Spatula

I would include lots with historic structures that could be moved easily, like the Pope House. But yeah, these aren't height limits and if anything they should spurn a bit more height than what we've been seeing.

See, I think they worded it wrong. I would've had a 40-story minimum for the remaining lots on Fayetteville street, and then a 20-story minimum in the rest of downtown. Anything lower would need special approval.

It would help if the Triangle were reclassified as one metro area (as it should be). Bear in mind that the corridor with the highest commuter traffic in the state was cut in half a decade ago, perhaps to make it easier for the US DOT to deny the area funding for such projects.

My main issue with the PNC building is the balconies, which look tacky. Otherwise I think it's okay; I like the exterior material and don't mind the spire. Meanwhile Wells Fargo is a nice enough building except for a very ugly roof and space-wasting, pedestrian unfriendly street front. Hannover II has a bad concrete exterior that changes color in the rain in the worst way, but it looks great at night and the overall shape of the building is my favorite. None of the three really stands out as better than the others. Anyway, PNC was improved a lot over the initial renders, which had a strange medical sort of look to them.

A higher concentration of bland can be found outside the beltline, increasing the further out you go.

I'm not pushing hard for a stadium downtown anymore since there isn't a great site anymore, without demolishing someone's neighborhood. There was one and only one spot across from the dogfood plant on Wilmington st which was large enough, and it got eaten up by a development recently. And... that's that.

http://photos.clearskyimages.com/2015-02-skyhouse-raleigh-aerial-photos/h478368c#h1648b0ec New aerials of downtown with the Skyhouse and Charter Square 1 nearly complete.

Durham I can sort of see where this opinion comes from. It has a larger stock of historic buildings and a grittier feel to it (of course, an outsider wouldn't know that most of them are still empty). It has the Durham Bulls stadium. It votes more strongly democratic in national elections. Its downtown revitalization has been as dramatic a turnaround as Raleigh's. It won some accolades for being a foodie haven (though the restaurants on the list were mostly suburban). To someone who hasn't visited, I can see how they could get the idea that it was more vibrant in some way. It *is* funkier. Though that doesn't make it more vibrant. Its downtown is half as large and full of holes in activity. The racial and economic politics are also a bit dysfunctional. It's a city of extreme haves and have-nots. Duke golf courses next to trailer parks. And unfortunately its neighborhoods are terribly segregated. Greensboro is simply baffling. I don't see what people are seeing there, if they consider that downtown more vibrant. I'm almost tempted to link to the threads where people had these arguments, but I don't want to start a huge internet flame war. Suffice to say, I suspect some of you also read this other forum about cities, which shall remain anonymous.

Eh, I wish Charlotte had gotten a university on par with NCSU in the late 1800s. That could've gone a long way--both for the urban character of the city as well as its politics. Charlotte proper is not responsible for the state government we have, and it is taking steps to become a more interesting place. I'll have to get over there and visit NoDA and South End some day. In the meantime they're allies who are hurting from the state's policies just as much as the Triangle. The perception of Raleigh as a boring place is far more widespread than just Charlotte's board of commerce I'm afraid. Even though in reality that's not the case, it will take some time for that to change. There are people who move to the Triangle and only visit downtown Durham the entire time they're here. That is the extent of the problem with perception that Raleigh has. All of North Carolina for that matter... we tend not to toot our own horn much. South Carolina has the world convinced they have better beaches, Virginia has the world convinced they have better cities, and Tennessee has an awful lot of people convinced the Smokies are fully within their state. There are people who go to school at UNC and pretty much go up to VA or SC for vacations, thinking there's nothing here. The whole 'vale of humility' thing really hasn't helped us out much.

My favorite system for any council or legislature-resembling body would be a proportional voting system. Everyone votes for a party and their top candidates. The parties fill the seats proportionately and the candidates fill the seats of their party by the number of votes they get. Everyone gets representation in some form, and instead of having strict majorities and minorities there's a plurality of views present. But most Americans haven't heard of this so the idea is pretty much nonexistant in this country. I have issues with dividing a council that votes on the uses of everyone's tax dollars in the county into respective districts. People in noncompetitive districts would have no say in how their money gets spent, effectively. People in other districts would fight those battles and decide. I tend to not like single-seat districts for that reason, well that and gerrymandering.

That is basically exactly what I wanted to see happen to that block. I look forward to seeing their plans fully fleshed out.

That seems very reasonable. I can't say I have much more to add really. As for competing cities that are more urban, that's a pretty long list. I see raleigh's late start as all the more reason to make serious far reaching policy changes rather than an excuse for the city's poor performance on vibrancy ratings and so forth.

We can be fairly confident that while there may be short term benefits to boosting the existing service, there would be more long term benefits starting a rail system, and those benefits will be greatest if we start the soonest possibly. It would not be easy, and it would strain finances for other projects. But having the system would do a lot for the city's image, and it would ensure raleigh continues growing in the right direction, while also keeping it competitive with other metros that currently have the leg up on us in the urbanity front. Frankly it doesnt seem like there's much of a counter argument from the nay corner if the two best arguments are "it will be hard if we do it now" and "we should wait till the traffic is as bad as austin's". That's not good planning. The whole point of planning should be to avoid those situations. Otherwise you're reacting, rather than planning.

I think this deserves more attention and this is part of the reason I think rail would be more successful here. On another note, there's some negativity going around. DanRNC, enough doom and gloom. The council are still largely pro urban and raleigh will continue densifying regardless. Raleigh is ultimately a forward looking city, and durham and chapel hill are not without their own flaws. Chapel hill's nimby problem makes raleigh look downright cosmopolitan. And durham is a city of extreme haves and have-nots, dysfunctional racial politics, and Duke calling the shots often. And if you ever thought NCSU lacked vision... Orulz, much as you think the rail plans are "vision without practicality", I would classify your well meaning arguments as "skepticism without evidence". Show me a city that started a rail system and didn't ultimately benefit. As for political consensus, there are no republicans left on the BOC, in an election year where the party basically cleaned up everywhere else. Why do you suppose that is? The ones that were there refused to allow a vote on rail transit. Bear in mind it's not just a matter of numbers here. There is some politicking. Many people feel if Charlotte has rail we should have it too, if we intend to compete with them.

I get your arguments Orulz and I'm aware that there are some bus improvements that could go quite far with minimal capital risk. I'm also aware of the projected ridership numbers from the last two times commuter rail/light rail were talked about and rejected. I echo your sentiments about the need for better zoning. I think looking at Atlanta vs Portland is a classic example of the mentality a city needs to have to approach light rail. But as for the arguments over whether we should pursue rail right now... Unfortunately, I have to say that I don't find these arguments against it very persuasive. A few things: -No matter what improvements are made to the buses, conservatives who oppose rail transit will use buses as a red herring. They will continue to propose improving the buses when the question of that vs rail crops up... forever. There is no magical point of inflection where they will start saying "okay now's a good time to start a rail system". There is no magical ridership number we can achieve realistically with buses alone that will cause them to change their mind. -Comparing Raleigh's bus ridership with the bus ridership of a larger city that also has good rail transit is not an apples to apples comparison. We know that Charlotte's bus ridership increased significantly after the blue line was built. The presence of trains in a transit system always has this effect on buses in all cities. The rail provides network benefits with the buses. Buses expand the rail system to places it can't reach by itself realistically. They are the capillaries to the trains' arteries. -Buses offer no advantages over cars other than being cheaper and not needing parking. Trains actually bypass traffic. Buses have to sit on I-40 in rush hour with everyone else. Until there is a transit alternative to sitting on I-40 with everyone else, there isn't really a transit alternative. That is a concrete, qualitative fact we have to weigh in considering where we improve. -There is a psychological aspect to trains. Some people are more willing to ride a bus if it connects to a train than if it connects to another bus. Trains eliminate a lot of uncertainty from traveling--you know where they're going, the tracks cannot change. There are no weird holiday routes or weekend routes, the train simply has to go where the track goes. I've had the experience plenty times of discovering that my connecting bus was no longer running that day and being stranded... not just in Raleigh or RTP but in Chapel Hill! Not during inclement weather or a holiday. During a football game! That's with Chapel Hill buses, which are about the pinnacle of what a bus system can be. Game traffic in the Triangle... well I don't need to explain what that looks like or what it does to the city that's hosting the game. One very clear immediate advantage of linking the major universities is that students could take the train on game days. The Triangle is unique and incomparable to other metro areas because we have such a large population of carless students living in dense areas easy to link up to rail right now. -We know that the longer we wait to start building a rail system the more expensive it's gonna be. We also know that the economic benefits of a rail system will be felt sooner, the sooner we start. -What exactly is the risk to 'building too early'? I think this is a point people supportive of rail should really look at because it's the crux of the skeptic's argument and it's utterly lacking in empirical evidence. Point to a city that has financially been ruined by its rail system. Generally the least successful systems have been in cities that started too late, if anything. The development patters were too fixed. If we wait until we're the size of Atlanta when they started MARTA, or the size of Charlotte when they started Lynx... that is what our city will look like when we start.

This is great news. It's a good size for the area and it signals that Kane is considering building downtown now.

I'd like to see the original historic Citizens building rebuilt in its spot. http://goodnightraleigh.com/2012/10/fayetteville-street-looking-north-raleigh-nc/ It was Raleigh's tallest building for 25 years. You'd think that would've merited some historic protection. Sadly, not.

Worth noting that Knoxville has a metro of 850,000 making it larger than every NC city except Charlotte and Raleigh. That is largely the story. NC cities simply weren't very large until recently. Richmond, Cinncinnati, these were historically major cities and much of their growth occurred before the 1950s. Kansas City is another salient example, as a city Raleigh recently passed in metro population I believe. The extent of its built up urban neighborhoods is greater than any NC city. And it has a great stock of historic structures. I suppose one area I could argue for Raleigh, Durham, or Asheville over these other cities is that urban isn't just about the density or the form, it's also about the use. Much of the areas in downtown Richmond, Kansas City, Jacksonville for instance are pedestrian dead zones, even though they may not look it from an aerial photo. That's common across the country as CBDs typically aren't the main nightlife areas--usually it's the adjacent neighborhoods in major cities. NC cities are a bit weird in that regard. One way that some NC cities can benefit from being a bit late to the game is that they lack single-use office towers that kill street activity (not Charlotte... but the others). When we do get new buildings we can do it right and have street retail in all of them.

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I think he should certainly be entitled to that option... once something taller exists downtown. It's just a matter of principle, but I don't like the tallest building in a city being somewhere other than the CBD. I'll admit that my reasoning is purely aesthetic. Suppose the Empire State Building had been built in Yonkers, instead of Manhattan. Midtown NYC wouldn't be as attractive as it is, and the ESB wouldn't be the icon that it is without the context of the city around it. Looking at Houston and Atlanta, cities that have embraced this type of model, I can't help but think they'd be better places if they'd developed in a more centralized manner. It's all relative. If Raleigh had Charlotte's level of business downtown, and a Charlotte-sized skyline, I'd have no qualms about 40 floor buildings in the suburbs. What's a 40 floor building here or there in a city that has 50-60 floor buildings? Raleigh's not in the same sort of shape though, and much like Durham and Greensboro were reeling after their tallest buildings got built in the suburbs, I've been firmly against the same thing happening in Raleigh ever since--though it has been threatened more than once. I get the feeling this is a uniquely southern phenomenon: developers who don't want to build downtown lest their tenants have to encounter those 'frightening negroes' on the way to work. Instead they like to make their own downtowns for rich white people away from all the unsightly minorities and poors, so we have Buckhead Atlanta and Uptown Houston, and soon-to-be midtown Raleigh I guess.

http://www.godowntownraleigh.com/_files/images/good-afternoon,-raleigh_carolynscott.jpg http://www.godowntownraleigh.com/_files/images/my_city-by-julian-thomas-.jpg I like those. Can't say I like any of the winners. Seems like a bunch of people uploaded photos that are either way outdated or taken from a phone. Why hold a contest? They could just use Matt Robinson's photos. Or James Willamore's. Or that other guy who's a professional photographer for the city... forget his name.

Sears is dying in general, so that's not surprising. CTC I don't know. It seems like all the malls other than Southpoint and Crabtree are merely hanging on. I really miss the teeny tiny Barnes&Noble they used to have. Now it's in a store across the street, sadly. The mall feels like a shadow of what it was in the 90s.

Head on over to city-data and check out the Raleigh vs Charlotte thread there. You'll find they spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking about it.

The problem isn't that it is not unique, the problem is that it doesn't look good. 2604 Hillsborough looks good. Bloomsbury Estates looks good. And in Durham the Liberty Warehouse apartments look good as well. My favorite though is 132 Hunt Street in Durham. The point of all this is that buildings at this scale can be attractive and contribute significantly to the character of the city. This is the sort of architecture I'd like to see more of in Downtown Raleigh.

Crowder may have been a bit of a NIMBY, but there are two sides to the coin. He was also the only councilmember who wasn't firmly under the influence of developmental firms who wished to railroad their agenda through the city government. He looked out for his constituents, he supported good architecture and rejected bad architecture when it was proposed, and he also supported urban projects like the convention center and the Fayetteville Street Mall. He was the lone dissenter against the convention center Marriott, as well as the ill-fated Soleil Center (joined by Stephenson)--both of which were no-votes I fully agreed with him on. Crowder played a role in downtown Raleigh's revitalization, and ultimately I think the good outweighed the bad from him. His vision may not have been as radical or as keen on dense infill as some of us would've liked, but that's politics. It pains me to hear about his illness. My condolences to him and his family.