@Tenkai
Thank you for this interesting post!
I have spoken with a lot of my neighbors as I live near this area and the one thing that everyone seems to agree on or prefer is to keep direct access to Ridge rd. Who knew…
Wasn’t everyone originally up in arms about there potentially being too much access to Ridge Rd?
seemed to me they where up in arms about other people using Ridge Rd, but they wanted to keep their access to beltway.
Yeah that’s what I thought too. Seems like they want their own road to Crabtree, as long as no one else uses it. But I may be simplifying things.
Currently there is only south bound traffic on the bridge across the beltline. Like Leo suggested, keep it in place and allow pedestrian, bike access. Perhaps a bus only lane.
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Guess who lives in a neighborhood off of/near Ridge Road?
Why did they even have this in the first place? Seems like something that selfishly benefits them at the expense of literally everyone else…
Sounds like several of us agree about this, myself included. Makes me wonder how much crap those residents can fling at this project and how much NCDOT will concede to them about their extra amenity.
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My take is that there probably isn’t any reasonable way to upgrade the interchange that doesn’t also involve a new interchange at Crabtree Valley Avenue. So we should work to minimize the impacts to Ridge Road, not categorically eliminate them.
Overall concept is that the Crabtree Valley Avenue interchange handles all traffic bound for destinations east of Creedmoor (Mall, Blue Ridge, Lead Mine, North Hills Dr) while the Glenwood Avenue interchange handles traffic bound for places from Creedmoor Road and west.
- Crabtree Valley Ave gets extended to Glenwood (and into Grubb’s Glenwood Place development)
- Blue Ridge Road gets a grade separation over Glenwood (not an interchange - no direct access.)
- Creedmoor gets an interchange at Glenwood
- Glenwood becomes an expressway for 2 miles from the Beltine to Rembert/Fairhill
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I personally do not think this is an ideal location for this kind of project. I never thought the mall should have been here in the first place. It is an ecological nightmare in a flood zone. Adding all of this new impermeable surface is only going to make things worse. Downtown is much more suitable and on Higher Ground. 
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I agree building a mall on a low laying cow pasture was not a good idea, but it’s done and has been there for 50 years and not going anywhere. The new projects at the mall will not add to impermeable surface, all the new construction is only replacing current buildings and parking lots. The major cause of flooding is all the development that has occurred upstream from the mall. Also while the mall creates a lot of traffic there is also a lot of traffic in that area that is not related to the mall and Glenwood will need upgrades mall or not, it’s a major interchange on the beltway.
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Another thing I’d add is that the development in that immediate area has a minimal impact on the amount of traffic that passes by it everyday. The same with the recent development at North Hills. People like to attribute the increased traffic to the development, but it’s mainly from the vastly increased suburban development outside of the Beltline and their limited options to reach the Beltline and downtown.
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Seriously, who still goes to malls?
I have been there three times in as many years and I can assure you that, at least for Crabtree, the answer is A LOT OF PEOPLE. Crowded every time including some random Saturday in late February. If anything, it seems more crowded than 15 years ago when I went a bit more regularly.
High end top rate malls aren’t really struggling as much as ones that are a bit more downmarket. Seems Crabtree is angling for that and (maybe) succeeding? This development sure seems like a step in the right direction.
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I used to ask the same question. Once i go out of “my-way” of living or at least the way the “I” thought about as normal or regular, then it still makes sense. Until you can make or replace all of the conveniences that malls offer, they will be around in one form or another. IMO 
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You should go work for NCDOT. This is better then any of the options I looked at posted earlier.
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if you ever go get an engineering degree and want to come work for our traffic engineering group, I’d be glad to give you a good reference
I’ll work pro bono if someone would just teach me how to be better at CAD. I have an academic license for AutoCAD Civil3d but (1) I am slow at it (2) I don’t know how to do a lot of things with it, and (3) I don’t know if that’s even the industry standard tool anymore (I think maybe it isn’t?)
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NCDOT uses Microstation which is another CAD software so that’d what you would use if you worked on any roadway projects in NC (and most states)
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But they have; it’s called Amazon.
You can’t try on clothes or shoes before you buy at Amazon. My experiences with clothes shopping online when it’s not buying an exact copy of something I already own has not been very good. Buy & mail back if it doesn’t fit/look good/I don’t like the material is such a hassle. I would rather get the job over and done with in a single day, so my family still buys all clothing, and most shoes at brick & mortar stores, occasionally involving a trip to Crabtree.
That and the fact that things like going to the Lego store is more fun than browsing online means that there is still a case for places like malls.
I wonder if something like a Wegmans or Publix could make sense at the mall, given its growing role as a concentration of high density apartments.
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I don’t see why not? There’s a Harris Teeter in North Hills, and they don’t seem to be doing too badly.
In general, I get the impression that Crabtree is on the way to becoming the indoor, less-bougey older cousin to North Hills (where you can take care of most of your daily/weekend needs in one district). This could be a good way to take advantage and make the most of that trajectory?
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