[Birmingham International Airport]

A new tallest would really help fill out the skyline.  I hope it gets built, and further hope that it fills in surface parking or an empty lot.

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Great for B'ham! I love your city.

[Hillsborough Street - NCSU Area developments]

Thanks for the quick response. Realigning Oberlin is fine with me with the attention to Historic preservation.

As a perk, or perhaps as an add-on to existing services funded by the downtown fee paid by merchants, a system of trolleys that essentially cover the downtown grid from very early to very late with intervals spaced according to peak usage. As someone who is trying to orient their life, in a live-work fashion downtown, I would make great use of these. They would compensate for certain services not being located downtown such as a grocery store and even encourage people to move downtown. These would be free with the idea that downtown residents would make the most use of them. The coverage would be as follows: three North/South  lines, each following the inbound/outbound pairs of streets, Dawson/McDowell, Salisbury/Wilmington, and Person/Blount. They would generally go between Peace and MLK, recognizing that for instance, McDowell/Dawson would be between South and Lane instead because of the interchanges. The E/W lines would be Peace(would provide Cameron Village access...and Krispy Kreme access!!), Edenton /Morgan (this stretch would be the longest, from NCSU to possibly DMV) and a Warehouse/Convention District connector along Martin and/or Davie or a wider loop along a two-way Lenoir, up Boylan and back accross a two-way Hargett past the new Train Station on Hargett. These Trolleys would be more useful than the long forgotten State Employee Lunch Trolley and the recently defunct Th-Sat Entertainment Trolley. While I am at it, the other 'service' I want in the grid is wi-fi access all along Fayetteville Street and City Market, once again, a perk for those willing to live downtown.

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#Wow, great stuff!!!

BTW, do you think ripping out F'ville Mall is good?

[Hillsborough Street - NCSU Area developments]

Pushing Clark through to Dixie would have meant tearing down the houses on Bagwell...but theoretically, it makes a lot of sense. Westbound Clark drivers - with the assistance of the COR DOT have made Kilgore an expressway. I would return Kilgore to two way traffic...

I have fiddled with ideas such as trolly service all over the downtown grid with maybe one going to NC State but actual tracks in the ground do not seem feasible.

Please elaborate if you can....

I would also nix this general version of the "Ferndell Connector" on the grounds that a single circa 1900 home would have to be demolished on Ferndell.

The plan would not disturb the Ferndell House - it would have taken Oberlin through the NCSU parking lots unlike the DOT's "Ferndell Connector" proposal.

Thanks!

[Portland Projects & Development]

Anything happening up on Munjoy Hill???

[Hillsborough Street - NCSU Area developments]

See this:

Link to Conversation about Triangle Town Center

[Hillsborough Street - NCSU Area developments]

Does anyone remember this?

HillsboroStreet.pdf ( 193.76k ) Number of downloads: 15

HillboroStreetText.pdf ( 439.67k ) Number of downloads: 11

HillboroStreetText2.pdf ( 401.5k ) Number of downloads: 9

I lived in Raleigh and worked with the Hillsborough Street group that was created because of this guy's work. The consultants ended up recommending something like 11 "roundabouts" but the majority of residents at the charette really wanted Cirello's plan for just two "traffic circles", and his realignment of Pullen and Oberlin Roads adopted. He also suggested reintroducing streetcar service between Meredith College (?) and the State Capitol.

What do you think?

[Hillsborough Street - NCSU Area developments]

Comments on the design: streetcars under the traffic circles? Wow, that'd be pretty awesome. But, of course, expensive. The traffic circle diagram looks big and european, but with six points of entry, it also looks inefficient and not particularly safe, so maybe a modern 4-way roundabout would be better? I sort of agree that I'd rather see two or three roundabouts on Hillsborough than ELEVEN.

I agree but I think that the intention was to create focal points (like in Europe or even in DC)...I remember someone seriously suggesting moving the NCSU Bell Tower to the center of the traffic circle at Pullen; if not some type of water feature. The idea was to create a ceremonial street... Also, the city/state - at the time - were working on (it's now completed) what amounted to a "bypass" or alternative to Hillsborough Street, for traffic going downtown (Western Boulevard).

The other "focal point" was to be at Hillsborough and Fairview/Gorman. It would have acted a "gateway" to Meredith College (leaving Raleigh) and as a gateway to the historic, urban, portion of Hillborough Street begins near here and goes all the way to downtown...

The streetcar would have either ended here or continued onto the Fairgrounds. Cirello proposed improving Gorman from the "Meredith Circle" to the train tracks to create a ped corridor to a possible TTA station at Gorman. (I have an image I'll add later.)

I don't think that closing off the old Oberlin Rd to traffic would have worked. If it were right in front of campus, maybe, but it's a block east of the belltower and it's just not visible enough. I like what the city's plan does - widens the sidewalk, adds parking, and makes it a one-way street for cars from WB Hillsborough to NB Oberlin.

The idea here was to take Oberlin through the parking lot behind what was Darryl's and align it with Pullen. This would negate the need for the current alignment of Oberlin. We also agreed that by closing off Oberlin between Groveland and Hillsborough would help contribute to the creation of the focal point (traffic circle) activity center... Access (and safety) at Groveland would also be improved by the alignment because it could then "T" into Oberlin instead of having that freaky alignment that exists today.

I like the quotation from the article where the head of the planning commision says that the number one concern is that the Raleigh tax rate stays reasonable. Of course effective use of taxpayer money has always been an essential mission of any government. But in the eight short years since that article was published, the threshold for what is "effective" and what is "wasteful" in the city of Raleigh seems to have changed. Also conspicuously absent in the article is mention of increasing the tax base through higher land values and development, although I'm sure it was discussed at the time.

LMAO! Actually though, Tom Fetzer was mayor at the time - a big "fiscal conservative" when it came to public spending...in any case,

The increase in tax values was something Cirello talked about when he went to present the project to the City Council. A few of we early diehard supporters went to that meeting with him; so we were very surprised at the time, considering the make-up of the Council of the time, how he was able to "fire" them up with his ideas. The News and Observer covered the meeting (I'll look through my stuff for the article).

P.S. The streetcars going under "Pullen Circle" would have been similar to the way streetcars once operated in DC on Connecticut Avenue through Dupont Circle...they could have just as easily remained on the surface...

[Hillsborough Street - NCSU Area developments]

Does anyone remember this?

HillsboroStreet.pdf

HillboroStreetText.pdf

HillboroStreetText2.pdf

I lived in Raleigh and worked with the Hillsborough Street group that was created because of this guy's work. The consultants ended up recommending something like 11 "roundabouts" but the majority of residents at the charette really wanted Cirello's plan for just two "traffic circles", and his realignment of Pullen and Oberlin Roads adopted. He also suggested reintroducing streetcar service between Meredith College (?) and the State Capitol.

What do you think?

[North Carolina Intercity Rail Transit]

Nice plans, but is is unfortunate that Western NC continues to get short changed by in these kind of plans.

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Remarkable, isn't it? Back in the early 2000's I believe that a study to operate rail between Greensboro and Asheville scored higher (greater ridership, lower costs) than the SE (Raleigh-Wilmington) proposal...

[North Carolina Intercity Rail Transit]

The report recommends:

-->Implementing passenger train service from Wilmington to Raleigh via Fayetteville and Goldsboro in phases as funds become available.

Exploring implementation of a demonstration commuter service between Smithfield-Selma and Raleigh (mentions EASTRANS).

link

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I'm impressed to see Eastrans still mentioned by name. It was a very, very difficult project to get up and running...and the political ramifications were deadly for some. If Eastrans ever gets running I hope that its founder gets some credit.

[City Hall]

I love NYC, LA, Philly (and Asheville - I'm an Art Deco whore)...but my sentimental favorite is SF.

[Charlotte MLB Team Speculation]

I doubt it.  Doesn't seem like there's much interest in baseball down here.  Maybe it's the south in general....the Braves, Fla. marlins and TB Devil Rays have pretty bad attendance historically.  The braves can't even sell out their playoff games.

The kingpin sports down here are really just basketball, football and nascar.

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I've read this before. I would be cautious about comparing NC to FL however. Minus Florida the only other "Southern" team is Atlanta...

[Charlotte MLB Team Speculation]

That is true,but Milwaukee didn't have MLB until 1970? I agree though, that a "market" no matter how large needs to mature...which is why I wonder how Atlanta got the Braves in the mid-60's when the city was so small and the market as yet, unproven? Was it because the league foresaw the great growth of Atlanta (something which is certainly true of NC's cities now); or was it because a group of civic, sports-enthuasist, leaders pushed it? In any case, if MLB is still around in 10 years or so, I can't imagine that the MLB could ignore NC too much longer...

[NASCAR Hall of Fame]

^^ LOVE IT! BTW, aren't NASCAR's origins in NC/VA...something about bootleggers...?

Anyhow, as person who grew up in the provincial states of New England, I've grown to appreciate NASCAR and think that Charlotte could do well to land the HOF.

[Charlotte MLB Team Speculation]

Rank Households

New York 1 7,376 (6.8%)

Los Angeles 2 5,402 (4.9%)

Chicago 3 3,399 (3.1%)

Philadelphia 4 2,874 (2.6%)

Boston (Manchester) 5 2,392 (2.2%)

San Francisco-Oak-San Jose 6 2,441 (2.2%)

Dallas-Ft. Worth 7 2,256 (2.0%)

Washington, DC (Hagrstwn) 8 2,224 (2.0%)

Atlanta 9 2,035 (1.8%)

Detroit 10 1,923 (1.7%)

Houston 11 1,849 (1.7%)

Seattle-Tacoma 12 1,685 (1.5%)

Tampa-St. Pete (Sarasota) 13 1,644 (1.5%)

Minneapolis-St. Paul 14 1,636 (1.5%)

Phoenix (Prescott), AZ 15 1,562 (1.4%)

Cleveland-Akron (Canton) 16 1,543 (1.4%)

Miami-Ft. Lauderdale 17 1,511 (1.3%)

Denver 18 1,399 (1.2%)

Sacramnto-Stktn-Modesto 19 1,278 (1.1%)

Orlando-Daytona Bch-Melbrn 20 1,264 (1.1%)

St. Louis 21 1,202 (1.1%)

Pittsburgh 22 1,175 (1.0%)

Baltimore 23 1,083 (0.9%)

Portland, OR 24 1,073 (0.9%)

Indianapolis 25 1,038 (0.9%)

San Diego 26 1,029 (0.9%)

Hartford & New Haven 27 1,001 (0.9%)

Charlotte 28 987 (0.9%)

Raleigh-Durham (Fayetvlle) 29 948 (0.8%)

Nashville 30 904 (0.8%)

Kansas City 31 875 (0.8%)

Milwaukee 32 871 (0.8%)

Cincinnati 33 872 (0.8%)

Columbus, OH 34 854 (0.7%)

Greenvll-Spart-Ashevll-And 35 807 (0.7%)

Salt Lake City 36 786 (0.7%)

San Antonio 37 736 (0.6%)

Grand Rapids-Kalmzoo-B.Crk 38 724 (0.6%)

West Palm Beach-Ft. Pierce 39 709 (0.6%)

Birmingham (Ann and Tusc) 40 698 (0.6%)

Norfolk-Portsmth-Newpt Nws 41 694 (0.6%)

Harrisburg-Lncstr-Leb-York 42 637 (0.5%)

New Orleans 43 665 (0.6%)

Memphis 44 662 (0.6%)

Oklahoma City 45 647 (0.5%)

Buffalo 46 648 (0.5%)

Albuquerque-Santa Fe 47 634 (0.5%)

Greensboro-H.Point-W.Salem 48 645 (0.5%)

Providence-New Bedford 49 636 (0.5%)

Louisville 50 624 (0.5%)

Las Vegas 51 602 (0.5%)

Jacksonville, Brunswick 52 598 (0.5%)

This is a list of the largest media markets in the US. As you can tell, except for Oregon; North Carolina has the largest markets with the fewest pro teams...in fact, NC's three largest metros (which overlap now in the media realm anyway, have over 2,500,000 households...

The markets in italics are smaller than NC's largest markets and have more than one pro-team...

I can certainly see an NC pro baseball team (heck, Colorado and Arizona can support 3+ teams!).