I love the idea of a Christmas market, and it’s another example of why Fayetteville Street should have stayed a pedestrian mall.
We could keep the driving lanes on Fayetteville and close the parking for stalls facing the sidewalks. This could activate more sidewalk activity that could benefit the Fayetteville businesses as well.
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Thanks. I sent an email to them and they responded shortly.
They do want a German style Christmas market and they even tried to make something like that happen in Pullen and Dix park but they only have a team of 3 people and of course a very small budget. With the ice rink at Red Hat and north hills market around this time they just don’t have the capacity.
So some sort of sponsorship and a group of organizers and volunteers is needed.
So the idea does have some legs.
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Is there enough room at Red Hat to host the market around the rink? It seems to me that the market could benefit the rink and vice versa.
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I don’t think there’s space and with the new amp being even smaller…
But what if they move the rink to Moore Square? The east lawn can host the rink and the market can be on the wesr lawn and wherever a stall can fit.
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I think putting it back on Fayetteville, where it belongs (in my opinion), would be better. It could be larger and located where the public square is and the market area could be the rest of the street or just the portion between Lenoir and Davie St.
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I don’t think that would work. See the wooden cabins that make the vibe of German markets take time to setup. So such events need to run for weeks. Raleigh would lose their minds if we prohibits cars or something.
I just came back from the Christmas Market in Wroclaw, Poland. They have temporary wooden structures 3 stories tall! You can’t really do that on Fayetteville Street but maybe possible in a park.
This structure below is 3 stories of hot wine drinking.
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Just go to Lafayette Village. It’s basically the same thing.
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A reconfigured, potentially smaller, and more unique version of this would suffice in my opinion. It seems as though multiple large cities have the same German style Christmas market. I’m all for copy and paste concepts (I’m going to the one in Baltimore) but I’d prefer a unique alternative similar to what Charlotte has.
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Your reminder to visit Asheville and western NC towns impacted by Helene. They depend on tourism while it seems to be coming back (from my last visit about a month ago) I am sure they could use more. Eat local while you are there too. Recommended by a friend and I only wished I had tried it earlier was Juicy Lucy’s Burger Bar just south of Biltmore Village. Downtown seems to be picking up and saw more tourists there. New Belgium Brewey center is open again along the river (and you can clearly see the devastation across the river) but the brewery itself is not brewing beer yet as the bottom floor was flooded. They are working on it and the White Duck Taco shop along the river was completely flooded but 2 other locations are open including the downtown one. So make plans to visit WNC soon and spend some money.
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I liked it better on/off Fayetteville as well!
Imagine Illuminate/Ice Skating/Market all being collocated.
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There’s space until there isn’t. I wouldn’t expect the first, or second, or the first several of these potential annual German Xmas markets to be that large, and a venue like Red Hat during the Rink not only provides an existing captive audience, but it makes securing the vendors significantly less expensive. You’d have to either hire a lot of security for Moore Sq or Fayetteville or build an extensive barrier around it. That all exists already at Red Hat with the Rink.
Start small and reasonable.
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After looking this up, it looks like it’s only running from December 2nd - 18th and is limited to those with a ticket. I always hear the tickets for this sells out pretty instantly. While I love living in Raleigh and will say great things about Raleigh, I have to say that Downtown Cary and it’s downtown park still beat this based off availability and running time. Given that we are the bigger city, I have to ask why we cannot have this run longer than 16 days?
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I also love the Christmas market in Bryant park in NYC.
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One more post. Went down to Charlotte earlier this month. I enjoyed being on their Rail Trail. This is what I would like to see in Raleigh. A place you could go walk, bike, and get food/beer right off the greenway trail.
It does look like Dorothea Dix might have this when Park City South is done although I don’t know what shops are going in.
I guess the big branch greenway will also be the same when it’s complete, but for North Hills.
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Whenever I see photos of Charlotte’s core and immediate surrounds, I always get the impression that the place needs more trees.
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Charlotte light rail is light rail cars on heavy rail infrastructure. Way too expensive, they should have ripped out the rail and installed tram rail lines and maybe they wouldn’t have 30 minute intervals.
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The frequencies are due to a lack of funding and staffing, not the type of rails or whatever. Currently it’s every 15 mins during peak times and 20 mins outside of that, which is too infrequent but now that the leadership has finally stabilized somewhat, they are working on building up the staff to be able to run 12 min and 15 min frequencies.
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