Jones_

I was thinking of the self-supplied Pier 1/Barnes and Noble chunk and Circuit City as being the 'little bit' but I presume you are referring to Best Buy and all that up Glenwood?

I remember a day..back in the late eighties...Crabtree and CTC were considered the two malls to be at for teenagers. North Hills, South Hills, North Gate, South Square...they were all on the Radar but not worth calling up your friends to hang out at. In keeping up with the Joneses (Southpoint and TT...us Joneses...we are hard to keep up with ) Only Crabtree succeeded..some fell short in their efforts (CTC), others hung up their Mall dance shoes entirely (NH, SH, SS) and one is still trying NG. Seems like successful malls now need more retail in teh area than just the mall itself...crabtree has some...TTC and Southpoint have a bunch...the failed malls had very little as does Cary Towne Center....Crossroads is a distance away...not sure how that bodes for CTC's future but the correlation is interesting.

I am pretty sure Lake Boone was a millpond, the 1871 map I have seems to reflect this. There were hundreds of mills in Wake County of various size. One was at the Lake Boone dam where the current road (Canterbury I think) crosses in front of the homes you mentioned before climbing up the hill towards Fairview, a second was near the Exxon on Glenwood by Oberlin Road and a third was on the other side of Glenwood on the Golf Course property and of course farther along on Crabtree Creek itself was what is now called Lassiter Mill dam. Along Oxford Road near five points the brick remains of one of the smaller mills is clearly seen from the road near a wooden pedestrian bridge over the creek. It is small, about half the size of a car and its millpond was maybe 4 feet deep when it was in use.

From the book of history on Wake County, the leadmine itself was located accross from Mineshaft. There are at least two decent size cemetaries near there, and two more down near where leadmine and Town and Country Rd (I think thats its name) split indicating to me that this was an area almost town-like. The last barrel of graphite mined was just after the turn of the century if I remeber correctly. Road tracing is fun stuff. I compare county maps to a map of Wake County from 1871 I have. Leadmine is easily discernible and the original Blue Ridge/Lead Mine/Town and Country/Millbrook/Leesville road is also very easy to pick off. Best I can tell this is the historical "middle hillsborough road" that a column of confederate troops retreated along when Kilpatrick rode into Raleigh in April 1865. Of course another column led by Wheeler, retreated along 54 through Morrisville and the battle of "Morrisville Station" ensued.

Market Raleigh as a technology and arts center. Play up RTP, Centennial Campus, the universities, etc, etc. even if they are not located downtown. Get free wi-fi rolled out along Fayetteville Street to compliment outdoor areas and for the convenience of visitors. Get a central library down near site 1 and 4, with a visitors center incorporating City and State info. Make sure the site 1 and 4 buildings feel like they represent one of the leading edge technology centers in the world. Incorporate a central arts "hall" in the visitors center with a map to each gallary, including CAM and Artspace and others. A schedule of upcoming Hurricanes games should be up. A shrine to Duke State and UNC NCAA basketball champioships should be near the visitors center. Placards touting big name companies and institutions like Red Hat and the Duke Cancer center. Everything that we are, everthing that we are proud of as a region should be reflected in the center of the region. We have to posture ourselves as the Center of all that is RDU. It takes the landmark buildings we are getting built. It takes the voice of our elected leaders. It takes the finer touches....the residents, the glassy buildings, the historic buildings. The Downtown Raleigh Alliance should consider moving to ground floor space at Site 1. From that vantage advertise our regional attractions from downtown. Bring people downtown to learn about the larger area. Something like that anyway.

Uh hehe No and No.

I would think TMC might have a basis to sue the city if proposals were accepted beyond the deadline. The language in the actual RFP documents is important...does this function like a formal bid where the property owner retains the right to reject all bids for any reason, there was a forfeitable bond attached to the bid proposal and a stated minimum number of qualifying bids had to be received or the RFP will go out again? If not then this RFP was a sneaky way for the city to get firms to spend money without the guarantee of an exclusion date (bid opening date).

I also thought that area was perfect for a couple thousand apartments or so. Walking accross Sumner in the evening to catch a bite somewhere among all those restaurants seems like it would appeal to alot of people.

I thought the Galleria was full steam ahead...the land is completely cleared except Steak and Ale...

This is the key right here...grid residents. Some ideas.... Old Wachovia building...$120k condos with retro appointments. The Professional Building at Harget and Mcdowell ( on a block that also touchs Fayetteville)...$150k condos appointed like a Pottery Barn catalog. The Commercial and Raleigh buildings $120k condos with Ikea style appointments, old Capital Club building $150k condos with restoration hardware style appointments. You need 1000 residents right on Fayetteville and 10,000 in downtown proper....office towers are not going to cut it alone...gotta have residents....my four ideas are about 200-300 units for a population of say 500. Get 500 more for me and you will get a HT Express on the ground floor of the Old Wachovia building...then a wolf camera, then a Blockbuster, then a Ben and Jerrys and on it goes from there...

Intersesting... I say realign Wilimington and Salisbury Sts at Peace, and line the southside of Peace St with 5 story State buildings between the RR and Peace college...all for DHHS. Would hide the ugly parking deck facing Peace and match the surrounding density nicely (minus the Archdale). Meeker just needs to offer a remake of Peace St so State workers can safely walk over to Sunflowers for lunch.

I like all the options that hit a balance between total parkland and totally developed. The Boylan Heights Park proponents forget that from SOME of the public there has been outcry as we all know in this forum. Bugs the heck out of me that they fail to see that usable parkland is being gained in all these proposals, not lost. Orulz, I too wanted to see Lake Wheeler become something of an urban corridor. Also, via the Road Worrier, Benson Kirkman told me that the Morgan/Western connection may never happen. It is very very expensive as it would be a viaduct over almost its entire length.

I should have showed up, my voice next to NIMBY's would have been relevant since I live in Caraleigh Mills just off Lake Wheeler and am equally impacted by any move made with the property. Once again...I love the city in a park plan.

Funny enough, the city in a park idea is almost exactly like what I submitted to Landesign with two exceptions. 1) I suggested moving the single family houses from the hill to over near Lake Wheeler and configure the streets into a grid aligned with the Fuller Heights subdivision and 2) I suggested putting the botanical piece as the centerpiece of the office park off Centennial Pkwy. As I self professed tree hugger AND an advocate of smart urban development as a method of enviornmental preservation, AND as a staunch supporter of historical preservation (in and of itself and as a method of 'recycling') I think this plan is very very good.

Absolutely. I am very excited to see these things happening all at once.

The mall was too big to begin with for a city the size of Raleigh with such a tiny convention center. It should have been kept down on the 400 and 500 blocks with mandtory restaurant space in buildings like the CP&L tower and One Hannover. I know City Market was given attention with the idea that conventioners would venture down that way, but again too much ground to cover for such small downtown and visitor populations. The mall might have worked as built if it were flanked by about a half dozen apartment or condo towers but in the days when it was built, urban flight was at full throttle. The only real tax generating use downtown is office space and naturally...NATURALLY, after 5pm everything will empty out. People that miss the mall, people who commute from far off to a job downtown or people who loved the plantings are not paying attention to what caused it to fail and the jest of how it is intended to function after 5pm. I have counted about ten restaurant type spaces on the mall(perhaps I should now call it Fayetteville Street...FS). In our proven suburban form, people with cars need places to put them. Wilmington and Salisbury streets have almost no on street parking, therefore FS must support its own uses. I urge people to think of the opening blocks not as a street but as more of a parking lot. Will 200 spaces at the doorstep of up to 10 restaurant help? I centainly believe so. Are restaurants what we want down there? Based on the success of Glenwood South and what I am looking for when I am the out-of-town conventioner, I would say again, yes.

The best I can find on Wilmont is that they were built in the late 1920's according to the online architectural survey. I like to throw these tidbits in...the Stanhope neighborhood used to stretch all the way to Dan Allen...a couple of the houses still exist...the florist, Farmhouse pizza and the Cantina. I agree kill the Brewery building but the brick storefronts are great...this stretch of Hillsborough reminds me of Birmingham England, industrial and a bit dirty but urban nonetheless...

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.

I am indifferent to this design and in general think folks are trying too hard where Hillsborough Street is concerned. Some uniformity in basic design, (sidewalks, plantings) a little more attention to maintenance, some attention to peripheral streets such as pushing Clark through to Dixie instead of building those two houses at Brooks and Clark, some upgrade in the streetscape such as boom signals instead of overhead wires and things would feel quite a bit different. Hillsborough St. is so different from say, Franklin Street. Most of the historic homes that used to line it are gone or have storefronts attached like at the Jackpot by Ihop. Plus Hillsborough has commercial primarily only on one side of the street making the creation of the traditional urban fabric very hard. 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. 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. Parking decks all over the place also are a fly in my soup regarding any urban plan. I had brainstormed a scaled down design with a similar goal in mind with the following main points: 1) No ingress between Brooks and Oberlin on Hillsborough, only egress. 2) two traffic lanes only with angled parking facing businesses on the westbound side 3)and lots of asthetic touches such as landscaped medians where there is room, public art, horse cops, gas lighting, and coblestoning portions of the egress streets like Horne and Enterprise. Just my thoughts...thanks.

I noticed two other buildings demolished too....there is a 1950's style motel accross from the Holiday Inn that is now a parking lot and lost in the collossal loss of the First Citizens Bank (Historically the Commercial National Bank circa 1912), a building fronting Fayetteville Mall with 1870's style architecture was also demolished...it was 4 or 5 stories and looked similar to the Briggs building, only several bays wider. Great show!!!