jtmonk

Probably taking down the tower crane

Agreed, their first sign was pretty nice.

NASCAR has changed their sign on top of their building, it's a lot more tasteful.

Parking is free if you go to WholeFoods, they should have given you a receipt to validate your parking.

So we were told that more information would come out today, anyone know when we might hear something?

Thanks @smeagolsfree I follow you on the Nashville thread and you always seem to know your stuff. Awesome stuff going on in Nashville by the way.

There's a lot of different projects proposed in the area. Right now we're working with a developer on a 3 story apartment building in the area, the new brewery should start pulling their permits any day now, plus a possible partnership with NC State University to develop the old Lexington Home Brands showroom into a agriculture innovation center for research and production of plant based oils, etc. We also continue to work with the state of other agencies on getting the train station up and running which is pretty much shovel ready. The plan is to build the platform first along with a temporary station. The main station will come later as it is pretty grand in scale and funding is limited, I actually have a hard time seeing the main station come to fruition as planned but can definitely see a scaled down version being built. There's also a lot of other great things going on around the city, a number of buildings downtown are being renovated into office and retail space with apartments on the top level plus your typical chain establishments coming to the city.

Looks like it is being used to take down the parking deck cranes.

Digging?! Don't you mean we should be seeing a rendering by March or April. I wouldn't expect digging until early or late fall. They haven't even submitted plans to the City yet.

I would bet they cover that up with a mural, no way they leave it like that.

@KJHburg Wish I could make it but I'll be working. I do appreciate all the contributions you make to this board, thanks for everything!

Putting this here as a friendly reminder of what this thread is actually about. I believe I read that Beacon plans to start construction on the first phase this summer, guess they plan to go spec?

I'll have to disagree with some of critiques you guys are making. I like the design and think it's a design that we need more of in Charlotte, not less. The proportions and layout do not seem that off to me. At first glance the few changes I would make is to move the hotel, retail and office space D around so that the hotel doesn't face the townhomes. I would also like for them to invest in a underground storm water retention system to free up the space at the corner of DeWitt Lane and Tryclan Road for more development. The name is pretty lame, they should just stick with Scaleybark Station. However, I think that Beacon has come up with better names than most other developers in the City.

Don't worry, I cancelled it out with an up vote/like!

That's just mean, don't tease us like that.

Wonder if they'll use the same crane for LU2? All you have to do is take the crane down, move it 100+ feet over and reassemble it.

I think the "overly dramatic" reaction comes from how you present some of your arguments on these threads. For example, you stated the aquatic center is "the biggest waste uptown" that has "no components that benefit too much of anybody." I know you don't mean to offend anyone but for the number of people who do use that place your statement comes off as offensive. You're basically saying that not only is the aquatic center a waste of space but that the service it provides is a waste too and the people who use it are not important (again, i know you don't actually mean that but some people may read it that way). Also remember that sometimes things get lost in translation on these forums and people may take something you say the wrong way, when that happens just try to reiterate your original point in a different way. Now regarding the aquatic center, I actually agree with you that the current set up isn't ideal for Uptown. When the current aquatic center was built there wasn't much emphases at the time on good urban form and development on that side of town was nowhere what it is today. Give it some time and I'm sure that the aquatic center will be redeveloped, hopefully with the aquatic center staying there but with better urban form and maybe a few other uses introduced in that location. I would also like to say welcome to UP @j-man. It's always nice to have new people contribute to the forum and to hear their ideas.

Charlotte does have character and does have a sense of place. It may not be well known to some and it may not be up to some peoples "standards" but Charlotte is a great place with plenty of things to distinguish it from other places (aviation museum, Carowinds, whitewater center, awesome breweries, finance, NASCAR, etc.). What Charlotte needs to keep doing is to build on what it has. It irritates me when people complain about the lack of this or the lack of that and then suggest that we copy something that another city has. And who cares if there are people out there that don't know the difference in Charlotte, Charleston, and Charlottesville. There are plenty of people out there who do the same with Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus or Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Indianapolis, etc. Now lets get back to topic and take the rest of this conversation to the coffeehouse.

I was only born in 85 but many of these street closures lasted through the 2000's, I believe Raleigh just converted Fayetteville Street back to vehicular traffic in 2006 with great success in revitalizing their downtown. I'm a City Planner and remember in college learning about pedestrian malls/street closures and the uphill battles they faced. Unfortunately most of them fail. There are a lot of pieces that have to fall in place in order for these to work and I just do not think Trade Street has them yet. One other thing to consider are the hotels that have pick up and drop off on Trade Street in Uptown. It will take a lot of money to reconfigure these hotels to have their pick up/drop off areas moved, if that's even possible from an engineering/structural standpoint. As for your counter points , I agree with them to an extent. I think there's room for some sort of dedicated greenway/bike path on parts of Trade Street and think its better than taking a lane from 5th/6th street. However, I think this can be accomplished without closing the street down to vehicles.

Not a fan of closing down Trade. Remember in the 70's and 80's when cities closed down a main street basically killing off commercial and pedestrian activity in these areas? Ask Raleigh or Winston or a number of other cities throughout the US how that turn out. Yes, there are examples where this worked. However, these places have: 1) a large university at or near the closed street; 2) located in an area of high tourism; 3) a built environment that already encourages pedestrian activity; plus numerous other variables. Unfortunately, Trade Street doesn't have this. Even with the Gold Line, there isn't a sufficient amount of activity along many parts of Trade that would make this work. Now if Trade Street had a number of turn of the century buildings with retail, commercial and residential uses then yeah, maybe it would work, but unfortunately we don't have that. The best bet for CATS is to synchronize the lights on Trade to better accommodate the Street Car.

I had about 14" at my house

That number you looked at is just for boardings, not total passengers. When taking total passenger in account RDU actually served over 11 million passengers . All the top 50 airports severed over 8 million passengers. I do think RIC bleeds a lot of passengers to Dulles and National, once RIC gets some flights out west plus some added frequencies to popular destinations, I think you guys could easily reach the 5 or 6 million mark, still out of the top 50 though.

Any time frame of this?

I agree with RDF, depending on how they handle the details it could be nice. It's not going to win any awards, but nice. And I'll take this over any 6 story stucco and hardie board building going up. Also wish it was just a little bit taller, I mean give me an extra couple of floors and let it stand out a little bit.

Pretty evening today