UP|The NC Triangle

Person Street

Jones133 — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 04:33:06 +0000

North Person Street has the best chance of being an authentic mixed use, pedestrian scale, downtown neighborhood. With Mordecai and Oakwood as bookend neighborhoods, all it ever lacked was cache. If the cadre of businesses mentioned above (which included a grocery as part of Market), plus the bike shop and coffee shop mentioned in the New Raleigh article all pop in in the area, you will have an area that rivals any other in the city for livability.

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Person Street

RaleighRob — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:40:12 +0000

Latest on the North Person area. This topic is due for updating.

PieBird of course has been open a while and is probably the most popular spot in the neighborhood next to Krispy Kreme. A salon just recentlyo opened next to it too, and some of the other store fronts are trying to fill up. We still need something good in the old Rosie's Plate spot. (I think it'd be perfect for a burrito shop myself...Chubby's anyone? LOL)

As many know the old Super 10 is becoming the latest version of Rapid Fitness. I kinda like the idea of more than one gym (O2 Seaboard, currently) being downtown, though this seems awfully close together. But competition is good regardless.

Ok now to Person/Franklin Plaza. City Farm project is still in the works. But today I saw this article in New Raleigh and my jaw hit the ground: http://www.newraleigh.com/article/market-restaurant-and-escazu-moving/
Market and Escazu may be moving there. Also, a bakery called Yellow Dog. All I can say is if this info is correct and it happens, this would be heaven. (I live nearby.) Crossing my fingers.

Also if anyone's interested, since much of this area is technically outside of the Downtown Alliance boundaries (which seems weird to me), the businesses have started their own minature version called the Person Street Partnership: http://www.mordecaicac.org/partnerships

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Five Points in Raleigh

RaleighRob — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:33:33 +0000

The architecture style shown in the drawings does fit the area well. More residential will help keep the retail/dining options (and hours) better too.

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Five Points in Raleigh

Jones133 — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 17:37:29 +0000

I think high/mid density residential is the correct transition to low density residential from retail so the project fits and I hope it gets filled up. First Citizens won't ever move off that corner unless they stand to make a huge buck though. The original Piggly Wiggly was about where Rite Aid is...it fronted Fairview though (as seen in a picture in The Point). The whole area though, will forever be a gentrified monolith with the dozens of tear downs in the east Whitaker area, loss of Whitaker Park apartments, reduction of late hours at Third Place, and closing of Sting Ray and Five Points Pub ten years ago.
I do hope the houses being replaced are salvaged by Habitat and not just plunked in the landfill.

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Five Points in Raleigh

Green_man — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 21:29:14 +0000

Hmmm, no retail at the street level - but not such a big deal in my opinion since this is transitioning to the residential neighborhood. Any additional retail space developed in the future will have to be located along Glenwood or in the mini shopping center.

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Five Points in Raleigh

Green_man — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 21:23:19 +0000

I like it! And more importantly, I think it has the potential to get built (i.e. not meet too much opposition from the neighbors). Looks like some expensive living though, hopefully they fill up.

I think the bank at the corner and at least one of the three(!) gas stations at the intersection should also be redeveloped into 3-4 story mixed used buildings as well. And I think the Rite Aid property has the potential for a grocery store. Love the neighborhood now, but also think there is tons of potential to make it is own (even more) walkable district.

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Five Points in Raleigh

Jones133 — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 20:53:48 +0000

New proposal to replace the three rental houses next to the post office.
http://www.fairviewrow.com/

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Hillsborough & Morgan St

orulz — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 18:11:59 +0000

Here's a 3d rendering of this project I've never seen before. This confirms the townhomes along Ashe. Plus, basically all the building's street frontage is active in some way, with retail along Tryon Hill, Wakefield, and Morgan, and townhouses along Ashe. All in all not a bad project. My only complaint is that the most prominent piece of land around here, the corner facing the roundabout, is (and will remain) a parking lot.

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Downtown Raleigh retail updates

Justin6882 — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 16:39:50 +0000

Actual retail (not a bar/restaurant) is opening next to Stitch on Wilmington Street. "Feelgoodz" (based out of New Orleans) is opening March 23rd. Check out their facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/feelgoodz.flipflops There are photos of the interior and exterior of the space.

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Raleigh's Hillsborough Street

RaleighRob — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 13:34:06 +0000

Yeah, hard to re-create the current Sadlack's spot. I kinda wonder where else they could go....you'd have to go pretty far west (or east) to find another similar-sized opening.

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Raleigh's Hillsborough Street

Jones133 — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 03:03:32 +0000

Part of Sadlacks charm is the patio perched a few feet above the sidewalk just a few feet from the belltower. You can't recreate that. I doubt a new location will do as well. Hopefully turns out better than North Dorm (an old hotel too far set back) and the Brownstone (needlessly askew, poorly addressing the street)

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Dorothea Dix Property

Jones133 — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:58:49 +0000

188 thousand an acre is pretty high. I think proximity to downtown was over valued. And what business does an appraiser have determining the "highest and best use" for a property? I call BS. That's what zoning determines. Or an owner.

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Raleigh's Hillsborough Street

orulz — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:48:30 +0000

This article is a month old but it contains some information I haven't heard about the belltower development.

1. The hotel will be 8 stories with a 2 story parking deck, and retail on the first floor
2. Sadlack's already has their eyes on a different, larger space somewhere else on Hillsborough and the hotel developer is helping to plan their move
3. Schoolkids wants to move somewhere else on Hillsborough as well
4. Construction is planned to begin somewhere around June 2013.

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Dorothea Dix Property

orulz — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:43:08 +0000

Since Perdue is not seeking re-election, it seems that she may want to find a way to permanently dispose of the Dorothea Dix property.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/02/15/1857775/perdue-announces-integral-step.html]Here is an article.[/url]

The entire 319 acre parcel was appraised at $60 million (today's value) and $86 million (if we were still in the middle of the 2007 real estate boom.) Meeker went on record saying that the city would pay a reasonable price for the land, and I'm pretty sure that McFarlane will follow that same line of reasoning. $60 million seems like a pretty big chunk just for the land alone, not to mention a huge pile of money to plan the park and develop facilities there. For Raleigh to bite off and chew by itself, this would certainly require a bond issue and a very big one at that.

We'll see where it goes from here.

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Northgate Mall

mallguy — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 02:24:55 +0000

How many malls in the South lose both a Belk AND a Chick-fil-A unless the mall is going under?

Doesn't bode well for the mall's future.

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Northgate Mall

NCMike1981 — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 16:01:33 +0000

Just wanted to share the following:

http://heraldsun.com...location-closes

After 37 years of operating in the mall Chick-fil-A closed last month. What is notable is that Chick-fil-A opened in the mall at the time Northgate enclosed in 1974 and stayed in the same location within the mall up intil it's closing last month. I do recall they expanded and renovated in the late '90s when Northgate appeared to be on the up and up (Southpoint pretty much stopped that trend when it opened). This closing saddens me a bit as I remember going there as a young kid in the '80s..my grandpa would always call it "Chick-A Fil". I think for many years this location and the drive through only location at South Square were the only locations in Durham...at least until Chick-fil-A started building their free standing with interior seatings locations in the area in the mid '90s.....

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Raleigh Convention Center

orulz — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 03:47:10 +0000

Regarding the correlation between PV generation capacity and peak demand, a quick search on google scholar reveals that at least some research has been done on the subject and the two papers I read generally seem to support the hypothesis.

Clearly solar has to be constructed with geographic diversity in order to compensate for the differences in weather and cloud cover. Unlike in the Mojave Desert, where the sky is dependably clear all day every day, a single large array definitely wouldn't cut it from the dependability point of view in Wake County.

An ideal scenario would be in a future with the oft-hyped "smart grid" where solar panels are installed on the roofs of buildings all over the region, both residential and commercial, wherever it makes the most sense: probably locations with an unobstructed view of the southern sky. That would meet the need for geographic diversity.

Clearly, the convention center roof by itself is not geographically diverse. But imagine 10 or 100 or 10,000 similar installations all over Wake County, or all over North Carolina. This could reliably generate power exactly when it's needed the most.

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Raleigh Convention Center

ctl — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 01:58:42 +0000

I agree that peak load is the financial problem. You'll have to invest in non-solar peak capacity (i.e., natural gas plants) anyway because you can't be certain that large-scale solar will be there when you need it. I haven't seen simulation results on the coincidence of summer demand peaks and projected large-scale PV output, but I can imagine that there will be times when the temperature on one side of Wake County is near 100 while there's a thunderstorm directly overhead the solar array on the other side of the county. Bear in mind that a utility is expected to be reliable at least 99.9% with respect to factors that are foreseeable. When a utility can't meet immediate demand, either bad things happen or the utility has to buy from the interconnect grid at high spot prices that are eventually passed down to customers.

In North Carolina (as opposed to the West), wind has similar constancy issues. Also I've got misgivings about wind turbines in a hurricane-prone Albemarle Sound.

The other way, and maybe the better way, to address the peak load financial problem is demand management, instead of the supply side. Progress Energy does this to a limited extent already. So far, however, most consumers and politicians have preferred to pay extra to avoid demand management.

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2035 Triangle Regional Transit Vision Plan

Jones133 — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 17:04:41 +0000

I have been suggesting additional transit hubs for some time with express runs between the hubs. There is some magic radius where a single hub no longer makes sense and though I do not know exactly what that is, after spending some time on CAT, I feel like we are way past it.

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Raleigh Convention Center

orulz — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:40:07 +0000

ctl, on 09 February 2012 - 06:00 PM, said:

Ambient temperature doesn't have anything to do with photovoltaic output, at least at temperatures that we have in North Carolina. A clear sunny cold day will have just as much solar energy as a clear sunny hot day -- more, in fact, because there is less humidity in the air and therefore more of the direct sunlight makes it to the ground. Electricity consumption here does peak on hot summer days, but those days are often partly-cloudy for us (or even downright stormy). Different story in Nevada, Arizona, etc.

True that temperature has little or no impact on the operation of solar panels. But, what I was referring to, is that on summer days, the sun's apex is at a higher angle in the sky and it stays at a higher angle for longer in the day, thereby making solar panels work better.

I'll allow that the days that are the hottest outside are often partly cloudy and frequently have afternoon storms. However, during the cloudiest and stormiest hours, electrical consumption is probably not at its peak. I don't have any scientific studies to prove this, but it would certainly make sense that the absolute maximum electricity usage occurs on the hottest, brightest, mostly sunny days when the sun's radiative heating has the greatest impact. Radiative heating has an outsized impact on the cooling needed inside buildings.

Ask any power company what is the most expensive power is for them to generate and they will tell you it is not the base load, usually handled by coal or nuclear power, (which, as you point out, solar is terrible for), but the peak of the peak of the peak, because they have to invest capital in a plant with enough capacity to meet the absolute peak demand, even though that plant will almost never be used at full capacity. The fact that solar cells incidentally generate the most power when it's needed the most (without any need for storage whatsoever) certainly helps to balance out the cost of solar generation somewhat. I'm not saying it's equal with other peak load plants like natural gas, but maybe with increasing costs of fossil fuels it will be closer in the future.

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Urban Apartment Boom

Jones133 — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:26:20 +0000

^just a reminder that there is no proposal to build to build apartments on that corner. It was a rezoning to fix what the new comp plan changed. To wit, apartments *could* be built there but the LNR site plan called for offices if I recall and the only development proposal I have seen at all was just 8 more row houses over at Peace and Person.

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NC State Govt Complex: what are the plans?

Jones133 — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:20:38 +0000

I walk past it every day and can confirm the construction sign says that is the case.

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Raleigh Convention Center

Jones133 — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:15:10 +0000

Peswiki has the most complete list I can find though it does not confirm that the costs noted are life cycle which is the only relevant number. Scrubbers most certainly do have significant maintenance costs involving the ash landfills and subsequent wastewater treatment, but I admit I do not know the cost per kWh of desulfurization maintenance versus wiping bird poop off a solar panel. Though a squeegee seems a lot cheaper than maintaining a 40 acre ash pond.
I am straying way off topic but couldn't help but notice that the N&O noted wind potential off the NC coast at 20GW. That is right there with the 22GW capacity that PE has right now so it certainly seems like clean renewables have the ability to almost offset fossil fuels. Something that will of course have to happen...one day...provided disease, an asteroid, super volcano or the boogey man don't thin our numbers substantially first.

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Raleigh Convention Center

ctl — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:57 +0000

I don't think I'm exaggerating the cost because I recently looked into a reasonably sized solar energy installation. Sure, when you go from acres to square miles, the panels get cheaper -- but on the other hand, the electronics and the sheer amount of copper (in tons!) necessary to connect all those panels goes up.

I don't defend coal. I will say, however, that emissions scrubbers are mainly a capital investment not an operational expense. Scrubbing grime from solar panels is something that goes on forever, and it's proportional to how large the arrays are. By the way, arrays are quite susceptible to hail, tornado, and hurricane.

Nationwide about 35% of generated electricity is consumed in the residential setting.

Ambient temperature doesn't have anything to do with photovoltaic output, at least at temperatures that we have in North Carolina. A clear sunny cold day will have just as much solar energy as a clear sunny hot day -- more, in fact, because there is less humidity in the air and therefore more of the direct sunlight makes it to the ground. Electricity consumption here does peak on hot summer days, but those days are often partly-cloudy for us (or even downright stormy). Different story in Nevada, Arizona, etc.

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Carrboro's Shelton Station

RaleighRob — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:31:24 +0000

Yeah, that's downtown. Technically, the "city centerpoint" on maps is where Greensboro Street crosses Main Street (thus the determination for north/south and east/west designations). And I count about 4 blocks from that point to this project (5-10 minute walk?). So yeah...I'd call it downtown.

Anyway, to the project itself, it looks like a good infill project. Definitely more urban in scale than some of the stuff directly around it, and probably the most mixed-use project I've ever seen in Carrboro in recent memory.

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Urban Apartment Boom

RaleighRob — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:22:02 +0000

^ Oh trust me I know! Last time I tried to move back downtown I searched about 3 1/2 weeks almost 24/7 to find what I got now (and I still consider it on the far upper end of my affordability range). And you know the Glenwood south area apartments are gonna be high...just look at the rates for Tucker and Hue.
But like you said, more units available out there can only help the situation...even if by a slight amount. Love to see it get to a point of some competition.

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Urban Apartment Boom

NCMike1981 — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:54:37 +0000

@RaleighRob sad thing is you know any apts built there would probably have jacked up rates lol. I wish downtown proper (not imcluding the shady areas near downtown but not in it) had more market value rental rates, although hopefully prices will get a bit more in line with other areas of Raleigh as availability of units increases.

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Chinatown

NCMike1981 — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:49:52 +0000

Are they planning on keeping the size of the interior of the existing mall in place and just remodel it? I'm just having a hard time envisioning all the spaces in this mall occupied, with or without asian themed stores....I bet the food court could be yummy though :-)

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2035 Triangle Regional Transit Vision Plan

Green_man — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:16:04 +0000

With all the growth expected in Wake County and the current lack of reliable city and county-wide public transportation, I put together a map of what I thought would be the end-goal of an eventual public transportation system for a city that would not have to be so car-dependent.

A few points: Bus-rapid transit in dedicated lanes is used for most routes other than the light rail already planned by Wake County with the hope that this will keep costs down while still providing a reliable system to avoid car traffic. The plan also includes 4 transit 'hubs' (Fairgrounds, Crabtree, Atlantic Ave, and New Bern) in addtional to the downtown Union Station with the goal of giving North Raleigh residents (majority of population) the greatest number of origination and destination options.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=203547115201919631866.0004aad3a0e24725f7987&msa=0

Just a fun excercise out of curiosity I'd thought I'd share - not sure of how realistic a massive plan such as this is. The proposed expanded bus service, commuter line, and then light rail line are starts though! (as long as the funding plan makes the ballot and gets passed in November)

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NC State Govt Complex: what are the plans?

RaleighRob — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:57:26 +0000

RaleighRick, on 16 January 2012 - 09:59 PM, said:

It looks like this project has begun. Construction fencing is up and work has begun. Does anyone know if the project is still the same as rendered?

Also, what ever happened to the new State Bar headquarters building mentioned in the above post?

I think the construction that you're seeing IS the State Bar headquarters, not the visitor's center. http://dtraleigh.com/2011/12/new-nc-state-bar-hq-construction-begins-deals-final-blow-to-former-baptist-university/

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