Spatula

Raleigh should have retail extending into the eastern neighborhoods. We don't yet have the transition to the east that we have to the west and northwest. Creating a wall of pure residential would permanently lock up the boundaries of downtown in that direction instead of leaving a porous membrane for future pedestrian activity. Partly I want to see the Moore Square district grow and expand to the east. In regards to your points, -There are a few thousand more bodies downtown than there were in 2007. And there will be a few thousand more in a couple years. -Downtown Raleigh has never attempted an actual urban grocery within walking distance of the CBD. Seaboard Station is a car island on the northern edge of downtown. It serves downtown but it also kind of doesn't, at least not in the way that would suit a small grocery. Seaboard is a more logical place for a full-size store like you're talking about, and if such a development happened an existing small grocery on the border of east Raleigh would likely not affect it or be hurt by it. -Considering the dearth of grocers in east Raleigh there is going to be demand.

only the proposals that involve a grocery should be worth consideration

Seems like there's enough clean ROW to run trains right up between the parking deck and Terminal 1 with minimal disturbance to the infrastructure that's there. Of course a tunnel would have to be dug in the plane overpass. I actually think the bridges to cross I-40 and some other obstacles would be a bigger expense. RDU will have an easier time of it, when the time comes, because it's going to be a short jog away from existing stops when the initial line gets built. Other airports like Denver's weren't so conveniently placed. Denver's airport won't even be connected until 2016.

Well Charter Square North would be next on the agenda. Nothing firm yet but presumably it will end up being at least a 20-story tower. Reynolds & Reynolds have also bought the Greyhound block to the north of the Quorum Center, with the intent to building something there. They tried to bring a 30+ floor building to Raleigh, "The Hillsborough" only to have those plans grounded by the great recession. They might try to take another stab at it (and hey that'd be awesome), but I'd guess it would be a more modest building, perhaps about the same size as the Quorum.

Conversely NOVA is much more urban than it used to be, and probably would have been, had it not been for the metro rail. Ballston and Rosslyn and other 'nodes' simply wouldn't exist.

Contrast that with Portland's light rail, which started in 1987, has 57 miles of track in a metro of 2.2 million, and 12.6% use. Portland's transit system has significantly influenced how the region has developed. The lesson to take from this is that rail by itself is not enough. The city has to engage in deliberate land-use regulation for anything to come of transit. Same could be said for Washington DC's system, which is another success story that can't be ignored. The other lesson is that you get what you pay for. Portland and DC both spent more on their systems than Atlanta. A system has to be large enough to offer network benefits.

The traffic around North Hills is some of the worst in Raleigh. It's a car-dependent place and yet parking is a pain. The central shops are laid out as if to look urban but they have no relation to their surrounding neighborhoods and the membranes of the area are not porous to pedestrians like an urban area would be. "New Urbanism" ladies and gentlemen.

Couldn't help but notice this comment at the bottom. I completely disagree. Crank Arm's Motivator and Big Boss's Night Knight are on par with the best of Foothills' and Highlands' lineups. This is all moot anyway, the only way Asheville could still be considered the beer capital of the state is if someone counted only Raleigh proper. If you got Durham and Chapel Hill involved it's pretty clear that the center of activity is in the Triangle, and has been for some time. I mean c'mon, Fullsteam, Steel String? That isn't fair. It's true though that Asheville punches well above its weight for a metro its size though, and proportionally for its population it does a lot more craft brewing than the Triangle.

Oh yeah the AT&T box is not going anywhere, though I think it would be possible to renovate it to make it less ominous. I'm sure it's pie-in-the-sky thinking but I see no reason why windows couldn't be punched into it. Also the historic building on the north end that was incorporated into the switching center could be restored to its old form. I suspect this will be an unpopular opinion but I actually like the BoA building. I do think they should step it up a bit with something taller, but I value that building, as it adds variety and color to the skyline. Though when I say I like it, that doesn't mean I don't love it, but it's okay.

Not thrilled with the architecture for either Hue or 222 but I don't find them offensive, mainly because they're functional. The CC Mariott takes the gold medal for being offensive, ugly, and a totally worthless addition to the streetscape compared to the other recently built buildings. Obviously I could cite the Halifax Mall buildings, the jail, the AT&T box as worse, but those are much older, and they were built at a time when we had collectively forgotten how to plan urban spaces as a society. When stuff like that gets built now it's an atrocity. When I think about all the residential projects, Park Devereux is irritating because it's single-use residential right in the CBD. It creates a wall where there could've been vital activity around Nash Square. Hue and 222 at least have ground floor retail. They actively contribute to the pedestrian environment.

I cannot find any evidence for this online. They seem to be raising the transit fees to pay for new construction and for increased bus driver compensation. Looks like expansion out to University City is still happening. That will be a huge network benefit for the rail system, linking with the university. Where's the problem? Worth noting that the proximity of NCSU to downtown Raleigh is much more favorable for a rail line. 2.3 miles as opposed to 19 miles. For reference downtown Raleigh to downtown Durham is ~25 miles. I think the distribution of highlight areas along the corridor from downtown Raleigh to Durham is also more immediately conducive to rail service. The airport is along the way. The fairgrounds are along the way. RTP is along the way. NCSU and NCCU are on the line as well. Duke just beyond downtown Durham. It just seems like a very solid corridor already with many uses, whereas Charlotte's hotspots are not so conveniently linear.

It still looks pretty dismal compared to Terminal 2, even if it is better than it used to be. Can't argue with free wifi though. Even Denver's palatial airport doesn't have that. I'm guessing that's partly to compete with Charlotte (which also has free wifi). And Char-grill. Vastly better than what's there currently.

For me it is not the overall shape of the tower but the materials and details that go into it. The recently built 1 Bank of America center in Charlotte is my favorite tower in that city and it's nothing more than a green glass box, but the interplay of architectural elements makes it a really pleasing building to look at. I'd love to see something like that in Raleigh.

'Abomination' is a pretty strong word for the PNC Plaza. I would strongly disagree with that. I was skeptical of the dunce cap at first but it's grown on me. The building itself looks good and downtown Raleigh looks vastly better with that building than without. VASTLY. I would also disagree that the city played a passive role in its planning... RBC Centura wanted to put their building in the Site 1 lot, and they wanted a building that was half the height of what we got. Raleigh nudged Highwoods into the old First Citizens lot and then nudged them into adding the residential section and gave us a better building for it. The same could not be said about the Marriott, which I agree is an EIFS elephant that cheapifies the surrounding buildings and looks very bland. It's a bad convention center hotel. There isn't even a street-level connection with the convention center it supposedly serves! Surely they could have done that. The underground connection is fine and all but the ground level has poor access and the Fayetteville street front is lifeless and unfitting for the street. I can't sugarcoat that building. This new hotel looks similarly suburban. It's not great but it's not as bad as the Marriott. If the beige stucco in the render were replaced with red brick it would be a good looking building actually. Maybe they could be coaxed into doing that... perhaps it's too late though.

The Durham section of the line looks very logical. It follows the 15-501 corridor and then the Erwin corridor, hitting commercial areas with lots of residential in a 1-mile radius near New Hope Commons, South Square, Duke Hospital, a couple areas Downtown, and NCCU. Couldn't ask for more from a Chapel-Hill to Durham line, really. The Chapel Hill section is what bothers me. It takes a very meandering route away from anything noteworthy and ducks in at a very inconvenient part of the southernmost section of campus. Sure, alright Glen Lennox is becoming a decent hub, but it's a longer, more circuitious route than just following 15-501 to say... Raleigh Road/South Road and then cutting through the center of the campus. There are proposals for stations with new neighborhoods in the empty areas where it stops. So it seems entirely dependent upon new development to justify itself, and not additions to existing centers. I notice the highlighted route still requires removing a number of buildings on campus and building several miles of elevated section, in order to cut over to Mason Farm Rd. Would that really be all that much cheaper than the Raleigh Rd route I'm thinking of, which wouldn't have to remove anything? Ugh... I mean, it's fine. I suspect it would be less time-consuming to just hop off the train onto the CL bus from New Hope Commons to Franklin Street for most people. (CL doesn't actually go out that far but I figure Chapel Hill would do something to its bus connections there to bridge the gap and connect to Durham). If you live in Meadowmont or Glen Lennox you make out like a king though.

It's appalling that the Hotel is being built where a nice corner of shops already exists. Why not the surface parking lot next to the abandoned Darryl's? Why not add density where Hillsborough needs it? Oh yeah, because the fine administrators at state just love to hog that lot for themselves.

The irony is that the real skyline has the new Wake County Justice Center in it, which is completely missing from the banner. The Clarion and Quorum are also missing. They do need to replace that banner. Frankly I think the 'money shot' is actually the worst angle. The best angle would be the view from Chavis Park--where Raleigh looks very impressive--similar to Providence or Richmond, but with better architecture. That view will only get better since the Skyhouse and Charter Square buildings will be prominent in it once they're built, and the new Red Hat sign on Progress II will also stand out. I don't think Raleigh's skyline is bad. People that say it's bad for its size tend to compare it to cities that are actually larger. In terms of MSA population, Raleigh's downtown seems to be about the size one would expect it to be. It merely isn't an overachiever like Charlotte.

Well it looks much better than it does at the moment. Better than the old Terminal C as well. It definitely pales in comparison to T2 though.

That's no place to raise children! We must keep them safe in the car. Just think... there could be poors walking around!

I really resent Southpoint. Not just the mall itself and its location, but the strip malls around it. They're the most auto-dependent shopping areas in the Triangle. You literally cannot walk from Southpoint to REI or Target, thanks to the way the parking and connecting roads are set up. The mass-migration of shops there is sucking the life out of pretty much every other commercial area. Plus it killed South Square, which is now another horrific strip. I think CTC is an enclosed mall that's in a lot of trouble. Now, while we may not always like enclosed malls for the business they stole from downtowns in the 70s and 80s, they are starting to gain a bit of historic character. They represent the public areas 2-3 generations grew up with, and they actually have civic value to them, so it will be important to keep a few of the old ones around. Unfortunately older malls like Northgate and Cary Town Center happen to be the most threatened. These malls also have the best chances of being better urbanized and integrated with their surrounding neighborhoods, and supplementing the cultural tapestry of the city they're in. Crabtree will be fine, though without the Capitol Room (on the 3rd floor of Hudson Belk), and Dunderbak's I no longer have any reason to go there. Luckily CR moved downtown. Southpoint is far away from everyone and everything. There is absolutely no hope it will ever become more urban. The relatively small enclosed space in Southpoint is really just a nucleus for the asteroid of strip malls that will continue to go up around it. Plus it has the worst parking lot in the state. We're getting national retail the Triangle has never seen... and of all the places it could go, it's going to Southpoint.

Does it still have the world's smallest Barnes&Noble? I loved that thing...

south hills mall should pull the same type of redevelopment that north hills did open it up and integrate it with the grid as for cary... unless they get serious about attracting urban developments to chatham street and the surrounding areas, the malls will be the only activity centers it has

This is fine. Remember, the park was mostly a method of protection from encroaching developments in case the hospital did pack up shop. Since they're not, the natural areas will be safer. However, even with the campus there, there's a lot of unused space. I'd be up for at least making greenway links with the soccer field, pullen park, lake Raleigh, and Centennial Campus

I would echo Bob Geary's opinion about sales taxes

Is this not exactly what I said? Where does your problem stem from? Once it starts operating, a maglev line is cheaper than a HSR line. However, it is not backwards compatible with existing tracks, and it costs billions to build just 30 km of new tracks. Like any technology that's in its infancy, it's going to suck for a while. However, once the infrastructure exists to manufacture these types of tracks easily, you'll see a lot more of them. Is that a claim that you would dispute, or do you think it's a technological dead end? 'national pride' is completely speculative. I won't touch that. 'crushing property rights' is interesting... considering no rail or road projects could ever get built without purchasing right of ways. That's not a problem specific to maglev, nor do I really consider it a problem.