I still feel like it could be it’s own distinctive destination if it got some momentum.
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Moving football was in the 60s I believe and was fine. Putting football arenas in a walkable location is a dubious prospect at best. There are like 7 home games per year.
Basketball was more of an issue, with maybe 15-20 home games. Maybe going off campus was inevitable but downtown would have been better.
My understanding is that Hillsborough was more of a college party atmosphere back in the 80s before the drinking age was raised to 21. Harder to make a profit when a substantial portion of your clientele isn’t allowed to buy the highest-margin items on the menu.
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Yea I mean that is what I am talking about by being short-sighted. It’s not just about the economics of game day (although I think you are probably underrating how important those days can be to a bar/restaurant) it’s about creating a cohesive collegiate atmosphere/environment. For better or worse NCSU has sort of just blended into Raleigh instead of really being a distinct area and part of that is exporting the most high profile thing any major university has - their basketball and football games + events in those locations - to other parts of the city and a hockey team.
Other schools have no issue building up a ton of bar and restaurants around their campus so not really sure the age things holds up.
I don’t know. I’m not a fan of the school and didn’t go there. I’ve just always thought the campus and surrounding area should be way better than it is. I’m sure there are multiple reasons why that is though. JMO
I think it would be very difficult for Hillsborough street to compete with downtown for nightlife. You likely aren’t going to draw non-college affiliated individuals to Hillsborough street but it’s easy to pull students to downtown. Plus, then you don’t have to worry about the major ebbs when students are off campus. There are also so many students that live off campus that’s it’s not like it’s that much more convenient for a large percentage of the student population. The vast majority of students who live on campus are freshmen, so I think the drinking age plays a huge factor.
The lunch/coffee scene on Hillsborough really seems to be the most successful and pulls from a fairly diverse crowd.
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Yea I think that makes sense.
Hillsborough seems to be stuck in a tough predicament where the college students only patronize certain types of establishments and are price sensitive, and the nearby non student neighbors don’t frequent the strip. Parking and access is too tough for most people more than 2 miles away to make it a destination.
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Football stadiums should not take up valuable real estate in walkable locations. They are far too large, with huge demands for parking and as @orulz said, they are used less than 10 times per year, leaving a gaping hole 350+ days a year.
Basketball arenas are questionable. They are also inactive a lot of the time, but smaller.
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I think it can be both true that it was in Raleigh’s best interest to move it but not NCST. Plenty of urban schools have on campus stadiums and do just fine. Of course trying to do it now would be different than planning around it over the last 75 years like most schools.
I think the parking thing is pretty overblown as well. Most schools just convert their existing parking to game day since it is not being utilized on Saturdays/nights. Plenty of ways to bus people in from satellite lots as well - most schools do this and it works fine.
Regardless, I am aware that a lot of this is speculative and subjective and has become more broad than the Hillsborough St discussion. I just don’t really get the planning of the campus environment and experience. It seems very dispersed and almost indistinguishable from a lifestyle of someone just living in DTR instead of a distinct collegiate experience within it. Of course, maybe that is the point!
As an outside observer I think it is pretty lame their stadiums are off campus and shared with a hockey team. Not really possible to quantify that I suppose but I think it is reasonable to question the impact of that decision outside dollars and cents.
If it was that simple every school in America would move them off campus, but almost all of them view these stadiums as sources of pride and a campus asset that contribute to attracting future students creating a vibrant on campus experience.
Just my .02.
So I didn’t go to NCSU, but I had a bunch of friends who did. They all lived off campus (the majority of students do) and I can 100% say that football games are Carter Finley were super fun BECAUSE of all of the parking right around the stadium. Tailgating was excellent. Plus- they were going to be driving in regardless of if it was on campus or off.
I used to have a similar opinion of NCSU until I started working here. While it’s certainly large and in some places spread out, they are very intentional about having little pockets of activity and community where each individual space has a unique feel to it. It’s hard to explain, but now that I’ve spent time on campus it’s easy to recognize and see the intentionality and thought that was put into it.
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I went to Georgia Tech which is essentially the opposite set up as NC State for sports. The school is in the middle of Atlanta and the Football and Basketball stadiums are both on campus. It was a great experience as a student to wake up and walk from your dorm to the football game. The campus would cancel open container laws on game days, which was a cool experience too.
The drawback was that lots of people end up parking half a mile from the stadium and walking over (beverage in hand) for the game.
When gameday was over the parking decks went back to being used by teachers & students.
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I grew up on Two Guys (and Brothers). When I went to college at state, I couldn’t get people to go there with me because they made assumptions about it being a certain type of bar, not that there is anything wrong with that.
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I think NCSU is in a unique little “no mans land” with regards to how it integrates with the rest of the city. Raleigh is too large to have its identity shaped around the university (think of Chapel Hill, for example) yet small enough that NCSU is a major driver of activity and doesn’t exactly just blend in like it would in a larger city (thinking like UPenn in Philly). I will say that both the parking situation on Hillsborough and the lack of through transit options (GoTriangle uses the high-speed Western Blvd.) is a detriment to the vibrancy of that corridor.
I can’t get a read on what the latest is with a future arena, though. I know a lot of people are frustrated with the location of PNC for reasons already mentioned but is there really an effort for a new on-campus arena? Considering PNC is both relatively new and Reynolds has been renovated to the point where it’s too small for the men’s program, it feels like there’s not an opportunity for this until the Canes start making a stink about wanting a downtown arena, but maybe I’m wrong.
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Wait, did GoTriangle shift the 100, 105, drx, and crx off of Hillsborough and onto Western?
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You’re right, I’m thinking of 300-301-305