I will certainly never advocate for more parking, I’m certain Kane will do what they need to do. However, I will be very curious to see what they decide. Every time I have gone through the SH1 / SH2 parking decks, they have seemed full. That is without the office building being fully leased and the commercial spots not open yet. I doubt the plan is for SH3 to rely on either of the first two decks.
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I have a hard time imagining no parking in phase 3 when it’s being talked about as 2 substantial towers. It would be nice if they went underground with it, but I am not holding my breath on that. I imagine that the most likely scenario is that it’s more like 301H with retail at the sidewalk, parking above it, and some sort of outdoor amenity level above it with the towers poking through it. It’s easy to imagine the parking garage abutting Capital since nobody is going to want to rent office space, retail space, or apartments with the immediate view out their window being cars whizzing by.
On the plus side, the embankment for the bridge will allow a few levels of parking to be somewhat hidden below street level of Capital.
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Krispy Crème Theme please!
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an automated Krispy Kreme dispenser would be epic!
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Sitting at the The Willard rooftop and noticed Smoky Hollow Phase 2 office building has some lighting along the upper floors. Not sure if this has been noted, but I at least wanted to draw attention to it.
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What, you can’t remember every single post in the forum? 
But agreed, it’s a nice touch.
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Ohh! Thank you! I had that feeling I was missing something, but I’m glad someone remembered! 
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What I thought was an Orange theory or cycle studio is actually a long term bike storage facility at the Line apartments.
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The Line’s amenities include : “Secure bike storage room, fixation station, and direct access to the West Street Cycle Track.”
There’s been significant pushback to extending the West street bike lanes north of Peace Street by business owners in that corridor. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out. To be fair, most are not opposed to bike lanes in principle, but have the usual concerns about losing parking.
I’ve never run a business, but . . . with new bike-friendly housing added to the area perhaps the local businesses would like to attract those new residents?
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Traditions mindset focused on car only customers. Adopt bike lanes and cater to the very local crowd. I bet it’s a win/win!
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Ideally there should be a way to do both. Having bike lanes/sidewalks is important for local customers. It is probably worth keeping in mind, though, that many of the customers for places like Layered Croissanterie are likely coming from all over the city and not just very close by. I know if I drove there from my house to get breakfast and couldn’t find anywhere to park, I’d probably just leave and not come back for awhile.
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The problem, of course, becomes space, and cars take up a lot of that. There’s only so much “both” that can go around in an urban setting.
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#commentoftheday
This is a huge issue. Cars coming downtown take up a lot of space, and their accommodation understandably needed to be prioritized when folks didn’t live downtown. I mean, where were the customers going to come from if not by car? As the city adds more and more housing, and more and more residents (=potential customers), business models and accommodation of cars need to adjust.
We all lament giant parking garages taking over our downtown, but that’s what we get when we don’t re-think how we deal with cars, our businesses, and our customer base. Otherwise, we are really just talking about taking giant strip centers and making them vertical.
This does not mean that we don’t accommodate any cars; it just means that we rebalance available land area to prioritize how our future is going to operate.
Now, regarding bike infrastructure, the community needs to actually use it. If it doesn’t get used, then where’s the argument to keep it prioritized? It would be like a restaurant investing in outdoor seating and then nobody sitting at the tables. Certainly the decorative tables, umbrellas, and arbors would be nice to look at, but that alone doesn’t justify them.
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Ideally, since cars aren’t going away (they may become automated electric mobility pods - but regardless we will likely always need a roughly 4 passenger mobility pod for final mile solution long term). and those cars, or AEVs will need space to park… or dock… ideally, parking is provided by local govs in strategic locations throughout the urban fabric in decks that aren’t necessarily tied to a parking requirement per development. Thus businesses wouldn’t need to worry about losing parking, or providing parking, because parking would exist proportionately throughout the urban fabric in centralized nodes. Office buildings wouldn’t advertise their “parking per occupant” but rather proximity to public parking, like proximity to parks and other amenities. It would require a shift in attitude and funding for parking decks, so that Smoky Hollow wouldn’t need to “enforce parking” for people that are visiting businesses on West st.
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I agree. It’s frustrating to see nice bike infrastructure constructed that doesn’t appear to get used. Usually this is because the infrastructure doesn’t account for beginnings and endings very well. Ideally bike infrastructure connects origins (where people live) with destinations. Would we build car infrastructure that didn’t connect anywhere and then wonder why no one drove their cars on it?
The city hasn’t been able to approach bike lane construction from a networked approach. It’s primarily been adding bike lanes here and there as part of annual road resurfacing projects. Not an ideal approach, but when you’re hungry and all you get are scraps, you’re not going to turn down the scraps. I think the hope is we eventually have enough pieces of infrastructure in place that it starts to look like a network even though it wasn’t necessarily designed that way. If that starts to happen we may see a tipping point effect. Or not.
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Sounds like the same hope the city has for our sidewalks 
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Just to be clear, I am a cyclist and have been for dozens of years. I don’t want to sacrifice bike infrastructure. I understand your comments, but I also know that a layered story about usage isn’t going to be successful if the community starts to push back and they don’t see people using the lanes.
I have lived in other communities with a similar approach to what Raleigh is doing today, but the lanes are constantly used, even when they aren’t networked together in a meaningful way. That’s because other cities’ have a serious contingent of cyclists who are using their bikes or bike share as transportation. Raleigh isn’t there yet. Most cyclists I see are of the recreational/fitness type.
The question for the community is how do we get people ON their bikes and in the lanes? I offer that there’s an unfortunately & unreasonably short period of time (because I’m a realist) for that to start happening or the noise from the other side is going to test the political will of our city leaders to keep pursuing bike infrastructure. It’s being built, and folks need to start using it or we will lose it.
Unfortunately, I see way more scooter use than I see bike use downtown.
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Good points. Curious at your last one though: why do you see the scooters as “unfortunately”?
I think if bike / micro etc any type of micro mobility modes are going to be successful the scooters are our best bet at getting it to be mainstream.
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Completely agree, but they’re currently semi obnoxious but fun. Kind of like Trolley Pub. I don’t like driving near them, they’re annoying to be around, but I can’t help but smile when I see them. And the scooters can actually be functional.
I’d like to see the bike lanes on West north of Peace wait a few years until there’s actually development and a park and sidewalks and even basic lines on the road. Right now it just seems too sparsely developed to need dedicated bike lines. Sharrows or just regular street riding for the few people visiting the businesses on bikes would make sense until this area catches up with the rest of the street.
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As @GucciLittlePig says, it’s because the behavior of many riders is obnoxious.
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