Jones_

Can't tell if there will be another connection to Lassiter Mill or just realigning/reusing of the existing exit. Also I guess the last bit of the old parking garage will bite the dust. Looks good to me. Glad to see an office building on the west side now.

The knee-jerk approach of just forcing on it this one project, with no prior warning, is what I don't like. The City has no affordable housing plan with teeth, just a bunch of goals. They need to establish absolute numbers of units relative to demand, a financial plan for achieving it, and a plan for supporting it with transit, and services.

I don't think the Outpost is.

It was built later to support the parking needs of First Union (later Wachovia and now Wells Fargo). But if you mean structurally support, none of the new building would sit on it from what I can tell...looks like they would just shave off that southern 40%. I haven't been in it since shortly after it was built but think I remember it functioning sort of like two decks conjoined at that center elevator shaft/atrium. Beyond that, I don't know if it was designed to hold more stuff on top of it, but at a glance it doesn't look like it.

The rendering only shows the south 40% of this parking deck and the adjacent alley being the site for 121. That would be great because for some reason I really like Paddy O's in that little closet location it currently has.

Oh wait....i'm oozing arrogance because I have an opinion about how a hotel should be rated? That's the name of the game buddy. All the condescension seems to be on your end there. Are you a hotel owner or operator? And anyway you're wrong...independent bodies rate them according to their standards...some standards objective, some subjective. Most of it is based on what is inside the doors but design quality *is a criteria and location/orientation surely has some degree of weight there. Where a hotel is matters to me and surely matters to others. I don't want to walk outside into a rectangle surrounded by 6-8 lane roads on two sides and isn't connected in any meaningful way to anything thing else walkable. Airbnb is gaining on hotels in general for a reason and its not just price. Anyway, the 'those with money' comment was a lament at the attempt to make it objective when it surely is not and the criteria are established by someone other than those who regularly stay at hotels, i.e. the customer. You only have to google a little bit to see that not all 5 star hotels result in happy customers.

With the old proposed Soleil Center, I imagined nobody would buy any condos because they'd feel and be trapped at the mall site. While North Hills has more to do that Crabtree and the prices involved are not as high in absolute or relative dollars (I imagine, plus i know this is rental vs buying at Soleil) I still think of living at North Hills as being sort of trapped on a island. There are no streets to walk around on. Mostly chain restaurants and retail. I am glad it is successful on one hand, but on another if this was the best downtown-like experience the future can ever again hope to see, well, what a sad dystopian world it will be.

The renderings appear to show it taking up the southern third of the existing deck and the alley between the deck and the Alexander Building.

Funny. The location alone (for Umstead) eliminates it from 5 star status in my head. Just another example of how the people with the money get to make the decisions.

I am definitely in favor of maxing out road capacity in order to demonstrate the need for light rail. Two things cross my mind here though. 1) the roads will max out here at about half the proposed density (just a gut feeling...don't have the calcs to back it up. I did study some traffic stuff for my CE degree though) and 2) pedestrians too will be hemmed in here. I'd be more in favor of the density shoved in here if there were combo bike/pedestrians overpassing the tracks both to the west and south of the proposed Davie/West pedestrian connection. I assume Trent knows this isn't Reddit and down votes are not anonymous....perhaps not.

A couple of reasons Rolly. 1) this is the last block of old warehouses in the City. There are some newer ones and a few scattered here and there. but when these are gone, the warehouse district is gone. Two of the ones on this block are older than 1888, which is the first available record of their existence 2) I think its too much density crammed down in a deadend corner. This is not a NIMBY statement. It's about all of those people and cars jamming down in there each and every day to the exact same point . You cannot exit west or south. I think it'd destroy the newly vibrant pedestrian atmosphere down there dodging cars every second. I think this corner is best when people walk down into and check out the stores and shops. I'd fill in the blanks against the tracks with like 6-8 story, sturdy apartment buildings and maybe stick a single 12 story office building wrapping around the old cotton seed warehouse and punch some storefronts into that warehouse (the one on the SE corner of the lot..there used to be two, the other on the SW corner). I'd also cobble stone every street in the warehouse district, add short gaslit street lights, and bulb out the intersections with crazy plants and industrial style art installations that speak to the railroad and warehouse history of the area. Especially Peden Steel. This area could be a distinctive destination, but as its shaping up, its just becoming melded into the rest of the downtown.

Not a fan.

Harrington really is getting that urban-off-in-the-distance look. (I just made that up...maybe it conveys what my wine filled mind is feeling)

Wow that is a fantastic unfit/rehab. Charles never disappoints.

To be clear I am not a fan boi of autonomous vehicles and the 'they are the future' stuff is massively overstated. If anything, I am meeting those folks halfway by saying, at best, straightforwards applications, where roads are easily read and route starting and ending points are easily identified, is the best you'll see for a good long while.

I think they need to go a step further and do something like reduce the block size...say punch Homewood Banks through the property to Glenwood and get another traffic light installed (synched with the rest of Glenwood of course), then make that smaller, eastern block the major mixed use block say. That whole grouping around Best Buy is terribly laid out and could use a entire redoing. Then you could eliminate the weird Blue Ridge entrance that snakes around behind and front the new buildings to Blue Ridge for proper urban-ish orientation. Just one rambling thought/possibility.

I think the first place autonomous vehicles will show up and be allowed to run is interstates. No obstacles at all. For safety reasons, that's where they are most needed too. Keep everyone moving at the speed limit, eliminate passing and such, and it'll function like a train more or less. When you get to your exit, the human has to take over and do the things that cannot be programmed in, like back up to the roof so I can clean the gutters, or whatever. On a side note, I wonder of the shine will come off this whole idea if folks knew they'd be forced to obey all the traffic laws all of a sudden..that seems like an obvious 'concession' to being allowed to operate one.

Fuller heights minus one house (up for City historic status and obviously different than the others) can and should be denser. I'd like 3 story townhouses and/or 4-6 story apartment or condo buildings. Caraleigh is a little different because its the most intact mill village in Raleigh (really only one has any left and that is Raleigh Hosiery Mill at West Hargett with 4 houses left). I'd pull the Fuller heights streets through to South Saunders and connect them to Maywood too. I think you could leverage the historic mill village as an attraction perhaps...maybe even put in a museum to NC mill history. Obviously I'd like to keep most of the structures there.

Good mixed use combo. Neither the residential nor office markets could really handle that entire thing being one or the other so a little of both seems right and also levels out the use infrastructure throughout the day and broadens retail feasibility as well.

Penmarc road area....pretty much around and behind the Red Roof Inn. I don't know all of the parcels they control (might not all be shown in the property deeds if title hasn't actually transferred), but that is more of less it.

I know on other boards there is plenty of talk about traffic, parking, where could green space possibly go etc. But, taking such a massive retail footprint towards more of a mixed use footprint, is at least a step in the right direction.

I hope the City steps up and helps actually connect it to downtown and also demand that the area be downtown-like in its design.

Yeah I just read that in WRAL Techwire I think. Facing Salisbury St...20 stories or so I think?

FYI, the center of your frame is the Link which had some damage but was not the one that burned all the way down.

Aaargh, why you gotta go showing us the Archdale Building! (I'm sitting in it right now...blech)