JunktionFET

Good idea, though South Hills (and that area) has kind of evolved into a miniature international district, in a way... might be kind of cool and quirky to leave all of that alone and see what happens. Speaking of malls, Cary Towne Center seems like it's suffering a bit. I went in there for the first time in years and it was kind of dead. I walked in through the Belk entrance and everything had this imminent feel. I don't know... Has anyone else noticed this? This is completely off topic, oops.

Cary is like a menu with only appetizers. Does that make it a bar?

Cary is the product of many decades of bad decisions. They may have seemed benign at the time, or even advantageous, but now what we have is a "city" that really doesn't seem like one. And let's be honest, many other suburb towns/cities have followed similar paths and are in the same boat right now. Perhaps as a regional rail system is established there will be new-found interest in the property along the rail line and through downtown. If that is the case, such transit oriented (re)developments could serve as a seed for some really clever and contemporary urban growth decades down the road. Something pretty ground-breaking like that has to occur, otherwise we will continue to see the same development patterns that I've seen since I was a student at East Cary Middle school back in 1989. Cary, like a lot of things, has a catastrophic amount of inertia when it comes to change. It takes a great force to overcome it.

This is a very fascinating thread... learn something new every day.

I had to connect in CLT last Monday and last Friday and both times the moving sidewalks for Concourse C were working... I had to go between C and B actually and all the sidewalks along the way seemed to be working. Have they broken down more recently?

My family moved back to NC along about 1989 or so, and I went to middle school right down the street from the mall. Our 8th grade technology class took a field trip to the mall to see the new part under construction. At the time it was very secret and there was no way for cars to access the rear part of the mall to see the work in progress.

Maybe that's why my flights are frequently so late or cancelled... I've been booking with a nonexistent airline.

Hello All, long time no see I fly a lot now for work, mostly between RDU and LaGuardia, but I go other places as well. LaGuardia is exceptionally old and they have pretty nasty delay issues in my experience, perhaps not as bad as JFK, but anyway. I have credit cards for both AmericanAdvantage and USAir Dividend Miles, so naturally I am going to choose one or the other so I can collect whatever reward I can... I've had the best luck with American and they are my first choice. It seems like they have the most flights where I want to go and they seem somewhat timely. I want to support USAir since their success somehow may affect Charlotte and/or North Carolina, so they are my second choice. My luck with USAir is spotty at best. Perhaps by sheer chance, my flights are either exceptionally late or they get cancelled. A few times though USAir has surprised me and and gotten me where I need to be nearly on time despite a very late departure or change of flights. It's still a hassle. USAir does have the nicest terminal at LaGuardia Anyway I hope they do improve, because I would use them more. USAir did give me my first flight on a Dash-8, which was extraordinary. I'm a bit of an aircraft geek.

I just returned from a trip to Seattle, and this is the first time I've flown on Northwest out of RDU. Man... Terminal A at RDU is embarrassing, especially the far side of the terminal where Northwest is. And the really crappy part is the lack of any people movers and the presence of those hills/ramps. The Northwest terminal in Detroit is absolutely fantastic. It's efficient, modern, and very pretty. Thanks to the elevated tram, you can make a 10 minute connection even if your gates are on opposite sides of the terminal. I can't say the same for the rest of DTW though SeaTac was nothing to write home about, but I think even it is more impressive than RDU. On the way back I had to connect in Minneapolis. I'd probably have to rank that airport 2nd behind RDU for inefficient and completely uninspiring design--and there were waaay too few people movers for such a long linear terminal. It's a shame to think that Terminal A at RDU may not be rebuilt for a long time, but I really hope some nifty upgrades are in the queue for the short term. As an airport, RDU has a pretty significant "rinky-dink" feel in my opinion. Maybe Terminal C will change that.

I expect there to be a lot of disagreements and poor decisions made along the way, but overall downtown is shaping into something really special. Look at how long it has taken Charlotte's downtown to recover into a truly functional and complete modern neighborhood, and it still has a ways to go.

That slice of land is begging for redevelopment. As the Crabtree Valley area evolves over the next two years or so, I suspect we'll see something really cool proposed for the hill. Heading west on the I-440 Beltline from the North Hills area, you can see across to the other side of Crabtree Valley (about a mile away) and see some structures there on Kidd's Hill. It is a great location.

That building is stunning and will absolutely transform the look of downtown Nashville. Way to score!!

I spent some time at Crabtree last week--the first time I've done so in a long while. It was remarkably busy during the afternoon--moreso than it was the last time I wandered about. Have any of you frequent shoppers noticed an increase in visitors or did I just hit it on a good day. I never thought I'd say this, but I rather like that mall and the potential of the surrounding area. I have a feeling that Crabtree Valley is destined for great things. I hope the cards are played right and the developers really do some cool stuff with the area. What the hell happened to PF Changs. Last few times I went there it was busy but not too bad. Last Saturday we went and were disappointed to find a 2.5 hour wait for the dining room and an alleged 3 hour wait in the bar section. Holy crap!! Crabtree was blowing up. Not literally of course. We ended up settling for NeoChina, which is actually a pretty good restaurant... though I was really in the mood for PF Changs, and we didn't feel like driving to SouthPointe (which had a mere 1 hour wait according to the person we talked to on the phone).

My brother works for a geological-ish firm in Raleigh and has told me the entire story. There is a stripe of very dense graphite that allegedy runs from, or ran from, Macedonia (now part of Cary--Walnut St/Holly Springs Rd/Tryon Rd intersection area) all the way up into North Raleigh. Most experts seem to believe it is vestigal "pond scum" from an ancient stream or lake that has been stretched and subducted somewhat over the course of millions of years--and now essentially resides as a stripe beneath the top soil. In fact there is a stream over behind the National Guard center on Blue Ridge Rd where you can pick up chunks of this graphite and actually mark things like wood and paper with it. A large deposit of the graphite was found up in north/northwest Raleigh and it was mined for use in pencils and other products that used or needed graphite. For whatever reason people used to call graphite "Lead" or perhaps got the two materials confused. At any rate, the area was referred to as a Lead Mine--and this is how Lead Mine Rd got its name. I will try to find out the exact location of this former "lead" mine. There may be more than one also.

This undeveloped land along the NCRR corridor can be a good thing in a way. It means that future development can be engineered to be transit oriented from the ground up, and a would-be regional commuter system wouldn't need to dodge existing crap development.

^Yeah, but in the hypothetical situation where all funding is available immediately, high speed trains could be running by 2010. That is probably unlikely, but still shows how money is by far the biggest obstacle.

I wonder if Belk will bring back the cafes in the future? With Federated as well as other names entering this market, I would think Belk may want to bulk up their high-end image to put them above the rest, and an in-store eatery is certainly a novel thing to have nowadays. I realize this is hardly an appropriate comparison, but Macys at Herald Square (NYC) has a rather impressive selection of food. Then again, with like 9 HUGE levels of shopping, serving food does make a lot of sense.

Hudson Belk at Cary Towne Center had a little cafe that was installed when they remodeled the second floor into shopping space. I have no idea if it is still there because honestly I haven't been on Belk's second floor in about 10 years. However I do remember having a burger there shortly after the remodel was complete--I was in my early or mid teens I believe. The food seemed alright and the staff was decent. I cannot recall if I ever had food from Crabtree's cafeteria. I think I recall an eatery of some sort in the store, but I cannot cite any details.

I can't say I like TTC very much. It feels sort of desperate in a way, for lack of a better word. Like someone else said, it has neat little features here and there, but otherwise feels like it's not supposed to even be there. I don't think it has made much of a dent in Crabtree or really even South Pointe. I think the only people who will really be veered away from Crabtree for typical shopping trips are those in northeast and east Raleigh, just because of convenience.

Rumor has it that PART and the city of Winston-Salem are taking the initial steps necessary to reclaim Union Station as eminent domain. I have not found any recent articles about it, but someone alluded to this on another forum. Though Mr. Davis has expressed a desire to stay in the station, surely even he can respect what this station is and what it means for the city. Nobody wants to be forced to do anything, but this isn't just any piece of property, and therefore it shouldn't be treated as a "I peed on it, now it's mine" situation. Once acquired and restored, the station can act as an endpoint for the Asheville passenger rail line, future PART regional rail, future potential HSR routing, as well as other modes of transit. If completed, Greensboro and Winston-Salem will have the only two historical and multi-modal stations in the state that I'm aware of. All of the other proposed multi-modal stations are new construction.

Something better happen there--that location is awesome. It would have a great view, and can be seen from I-440 near the Six Forks Rd exit (due to geography)

Typically yes

There's downtown Durham's new multi-modal station. The renderings and models look quite nice and it has provisions for the proposed TTA rail system too. Downtown Cary's train station is designed to be multi-modal in that it will handle the proposed TTA rail system and also act as a major transfer point for TTA and C-TRAN buses (when C-TRAN starts their fixed routes, this month I believe). Ironically the Cary station also houses a DMV driver license office The station envisioned for downtown Raleigh is also multi-modal (or "inter-modal" as it has been called). It has been through several different revisions and such but certainly combined many different forms of transportation. It also has the capacity to handle eastern commuter transit lines like those suggested by Eastrans. Who knows when this new station will get off the ground though. I believe some of the other recent historic station renovations have had some future multi-modal element in mind. By the way, this news article has two small but interesting photos from the reopened Greensboro station.

Sweet, the midday Piedmont will be a welcome addition for sure. I'm also stoked about the Charlotte-DC high speed rail project too of course. I hope the article is accurate in its claim of HSR service within a decade.

The whole Amtrak story is confusing to me, and is even more confusing when you throw in the story by the Bush Administration (which isn't surprising). I don't see how the 50/50 funding deal proposed by the administration is supposed to work. I assume this means that the federal government matches whatever funds NC throws at passenger rail. But does NC just need to continue subsidizing our own rail service, like they have been, and the feds reciprocate with money and Amtrak service, or just the money? It seems that this question has really not been answered in micro-detail, and the administration's effort is more of a conceptual sales pitch to drum up support for something that, in the end, guts passenger rail in the US. If Amtrak goes away, NC would definitely have to turn the operation of the trains over to an in-state rail transit authority... or perhaps a multistate authority shared with VA and MD (or others...). NCART (North Carolina Authority for Rail Transit) or DELMARVANCART come to mind...