Ever been to Rockefeller Center? Place des Vosges?
Anything new is invariably going to feel, well, new and shiny. You can’t rush time. Bigness is also a fault; a group of smaller projects with contrasting different ideas feels less “fake,” but also doesn’t get big outside investment, big attention, or big parking garages.
You could learn a lot more from reading “Death and Life” on what Jane Jacobs found correlated with urban diversity.
Yes, I’ve been to both. Rockefeller center actually faced a lot of community opposition when it opened and is still a dead space most of the year except Christmas when tourists show up to gawk at the tree. Don’t remember offhand but I’d be surprised if Jane Jacobs had anything positive to say about it. It’s notoriously difficult to engineer “urban fabric” from above-- the verdict is decidedly mixed on mega projects like that. Bob Fitch’s The Assassination of New York is a good source on this.
Anyway, not saying the thing shouldn’t happen, but there are better and worse ways to promote development.
Jane Jacobs actually like Rockefeller Center bc it split up the large city blocks into smaller segments allowing pedestrians to linger and window shop. Would she like the relative homogeny today? I’d say she still would be impressed.
As for this development, I think it’s a well-scaled, smart development at the edge of downtown. It looks dense, has retail and streetscape. I’d be interested to see how the materials of the buildings hold up and the integration with Peace University, but I am hopeful that it’ll have decent foot traffic.
Point taken, but this where we are with “urban” design. Not being a developer, I suspect these sorta neo-industrial designs hit a sweet spot financially.
My biggest issue with projects like this one, and ones like Smoky Hollow, is that they are largely inward facing. I don’t see them doing a good job of relating to their communities and creating a broader urban fabric.
The inward-facing-ness is largely because the public realm just beyond is incredibly pedestrian-hostile NCDOT stroads which will not have the foot traffic that retailers demand.
Retailers really want to be able to draw shoppers from in not just next door, but across the street. That’s much easier done when (a) the street is easy to cross, (b) there are complementary uses across the way. Both are much more easily done when one owner controls the street and the block, whether that’s in an enclosed shopping mall or an outdoor setting.
BIDs have come a long way in terms of improving public space management in urban areas, but certainly they’ll never have the same level of control as a mall. Dispersed ownership is generally a good thing in terms of creating more diversity, but sometimes it results in disharmony, too.
Well, it should be noted that while DRA is somewhat similar to a BID, they are not a BID at all. At least from my understanding. They are like Center City Partners in Charlotte…neither of them fund public space management, but act as boosters for their downtowns. I don’t think a true BID would work in Raleigh only because of the tax leverage. But it wouldn’t hurt to see.
The inward facing-ness allows for a better pedestrian experience. Granted getting there may not be as pedestrian friendly, but that falls outside of the development’s control. When I was passing through Smoky Hollow during First Friday, they were able to have a lot more room for people to hang out while shopping at some of the vendors. I’m sure it would have not been the same if it was pointing out towards West North Street or Harrington; Those streets would probably be a hassle to close as it would be more work to get permits. Not to mention that you’d only have one side of the street with stores. Technically Smoky Hollow only has one side open with stores anyway with J Lights and Crunkleton out 
, but once filled, then it would be a better place to walk thru.
Fenton, NH, and the malls are the same. Granted people currently drive to these places, but once within the center, you do have the more enjoyable pedestrian experience. The Crabtree Mall and North Hills have some sections where there are raised pedestrian crossings. The speeds of cars within NH and Fenton are generally way slower; They are slower than the speeds in downtown Raleigh.
My biggest problem with Crabtree Mall is that it doesn’t connect very well to the apartments around it. There is the greenway which I’ve used to get to the mall, but can we blame the mall for the connection across Glenwood Ave, Creedmoor, Blue Ridge, or even Crabtree Valley Ave? Those are city/state streets. I can’t really blame NH for Six Forks Rd. I could probably blame it for the narrow sidewalks and lack of biking infrastructure.
This is where I completely disagree. This sort of development isn’t weaving together an urban experience and behaves more like another indoor or outdoor mall that you drive to.
This is not a binary choice IMO. You don’t have to sacrifice connecting to a community because you want to have an internally facing event/gathering space. For as large as Smoky Hollow is, it has given us a dearth of either Harrington or West facing storefronts. Even worse, places like Midwood put their kitchen backing up to West like it’s some sort of Alley. Had Kane paid as much attention to the street facing experiences, we’d have a much more active and robust project for the greater Glenwood South District.
I’m sure all retailers would prefer to conduct their business in a hermetically sealed environment, but unfortunately, that’s not how cities work. A city is not a loose cluster of self-contained developments, no matter how individually successful those developments might be. Raleigh should aspire to be more than the sum of Smokey Hollow + Crabtree + Fenton. If retailers really want to operate in an anesthetized setting that only they control, they should move to an actual shopping mall next to the Hot Topic, not an open-air pseudo-mall that takes up valuable street frontage. Inward-facing projects might make short-term sense, but they don’t last long without some connection to their surroundings.
There’s also a chicken and egg problem – if our city streets and sidewalks are not inviting places, maybe it’s because developers keep building inward-facing storefronts and quasi-private plazas that don’t encourage circulation.
And back to Seaboard, there’s an opportunity for a street-facing connection to William Peace across Halifax, or even Peace St proper. Oh well…
Moved my response here: Zoning and Density - #768 by wanderer
these were many years back. not fake I suppose but maybe different frontages provide some eye relief.
Man I was just thinking I needed another bowl restaurant option. If only they serve tea with chunks, I’ll be over the moon. LOL
I am actually pretty excited to hear about Omakase. This is the first I’ve heard about that. Hope it’s good. Kai seems to be a generic looking sushi place on Lead Mine Rd.
Regardless how it “looks” - I’ve actually heard pretty good things about them!
Used to live off of Strickland and can confirm that Kai is one of the more underrated sushi spots in Raleigh.
I don’t know how people in Raleigh can still have such preconceptions about strip mall restaurants when like >half of our best restaurants are in strip malls.
Because I moved here for the new interesting things popping up, not some old strip malls in the suburbs. I’m sure there’s some gems, but probably 3/4 of the restaurants I’ve been to in those kinds of places have been mediocre or generic. I’m also never really in most of those areas, so I’m not acting like I’m an expert. But in my experience, I’d prefer M Sushi instead of something in a generic strip mall. If this place is a hidden gem, then awesome. Makes me more excited that the place coming to Seaboard could be very good.
M Sushi has its place. Seoul Garden has its place. And I eat at Seoul Garden way more.
All across the Sun Belt, the best non-special-occasion ethnic food is found in strip malls.
Just here we’ve got Seoul Garden, Szechuan Mansion, Bosphorus, and Taipei 101 off the top of my head for excellent food for a great price and a fun, unique experience on top of it.
In the past, ethnic enclaves organically developed in central cities because they were more affordable as the wealth migrated to the burbs or to newer/more desirable parts of the city. Today a growing amount of affordable places for those finding their footing in life is in aging suburban places, and especially modest strip centers. This is probably why the burbs incubate so much of the ethnic food scene. Downtowns have gotten expensive, but there are still affordable opportunities in second generation spaces that already have kitchens, etc. Then again, there’s even cheaper space in second generation suburban strip centers.
