See, those Kimley-Horne concepts, especially concept 1, are better. Concept 1 does about as well as is possible, given the constraint of the creek.
When it comes to the experience of using transit, things like this matter. A lot. When there’s only about 6,000 gotriangle riders per day it’s easy to see why this gets dismissed so easily, but if they want more people to ride, they really have to treat riders’ experience as a first-order consideration.
And FWIW, the long walk at the Durham and Raleigh station is in no small part the source of my exasperation.
There’s a concept known as the “Kitchen Work Triangle”. The perimeter of the triangle whose vetices are the Sink, the Stove, and the Refrigerator, should not be more than 26 feet, or else a kitchen will feel frustratingly spread out and hard to work in.
We should ask for a “transit transfer triangle” where the perimeter is something like a quarter mile or less.
I worked in the Nortel facility (now Fidelity) adjacent to this property. The 19 acres are still owned by the non-profit Research Triangle Foundation. The property immediately across 54, which used to be Nortel’s intramural athletics field, is part of the holdings described in Park Point, a renovated campus in RTP, sells for $288M - Research Triangle Regional Partnership. The athletics field has been dormant for 20+ years.
Additional constraints on this parcel include the transmission wire easements running along the east and south edges of the property and the train tracks, where grading and vertical construction are limited, and some pretty serious terrain where the there is more than 100’ of elevation gain going from the NW corner of the lot to the SE corner.
It’s disappointing to see that the concepts are no longer connecting this development to the stub street in the neighborhood to the south.
I do acknowledge the presence of the 100kv power transmission lines, but GoTriangle is no stranger to this: the existing RTC platforms are right below some massive 230kv lines! Even if they can’t put permanent shelters under the power lines, roadways and circulation could still be there. And there is still plenty they could do to place the RTC closer to the BRT even without putting anything in the easement.
There’s also the question of accessibility. The south edge of the parcel is the flattest and easiest to construct the bus platforms which are restricted by ADA PROWAG. Not to mention the issue of building an accessible path across the power easement to a future train station. This is the topo that they’re dealing with…
I definitely agree that they should have gone with one of the earlier concepts with the bus facility closer to 54 and the train tracks and they should have just paid to get the grading done, just explaining some of the hurdles presented themselves during the concept design process.
Two words: value engineering. And with inflation as well as the federal government being more untrustworthy than ever, I wonder if that extra work was too expensive given the strict budget that GoTriangle has to work with for this project.
Just to be clear, I also agree with what y’all and @orulz are saying - and frankly, this is something that I think is appropriate to submit a comment to call out the obvious faults with this proposal in next month’s GoTriangle board meeting. The timeline for the project negotiation process implies that now is the time to object. …or else, the current plan will just be set in stone, and any attempts to change that will only make things take longer (and be more expensive, thereby eroding trust in GoTriangle even more).
The Raleigh Magazine Cocktail Classic was hosted at the Exchange last year after it was in the parking lot between Clouds (RIP) and Killjoy in 2023. Much preferred the open air/tented location downtown from 2023 in part because hosting an event in an office lobby/common area felt a little bland/tight (even if it was a nice space) and because the Exchange location just felt so isolated.
Excited to check out Peregrine - and I’m sure the area will feel a bit more walkable once Standard and Benchwarmers open at the NHID, but still feels isolated over there.
Not to be pedantic, but if nobody wanted lunch on a weekend, no restaurant would be serving it. Actually the brunch business can be lucrative, especially when cocktails are involved.
I think we’re on the same side of this, but I just wanted to clarify that I always want weekend lunch at restaurants and it bothers me so few places offer it.
Don’t think this has been posted yet, but looks like The Strand has officially broken ground - just saw it on a few sites and on Kane’s Instagram per the below snip:
Crabtree Valley Mall getting a tenant for the old Sears space.
from the Triangle Business Journal
"Public records with the City of Raleigh indicate that Dick’s House of Sport, the experiential venue of Dick’s Sporting Goods (NYSE: DKS), is taking over the space that was formerly Sears at the mall along Glenwood Avenue.
The location will be the first Dick’s House of Sport in Raleigh. A location in Durham’s Streets at Southpoint is also in the works in a former Sears building. Currently, Fayetteville has the only Dick’s House of Sport in the state, according to the company’s website."
