JeffC

^ Seems the concern about Peace College buying the complex was somewhat overblown. They repeatedly assured the City Council they wanted to keep the area going as a source of income. (aren't some major landmarks in Manhattan owned by the endowments of colleges and universities? Hardly a novel concept)

427 S. Blount is the Masonic Temple Building , dating back to when the Masons were segregated. The upper floors have always been boarded up as long as I've been living in Raleign (20 years). It is a secret society, after all...

There's no need for a subway when you lack surface density--why pay billions of dollars to build a tunnel underneath low density houses and strip malls? It's be cheaper, on a per mile basis, to pay each landowner a fair return on his investment and tear it all down to build a brand new rail line (not that they'd do it) than it would be to build something underground, particular for the 12-18 miles from N. Raleigh to RTP...

would that road have been paved with anything, or would you just be looking for a road bed? Also, did this road predate the extension of St. Mary's through there? If it diverged from St. Mary's at Nichols, it would have been running parallel to that road less than a block distant for nearly a mile...perhaps they closed this road when they built St. Mary's through there?

No surprise...that area is just about filled with cheap, cookie cutter subdivisions, and judging by the recent crime stories, is well on its way to being Raleigh's next ghetto.

FWIW, I've found Route 2 to be fairly handy (up and back Falls of Neuse) and reliable. And downtown, I'm noticing more and more people waiting at stops for the R circulator bus.

FWIW, Red Hot and Blue is no great loss. Blaming the traffic is somewhat of a red herring. The food was mediocre and way overpriced, given some of the culinary competition in the area. I go to the church right across the street, so it was a popular lunch spot on Sundays. When I began noticing that folks from our church made up 75%+ of the Sunday afternoon lunch crowd, even during football season, I sort of suspected the place was doomed. The plus is that there is now a nicely refurbished spot for a cool local place to go into.

Hey, the real old timers like me remember when Glenwood south was nothing more than Sunflowers on the corner next the the TV repair store that became the Hibernian years later...and the commercial strip where Zelly and Ritz and the sushi place are was a couple of old bungalows.

Interesting collection. Of particular interest to me was the 1977 shot of the Legislative Building that appears to show a house across Lane Street, where the pedestrian bridge is now...I thought they had cleared all the State Government mall area by then (indeed, you can see the Archdale Building and the Dobbs Building in the picture--the Legislative Office Building had apparently not yet been built.

I think the retention of Dix property's use as a mental health facility is GOOD news, because it keeps it out of the hands of developers for years to come. As for the State's plan to build more buildings there, given the current fiscal situation and the legislators' rather dim view of DHHS's management capabilities, I wouldn't lose too much sleep over the prospect of hundreds of thousands of square feet of new DHHS bureaucracy out there--particularly given that the current glut of office space all over town leads to bargains when DHHS goes shopping for space to lease.

Is a skating rink really a good idea in a climate where we have many more days above 60 degrees in December, January, and February than days where the daytime temps don't get out of the 30s...

Place was never the same after Peak bought them. I bailed in the spring for Golds at North Hills, spurning various all cash up front discounted offers from Peak (and boy, wasn't that a good decision). They drove that downtown location nose first into the ground. Until Golds North Hills came along, Capital Fitness was the best place in the city. The deterioriation under Peak's bargain basement management was breathtaking. I remember one of their poor front end sales people (who are basically hired to deceive people) talking about how many thousands of dollars they had poured into the downtown location. I asked him to name some specific projects (this was before they put the new faux wood floors in the locker room). Know what the only thing he could name? The new "Peak Fitness" sign they put on the building. I laughed out loud at him and suggested maybe they should have used that money on fixing the numerous pieces of broken equipment that would sit around for months. One sad thing is that Peak's old Spa Health club location in North Raleigh (FON and Spring Forest), which has been a gym for decades and had a GREAT wet area is also closing. Shame Peak's mismanagement dragged down locations that had been profitable for years.

It is clear that our amenities (parks, greenways, museums, symphonies, amusement parks, etc.) haven't kept up with our population growth. At some point, some of the highly-educated urbane people moving here with corporate relocations are going to start standing up and saying that the emperor has no clothes...many "old"cities with comparable populations have far superior cultural and recreational amenities...

The sites of Reynolds Tower and the Lafeyette will eventually have something on them, IMO. I doubt the "ell" ever gets built, and twenty years from now will be a trivia question..."Why is that parking deck look finished on two sides, and ugly on the other two?" And all of us will know and remember... I believe the entire concept of the "ell" building was marginal from the start at this stage of downtown density (and is exhibit A as to the mania of the recent and now deflated real estate lending bubble). Look at the deck at the corner of Cabarrus and wilmington...they reserved space on street level there for commercial development, and nothing has happened there in over 10 years...Given the glut of street level commercial space that is unused or underused, it will be decades before the demand reaches a level that street level retail in and around parking decks becomes financially viable to develop.

Reading in the paper this morning about the Lafeyette joining the Reynolds Tower on the scrap heap, I started wondering...although the building torn down to make way for the Reynolds Tower certainly wasn't historic or notable, it has, nonetheless been replaced by a parking lot that is likely to be there for years if not decades. What OTHER great Raleigh buildings in the 60s and 70s were demolished to make way for projects that were never built? I suspect the demolition of some of the grand homes along Blount Street where those acres of asphalt now are was justified as needed for some building scheme that never materialized... What else have we lost to building proposals that disappeared not long after the beautiful, notable, or historic structures they were supposed to replace? My list includes: -old Meredith College (didn't the state have some plan to put something on that lot? -that nicely restored commercial building (it was painted yellow) in the block across the street from 42nd street that was demolished last week, and which is also likely to devolve into an asphalt parking lot, unfortunately. If I ran the city, developers of projects like this would be required to post a bond to cover the cost of at least providing some nice landscaping for the cleared sites of these projects (maybe that requirement already exists?) when they evolve into semi-permanent parking lots...

If you don't work AT NC State or right along Hillsborough street right there, why in the world would you be using that street as a route to go anywhere else? (and, in fact, if you work at NC State, why not use Western Blvd or Gorman Street/Sullivan Drive to access campus?) In light of the numerous alternatives actually designed to funnel traffic downtown, noone traveling east/west in West Raleigh should EVER use Hillsborough Street as a through route, other than the groups noted at the beginning of this post. If the construction encourages drivers going from 440 and points west towards downtown to find alternate routes, it will have all been worth it, IMO...

so this "new house" built by Elizabeth Love on the NE corner of New Bern & Bloodworth no longer exists, right? Isn't Bloodworth where there is new "vernacularly appropriate" infill houses on each side of Bloodworth at New Bern? Or am I off by a block?

If they build it as pictured in the paper today, Centennial Campus will finally have its architectural landmark (although I have always liked the design of the Textile School and associated plazas and how it relates to the stream it sits next to, some of the research buildings are absolute dreck. Park Alumni center, though certainly a very nice facility is rather cliche architecturally--obvious they were keeping it safe to preserve that wedding reception business.

I am fairly sure that this has to be the namesake of the village of Millbrook, because, if you look at Google maps, this site is only maybe 1/3 to 1/2 mile northwest of the original site of the village (which I understand to be where Millbrook meets Old Wake Forest and the railroad tracks). One of the giant tire/service places there is the original site of the Millbrook Masonic Lodge, and the Methodist Church is right on the corner there, with the Baptists half a block away. I'm guessing a road to the mill would have been a left turn off of Old Wake Forest just north of where it crosses Millbrook. Old Wake Forest follows its original alignment for a few hundred yards north of Millbrook, then swings to the left to connect up with Forest Oaks, which deadends into Atlantic Avenue. Where it swings to the left, there is a remaining vestigial stub of Old Wake Forest that now deadends.

Is the Citgo the former front yard of this house?

Right next to the Tennis club, there is a large transmission line right of way. You walk down that right of way away from Falls of the Neuse (not that far, IIRC) until you see a path (kids dirt bike sort of path) going to the left into the woods. follow path until you reach the creek. Can't miss it...enormous dam/spillway structure. It is practically in the back yard of some houses in the neighborhood off of Falls Church (Falls Church is the next right turn off of Falls after the Racquet Club and then the old brick condos across from the Catholic Church)

So Morgan Street split the block where the Federal complex is now, and the old high school was on the southern side of Morgan through there? What was on the northern end of that block? Some beautiful old houses, I bet...

Has anyone run across any pictures of old Hugh Morson High School? I was driving down Bloodworth today behind the Federal complex, and noted that there is a one block "Morson Street" that dead ends into Bloodworth there--I bet that Street originally ended at the front of the school, like the elementary school on St. Marys street behind the college (Wiley, I think?) EDIT: found some pics at Goodnight Raleigh Good lord, what a beautiful building. What would people pay to have a loft Condo in a building like that today at that location? I'm coming to the realization that the 1960s were, collectively, an architectural catastrophe for downtown Raleigh in terms of great buildings lost....

Environmental cleanup of that site has been going on for years...haven't checked lately, but they had some kind of groundwater remediation system operating there for years (you could see the machinery behind some bushes right along Dawson Street). If it isn't there anymore, it means the remediation has been completed, but it then can take years to get a final closure letter from EPA or the state Department of Environment. As you might guess, fairly difficult to get financing on a contaminated site until you get that "no further action" letter...

I disagree...from the Airport Authority's own annual report for 2008 , page 20: "Parking continues to be RDU's leading revenue generator. With more than 20,000 spaces, parking operations accounted for just over 30 percent of Airport Authority-generated revenue in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2008." the exact figure from that year was 32.7% of revenue (more than landing fees and terminal rents combined). Show me any organization, public or private, that is going to cut into a revenue source that provides one-third of their annual budget... Since parking revenue is their lifeblood, and since the cash strapped local governments who appoint the RDU Authority Board know that if they killed this golden-egg laying goose by making it superconvenient to take mass transit to the airport, they would have to cover the revenue shortfall from their own overextended revenue sources, don't hold your breath waiting for this to happen. It isn't in the financial interests of anyone with any actual authority to make it happen, which means it won't.