Spatula

The parking garage eating up the adjacent block bothers me. Another block that would be wasted. Why not have the tower sitting on top of a parking deck? Make it 20 floors, and save the other lot for something more interesting?

Also, I recall this issue of the water mains being brought up several years ago, and I recall hearing that the downtown water grid could support up to 40 floors, but not higher, without significant improvements. I don't think that is responsible for the 20 floor limit in most of downtown. Although I do think it's the reason Fayetteville Street is limited to 40.

Begs the question why were the 3 buildings >400 ft that we have allowed in the first place? Why were proposals for 400+ ft buildings accepted left and right leading up to 2008? What changed? Why is the limit at 20 instead of 30 floors?

Wish we could just combine them all into one good tower.

I think of Glenwood South as a neighborhood inside Raleigh's downtown, whereas SouthEnd is an urban 'spoke' adjacent to Charlotte's downtown, but not in it. Hillsborough street would be a closer analog to SouthEnd, although no comparison between the cities is ever apples to apples.

I'll be impressed and excited when I see the design, but at least something is going in that block finally, and kudos to them for picking the tallest of the three options.

I would still find the University Tower ugly even if it were downtown, for what it's worth.

It'll never happen but I'd like to see something tall in that spot.

http://fox13now.com/2017/03/16/videos-show-massive-fire-in-downtown-raleigh/ Some videos of the fire at its peak. Flames topped the height of the 15 floor Quorum Center nearby. LIVE FEED: http://heavy.com/news/2017/03/raleigh-fire-live-stream-downtown-watch-news-coverage-update-death-toll-cause/ Looks like it's calming down, and they've wrangled it under control now. It spread to some neighboring structures though.

If it bans them I'm cool with it. I've always considered it a matter of time until one of them went off. While it is possible to construct relatively safe wood buildings (even wood skyscrapers), the ones going up are nothing like that.

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article139056083.html

I can say that I don't shop much. If we got an IKEA... they would get my money on opening day.

If that hotel section were on top of the office, it would look much better. But no, let's make everything 20 floors! That's the sacred height!

I will say, kudos to Raleigh for voting to pay its civic employees a wage you can actually survive on. They don't get everything wrong. Hopefully if HB2 gets repealed they can push to raise wages for everyone in the city. Raleigh has always been held back by being in North Carolina, to some extent.

A real gut-punch would be if the N&O site became all 20-story buildings as a result of this. Prepare yourself emotionally for that very real possibility.

From time to time, Raleigh's city government has taken a stand and done something audacious. They do generally play it safe though. It's a tricky minefield because left/right politics don't always predict how a city's voters will react to urban policy. When Chapel Hill tried to pass a transit tax several years ago, I remember hearing all manners of arguments for and against from liberals, socialists, conservatives, libertarians... "We should have the transit tax because the rail system is a good idea". "I support mass transit but oppose the transit tax because I hate sales taxes. Why can't we ever have progressive taxes for this stuff, why does it always fall on the poor? If it were added to income taxes I'd like it." "Trains are a boondoggle. It's a waste of money". "Trains are a boondoggle, but we need the other transit improvements to help grow business and I doubt they'll really build the trains so I support the tax". Two left leaning and right leaning views that I've heard. You can tell this was Chapel Hill because the 2nd one was by far the most common anti-transit-tax opinion I encountered.

We need a coordinated effort to get candidates on the city council who aren't such NIMBYs. Seems like it's a bigger problem with MacFarlane's council than it was for Meeker's.

It's easy to tear something down, it's harder to make a positive claim. But I've attached this crudely drawn MS Paint showing what I think the main problem is, and a simple way to fix it that would cost NOTHING to the developer. The saddle should try to look like a 3rd building, with a constrasting architectural style compared to the other two. This alleviates the image of the whole block as a monolith and makes it look like a city block with 3 different buildings on it. I'd change some other things too, if I had god powers though. The upper 1-2 floors should have a different color theme from the rest of the building, to give it golden ratio appeal. We see this in Progress 1 and the Skyhouse, where the upper floors have a distinctive architectural flourish compared to the rest, and it goes a long way towards giving the buildings character.

It looks like ass. You guys are kidding yourselves. If the two buildings attempted to form their own architectural ideas, and if the 'saddle' in between tried to look more like an independent 3rd building, it could be acceptable. As it is currently it would be a borg cube sitting in downtown. It's a disorganized mess. Reminds me of some of the later designs of the Reynolds Tower that would've sat on the block, which people also said looked ugly, except this is even uglier since it takes up the whole block. The Reynolds Tower at least would've had decent vertical proportions. Bear in mind the western building will be more visible for people entering downtown from Glenwood and Hillsborough, and it's the architecturally weaker of the two.

Ugh, getting sick of all these megaboxes.

The pedestrian connections between Glenwood South and the CBD are not great. Hillsborough Street is a car-centric barren landscape. I'd like to see a pedestrian bridge like the Millennium Bridge in Denver to cross the railroad and connect Glenwood to the Warehouse District. Perhaps a bridge or a tunnel to cross Hillsborough at Glenwood as well? Just some infrastructure to invite tourists and to give the impression of a single cohesive downtown.

I know how you feel. I'll try to take some pictures in the coming weeks. The Dillon in Raleigh and the City Center Tower in Durham are both on the way. Those are the only 10+ developments at the moment. Everything else is tiny. There's been no news on Charter Square North or 301 Hillsborough since March, and the Edison Office went kaput and the property got sold. Highwoods will probably do something similar in scale there but it won't happen this year.

Came here to post exactly this. Perfect height in the perfect spot. Here's hoping this happens!

Some shots from two weeks ago, enjoying the perfect weather at Moore's Knob:

The view from Black Balsam Knob, looking at Mt Pisgah Looking southwest towards Richland Balsam: The Parkway that day: High Shoals Falls on the way back: