Council member X: Is it more important for you to vote for something that’s right for the city, or vote the way a small % of your district that you’ve interacted with want you to vote?
I doubt anyone would get a real/truthful answer to that though I know some of our city council that is voting the former, not the latter.
I think now is a perfect time to remember the awful West St. rezoning decision the city made to please a small group of vocal residents instead of what is better for the city as a whole.
Remember what the developer offered too, funding for the park etc. Don’t underestimate their ability to royally screw this up.
Prepare to be disappointed
I didn’t realize that the Cabarrus St. intersection is also supposed to be raised to the curb level under the current proposal (notice the dotted lines representing bollards).
This will definitely cause drivers on McDowell to slow down and improve the pedestrian experience.
Great call out and LOVE that! If only we could do this same thing at every block (or if I’m not being greedy, maybe every other block?) along both McDowell and Dawson downtown. That makes the NASCAR track much more interesting.
A great opportunity here to create a new, different, exiting experience by rethinking the exact purpose of South McDowell and West Lenoir streets. 
Right! We want consistency lol 
Lenoir street is a much bigger, farther reaching East/West street than South Street. It’s not like Boylan Heights people are getting cut off from Raleigh to use Lenoir. Geez these people are entitled. “We need ALL our existing streets for our neighborhood. And no ugly buildings down the hill closer in town to block our view. And no loud music to keep us awake.”
Another post from me complaining about this (lol), but just reading a bunch of 1st page threads about all the commercial and entertainment draws happening outside of the core downtown, from PNC, to IronWorks, New Seaboard changes, North Hills, Midtown etc and it’s just really hitting home what the loss of RHA could be for pulling people into core downtown to hang out and the appeal of living there. I think there is a real possibility of the early stages of a nasty self-reinforcing downward economic spiral if it were to occur.
The combination of this competition for entertainment dollars + losing RHA + slow recovery from 2020 issues + WFH dynamics would be a series of consecutive haymakers that would leave the future of downtown very vulnerable - with the only tailwind being all the residential coming online. Which, to be clear, is definitely a big deal, but most of which was planned prior to all these things happening and where the business case was built on a thriving downtown and one that could have real problems if the demand for living there changes rapidly.
To your point @Roganberry one of the unique things about this metro area is the abundance of really cool venues and sites and activities spread all the way from Raleigh to Cary to Durham to Chapel Hill. There’s an embarrassment of riches distributed pretty evenly in my opinion. Tons of stuff to do in “sleepy” Cary that didn’t exist, whether downtown, the huge new park, Fenton, etc. Lots of options outside of downtown core of Raleigh like you listed. Even the museums arent limited to downtown Raleigh with the art museum out by PNC, and the growth of the PNC entertainment area. I haven’t been to Iron Works other than driving thru to look, but yeah, there’s not a lot of room to lose a big venue downtown Raleigh like RHA without seriously making a dent in things there. But I’m less convinced than I used to be, with or without RHA, that I have to live right smack downtown Raleigh to enjoy downtown Raleigh. There’s tons of parking for those of us who want to drive to downtown!
I’m sure behind the veil there is a lot of momentum for this to be pushed through.
What will probably happen is something akin to what happened to the Dix park master plan at the last second… remember SAVE THE FARMERS MARKET and DIX306 movements…
The city will throw in some concessions that likely hurt the venue and/or walkability in some unforeseen way, push it through, call it a victory of community input, and delay the project.
As someone who moved in later, what concessions did they end up having to throw in for Dix to get through?
This was the beginning of the seafoam green we will live with forever and ever and the shall we say less than desirable building finishes on a 7 story (could have been 20 story and better) project now gracing the lands headed into Boylan Heights.
Dix306 is the prime example of public input making something better.
Early on in the planning process, the city envisioned setting aside some portion of the Dorothea Dix land, mostly along the edges, for private development. The reasoning was selling or leasing some of the land could provide revenue to finance build-out and/or upkeep of the park.
Dix306’s main argument was that all of Dix should be a public, and that private development belongs across the street, because hard edges make for a better park. I think they were spot-on about that. (Imagine if the Billionaire’s Row skyscrapers sat on the Central Park side of 59th street, between the street and the park, for example.)
So, instead of private development inside Dix Park, we have upzoned the heck out of Fuller Heights, and the development is popping like crazy over there.
Maybe so for the 8 acres of private development along L Wheeler, but they also fought against the idea of the main hospital becoming a boutique hotel, and some other specifics I can’t recall. For better or worse, they chimed in at the end and got some stuff changed after an 18 month public engagement process lead by world class landscape architecture firm…
Heading off topic, but the plan is still for one of the wings of the old main hospital to be a boutique hotel. Not too many changes in general actually from the master plan - just all in “future” phases that who knows will happen.
BH folks love Red Hat, but don’t want to lose South St and feel ambushed by the annoucement it would close. “vital” connection to downtown keeps getting mentioned… did someone say the car count was under 4k a day?
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article291041665.html
That’s good to know.
Maybe Dix park was a bad example.
Either way, I’m guessing Boylan a la livable Raleigh has their concessions thrown in last minute, whether that’s a stricter noise ordinance or whatever, and the N&O writes it up as community engagement, and the plan gets pushed through…
This is somewhat of an aside, but the topic of creating a downtown district seat (versus letting several seats have a slice) to promote neighborhood-specific advocacy has come up a few times periodically here. It seems like this issue is a perfect example of why.
Ok, so Dix isn’t an example…
Where, then, is an example, of when taking a moment to gather public input, or even sending something “back to the drawing board” killed or ruined a public sector project like this? Where taking the first offer on the table, and proceeding forward in full panic mode, would have “saved” the project - or even wound up with a better result?
I am not necessarily saying such an example doesn’t exist, but I sure can’t think of one.
Closest I can think of was the original Lightner Public Safety Building plan, but that was killed less because of public feedback, but rather because some nonsensical requirements made it too expensive (a bunker holding the 911 call center, built into a skyscraper!) and the city itself decided we couldn’t afford it.
Every voice of skepticism or concern is not automatically a NIMBY that must be steamrolled. Nearly everyone earnestly wants RHA to stay downtown. The people expressing concerns about South Street are not disingenuously raising these concerns to kill it. They just don’t want South Street to close.
I encourage you to reflect on how much you’ve written on this subject in the past 2 weeks
