Yeah, I agree with that. A renovation that would have allowed it also to be a parade route when necessary would have been amazing.
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That’s giving off old skool “Live After Five” vibes. IYKYK.
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It needed a lot more than renovations. It needed blocks worth of commercial activity. It needed restaurants, bars, and shops.
The place was dead most of the time. It was just a public space surrounded by some office buildings, the courthouse, and the old civic center.
Sprucing it up without a massive infusion of street (plaza) level activity, would have been a waste of money.
And due to the type of buildings in place, it never really had the chance to become something like the Downtown Charlottesville Mall or the Burlington VT Church Street Marketplace.
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a near Christmas event was also nice there…Raleigh bell ringers, hot tea and Santa on the Mall. the 5pm (dark at that point) flow out from state, county and city govt offices didnt have to go far.
I think with the proper renovations, you could of had that. It was much more active the first few years and then it just slowly died. Now, maybe because everyone wants to park right in front of where they are going, it was inevitable that it had to be made a street again, but you might as well have has installed diagonal parking.
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I hear Charlottesville thrown around a lot as a pedestrian mall comparison and their office market is just completely different both from a pure RSF and mixture of existing uses. Some good (Fayetteville has eons more office space which is the boring stable boyfriend of tax base) some bad but it’s kind of apples and oranges
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Raleigh tore out its pedestrian mall just as interest in being in more urban areas started to emerge. IMO, Fayetteville St. didn’t fail because of the pedestrian mall; it failed because of the timing within which the mall existed.
For all of the money that the city spent and continues to spend on the street, one could argue that the investment hasn’t yet resulted in a commensurate amount of daily sidewalk activation, though it has enabled street festivals like the one we had this past weekend, and parades like we had in June for the Canes. Even so, these events could have also been accommodated with a renovation of the mall instead of returning it to a double dead end street.
One could also argue that this latest plan attempts to move us toward an improved sidewalk experience that tries to better mimic the positives of a well designed pedestrian mall. However, without effort by the city to find ways to draw more people to be there daily and even live there, it will continue to be primarily an events driven resource for the city.
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I will also say that as someone who spent a lot of time in Charlottesville between 2014-2021, the pedestrian mall there was dead a lot of the time. In recent years, it’s really exploded though. Was up there last month and wished Raleigh had a walking mall like that. However, I still think the current iteration of Fayetteville St could serve that purpose if there’s a better street level experience in terms of restaurant/retail vendors.
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All these studies and proposals. Not sure why the city won’t consider doing a temporary pedestrian mall at either Fayetteville St. and /or Glenwood South?
Put up temporary barriers, and close the street to traffic. They could do it for weekends only to start. 6:00 pm on Friday, through Sunday night. Encourage bars / restaurants to provide outdoor seating areas. Encourage food trucks to park there, etc.
The whole thing could be a 6-9 month trial. Next year. Start in March and run it through October. If it does not work, or needs to be tweaked, you can get rid of it, or make incremental changes within the trail period to improve it. Discard what does not work, and reiterate the concept until you find something that works best.
Stop all these expensive studies and design. Go out and try it on a temporary basis and learn what works and what does not work. Make it happen. The money saved on all these studies, would probably pay for the temporary program.
Then once you have figured out what works, the city can make plans to make it more permanent with a streetscaping project, etc.
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Thats a great idea. I bet the city could do some studies to see how viable your plan is.
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All I was trying to say was that you need a lot of street level activity (fun bars, a nice array of restaurants, and quirky fun stores) to make a pedestrian mall work. And office buildings, courthouses, hotels for the indigent, etc, really detract from such a space.
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Bloodworth renovation. Photog studio…..?
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Isn’t that the building with that expensive, modern, two story apartment in it?
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@StreetviewRDU not sure why this exasperates you that I don’t know every building in the city and had the audacity to try to learn.
Thanks for the info, guys. I wanted to go see this in person. Unusual looking building for Raleigh…
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I gave you the face palm because you’re on here more than anyone and it’s been posted about many times. It’s just an emoji reaction, don’t get bent out of shape.
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