The community is our elected officials. Note, I’m not including unelected ‘councils’. Our elected officials have figured out that the previous mode of allowing development carte blanche has not been paying the bill. But they’ve also figured out that letting ‘developers are evil’ crowd dictate terms is not the answer either.
Gotcha. Imo, it starts at the tax code. But that’s a discussion for another thread (or board altogether!). To distill my thought on this New Bern project - others have done a great job of pointing out the short shortsightedness of the opposition. But I cringe when I hear echoes of ‘just let them build what they want’. Because that’s clearly failed as well. I think the answer is somewhere in between.
My biggest frustration with the LR and other self-styled ‘activists’ is that in meeting after meeting I hear them say that the city or developer should do anything different than whatever it is they are proposing to do. But they can’t articulate what the “right” way is. It comes across as political theater. It’s understandable people are frustrated with inequality, and their first target are the things they see in front of their face - housing, and the city that approves it and people that build it, but if they really wanted to affect change they would aim higher (back to the tax code again. Earned Income Tax Credit, etc).
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What would you say is a city that’s truly let developers “just build what they want”?
I’m thinking Houston and Las Vegas would be the examples I can think of. It’s definitely impacted the urban form in a bad way (hello cars and freeways), but they’re actually both really affordable places to live.
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We were a city that did that. I don’t mean build anything in the literal sense. And I believe Houston and Las Vegas also benefit from an extreme abundance of flat land as far as the eye can see. Also, they are both not that affordable anymore, particularly if we’re talking about the cities themselves. Houston is also spending a lot of federal dollars on relocating people out of flood zones because of their lax planning.
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“The Community” of our elected officials have to balance a lot of issues, and one of those issues is fiduciary responsibility to all citizens of the city, and they currently can’t ignore that the vast amount of low density suburban infrastructure is at the precipice of needing serious attention and replacement. One of the most powerful levers that they can pull in that regard is to create more tax dollars out of the most valuable land in the city near the city center by supporting high density, high value projects on those parcels, thus delivering hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue annually into the city coffers that not only fund infrastructure maintenance/replacement, but affordable housing programs, city services and the like. Of course, they can also just raise taxes to cover everything, but we know how that usually goes down with the electorate. They can also start closing parks and selling off the land, or they can start shutting down city funded community programs.
Of course, decisions to build expensive and lucrative projects are often diametrically opposed by desires/missions to create lower density and/or affordable housing on the very same parcels as pressured by housing advocates, and/or NIMBYs.
I for one don’t want to be in the city council’s shoes. They have a pretty impossible job because they can’t satisfy everyone, yet they still have to make decisions that can cover the city’s financial obligations.
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It was going to be a Publix express at the entrance of Bedford subdivision on the corner of Dunn and Falls of Neuse road. I lived there at the time and have rarely seen such hysterics. You would think they were going to locate a prison or hog farm there the way people were acting. It pitted neighbor against neighbor as a lot of us wanted a grocery store we could walk to. The opposition was absolutely militant collecting signatures on their petition. One of them coerced my then teenage daughter into signing it when we werent home.
It was one of the reasons we moved downtown and cemented my feelings about nimbyism fairly or not. I knew one of our soon to retire city counselors came out of that movement. I did not know LR came out of that as well but it adds up.
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Yeah I remember seeing articles about it when I first moved to Raleigh in 2016, and I read up on it again recently after @Anti-carAction re-shared the N&O link. I’ve never heard of another situation like it tbh. With all of those dense neighborhoods surrounding the development, you’d think most of your former neighbors would be in support of a walkable grocery store, let alone a Publix (one of the best grocery stores). Not only would it have increased the value of everyone’s properties, but it would’ve also made the neighborhood immensely more walkable, while probably reducing traffic as a result (at least within the neighborhoods). I can only imagine the sheer number of Karens it took to get this scrapped…
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So, I looked up that corner and there’s now a 3 story mixed use building that looks like apartments over retail, plus a freestanding Dunkin’ Donuts. Is that the parcel?
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I’m assuming so, because the opposite (Northeast) side of that intersection is residential, and the Dunkin Donuts at that corner was just built a couple of years ago. Not sure how long the small shopping center next to it has been around, but that looks fairly new as well.
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Last time I was up there I think they were senior living apartments. I like the idea of retail below
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The apartments you’re talking about w/ the retail at the bottom (next to Dunkin Donuts)…was that built before or after the Publix fiasco?
Well after. As i remember, only the day care was there at that time.
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The Publix proposal included both the senior living parcel and the mixed use parcel
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Replying to the thread above, not just your comment:
NYC was built by individuals building whatever they wanted to meet their individual needs and the needs of their community. That seemed to work out pretty good.
The short term issue and solution is housing supply. We need housing, so let’s streamline and cut out as much fat as possible in that process. If a proposal includes more units than the current zoning allows within a close proximity to transit/walkable services, well that’s the whole point of TOD isn’t it? I understand New Bern corridor missed the boat on TOD overlay due to timing.
The long term issue is much more rooted in the extraction of wealth out of communities into REITS/wall street, and the failings of our built environment to produce productive places. That is going to take much longer to fix, and should not be used as a reason to discourage the short term solutions.
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i dont discourage additional transit frequncy on some routes, perhaps all, but autotrader has 235 vehicles under 15k USD with under 75k miles in a 10 mile radius of zip 27609.
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I’m throwing it out to the group to see if anyone knows what’s going on or planned for this parcel on New Bern by the Welcome to Raleigh building. I just noticed the posting and haven’t seen (or missed) the latest. Thanks.
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F7 Development is building a single family home. The developers have a decent number of planned mixed-use developments, such as Falcons Point and Montague Plaza.
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More $1.2M priced townhomes were added to the market today. These are the 12 new ones on Hargett St.
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No views unless you climb to the roof
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Great views from there though. I find this design really blaa, but there sure is a lot of this style in Raleigh, lol.
At my age, I just can’t imagine living vertically with out an elevator. @GucciLittlePig will verify, I struggle with stairs already in my advance stage of decline.
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