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Downtown Raleigh's Future


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No retail announcement, but there's some work being done on the bldg at 225 Wimington St, which is next to Slims. The sign says it will be available in 2009. David Meeker, the Mayor's son, seems to be the developer of the project. That stretch of Wilmington, with many dilapidated storefronts, seems to be getting some added investment with Taz and now this. It would be nice to continue "Hatem's Corner" down Wilmington St... the storefronts are ready for some new life.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well Wallstreet has rallied over the government takeover of Fannie and Freddie and analysts are expecting banks to loosen their mortgage lending purse strings some as a result, which could be huge for DTR. This could make it much easier for Reynolds and others to get financing for their projects with financing of mortgages getting a bit easier once more. Lets hope this materializes and it helps bring some of these stalled projects off the ground. :thumbsup:

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TBJ poll on what people think downtown needs:

http://triangle.bizjournals.com/triangle/s...08/daily21.html

26% - we need a sporting and entertainment venue (*cough* RBC should have been built downtown *cough*)

22% - more major company headquarters

18% - grocery store

15% - more parking (:rolleyes: how many times do we have to cover this, there's enough parking)

04% - movie theater

15% - something else / no opinion

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I voted in that pole. I voted "other". In keeping with goals of quality, diverse retail, the most interesting street appeal and pedestrian scale and livability, I had in mind, more preservation of historic resources. An arena in the middle downtown does not create a livable downtown. Denver has its stadiums on the edge of downtown proper. Richmond has a huge fight over moving its minor league stadium into Shokoe Bottom. Blount Street Commons will do more for downtown than any other other project to date as far as the downtown I want to see goes. Parking, again, is for visitors, not residents of downtown. A downtown full of residents needs to rely much less on visitors. Grocery store's and company HQ's are more sustainable investments I can get behind though.

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  • 2 months later...

I got this random idea today walking around...

Why not take the Reliable Loan & Coopers buildings on the Edison block and move them to the site of the Mechanics & Farmer's bank (& surface lot) at the corner of Wilmington & Hargett? I'm not sure they would all fit, but contextually, it would be a perfect fit, meshing well with the rest of Hatem's (historic) corner. Yeah, it might be prohibitively expensive to move heavy masonry buildings like those, but it would be more than a shame to see them meet a wrecking ball.

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myself and Jones133 explored that idea in the Edison thread. The location that I came up with was the lot facing Person on the City Market block, but Jones133 actually came up with the exact same spot that you did. Great minds think alike, I guess.

As Jones133 mentioned, moving masonry buildings is certainly possible, but extremely expensive.

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It might be a little trickier, and I don't know if the dimensions work, but there are surface lots on the block of East Hargett between Blount and Wilmington. I don't think missing the "Cafe Luna" lot would be too big of a deal with two nearby parking decks and on street parking. The lot between Landmark and the Furninture building might be a tight squeeze, but right now it feels like dead/underutilized space.

The next area I would look to move them would be aroudn the Blount/Cabarrus corner. There is an empty lot on the SW corner that they would infill and meet the character of the area.

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I saw a graph in the Wall Street Journal showing China's economy slowing down as well, and the resulting lowering of prices across the construction industry. When things like steel go down in price, of course, the price of projects goes down....though relative to the local economy as a whole, things would really be still at par I am guessing.

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  • 1 month later...

I just returned from an overseas trip, and after seeing the vitality of a number of the downtowns where I visited, despite not having many skycrapers nor a large population to draw from (most smaller than Raleigh), reinforces my belief that pursuing more skyscrapers for DTR is not the answer to building a better downtown and city. One of the things I think this real estate and economic crisis should inform us, is that we Americans love to supersize things (buildings, highways, etc), but that concept isn't necessarily sustainable nor the best "strategy" for producing the type of places we want to live or the economic outcomes we want.

Take RBC Plaza. Yes, RBC is a good vertical mixed use project, and 90% of people will agree to that. But, frankly, there are many pockets of DTR that have empty surface parking, empty retail space, and horribly underutilized buildings. To me, there should be much more focus on that aspect of building a vibrant downtown built for people, rather than the pursuit of the next giant tower. One of the results of huge, fancy (expensive) new towers is high rents, and as the RBC retail spaces sit empty, while some older spaces are filled (Empire comes to mind) even in tough economic times, it reinforces the idea that bigger isn't always better.

For the folks who live DT, I would bet most would say that Hatem's Times & Heilig Levine projects have done more for DT than probably any other project that I can think of. Plus, while the big developers (including Hatem on Lafayette) wait on financing for the highrise projects that may never materialize, cheaper adaptive reuse of some cool old buildings has injected some life & charater to a pocket of DT that had basically zero street activity.

I recall DRA Chief David Diaz said recently he wants developers to build 40 or 50 stories instead of 10 or 20... I'd rather see 6 midrise buildings w/street retail built on some of our empty/underused blocks than two 40 story buildings that we might have to wait years to see come to fruition. The market for condos, office space, and retail is not unlimited--especially now. We should realize that sometimes it's the smaller, under-the-radar projects that can do just as much, if not more, for DTR as the fancy highrise.

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It looks like hotel demand has taken a sharp turn in the Triangle, for the worse. According to the N&O, occupancy for 2008 was only 60.8%, first time there has been a decline since 2003. Progress Energy, for example, cut their business trips to their downtown office by 1/3rd. Only critical trips are allowed now and everything else is done via video and teleconferencing. Lenovo also made cuts. I'm not really surprised by this, as my company has been doing the same thing, even going as far as to purge there regional VPs from the corporate offices and relocate them to the region they are in charge of, making them live in the market to see it first hand and drastically cut the number of trips they take. We would see our VP around 8 days a month. Now the VP just drives (or uses mass transit where its feasable. Our company REQUIRES the use of mass transit to save money when available/feasable) whereever he wishes in the market. This makes me wonder what impact this has had on any of the projects that are now on hold....

http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/1419701.html

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  • 1 year later...

Was just listening to the local news on a station that was playing at a restaurant I was at and they mentioned that Raleigh city council has voted to "freeze" time, in terms of limits they put on developers for getting financing (such as x amount of months before the city revokes the developer's plans), among other things. The reason given is that city council feels it is unrealistic in the tight financial market to expect developers to be able to secure all the financing they need and at they do not want to kill any otherwise great projects that could prosper (they gave condo projects downtown and the Edison as examples) once the economy gets on more stable footing.

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  • 11 months later...

^Well its a good thing there are different ideas of what makes a successful downtown and that one of those ideas does not mean large corporate anchors are necessary. Hell if you can push class A rent below 30 dollars a sqft, the little guy might be able to make a go of it in the CBD.

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The Business Journal is reporting that BB&T and PNC Bank are the two front runners in the purchase of RBC (they cite a Winston-Salem Journal article from saturday). The article included this ominous note at the end:

Of course, BB&T and RBC Bank have significant market overlap, especially in North Carolina where both banks are based. If the two banks were to merge, BB&T would need to make considerable cost-cutting measures in those markets to make the deal profitable.

http://www.bizjourna...du&ana=e_du_pub

EDIT: The Winston-Salem Journal article is somewhat more doubtful that a BBT / RBC purchase makes sense.

http://www2.journalnow.com/news/2011/apr/30/wsmain01-analysts-see-bbampt-as-possible-buyer-for-ar-992650/

Edited by kermit
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Downtown Raleigh has lost 3 of the city's largest headquaters to larger companies, over the span of only a few months. My thinking is that this will not bode well for Raleigh's business and civic climate over the long-term. Mainly because the chances of luring similar or larger sized headquaters in the near furture seem very slim at this point, but also because we're losing companies that had deep roots and contributed substantially to this area.

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Raleigh's current situation (in my opinion) highlights the entrepreneurial weakness of the RTP. The branch plant facilities located there have (with some exceptions) failed to create substantial spinoffs -- the type of growing firms that might find value in the substantial charms of downtown Raleigh. This is essentially the same process which reviatlized the SOMA portion of downtown San Fransisco.

I think Raleigh should forget about bringing a new F500 to town -- instead work to nurture some local startups into becoming bigger local employers. The video game industry seems ripe for such a transformation. A couple more companies like Redhat would really make downtown Raleigh a bustling and more dynamic place.

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RTP has had no troubles with start-ups-its the issue of sustainability. Most of the venture capitalists want to see these companies sold off to larger entities-see Motricity that was absolutely raped. I agree that F500 are dinosaurs but you need to stop bleeding everything out. Financial services is pretty much done in the Triangle and that may not necessarily be a bad thing long term.

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The original vision of RTP from the 1950s was innovation, mainly in applied chemistry. Within 10 years, however, IBM moved in -- and RTP was all about large corporations after that... Nortel, Burroughs Wellcome, BASF, etc. Large government like the EPA came in, too.

It's trendy to promote start-ups a la Silicon Valley, and RTP has had some... but the primary engine of RTP has consistently been established companies that move in and hire 500+ people. Cisco, for example.

As for the F500 being dinosaurs, that's unwarranted. IBM made $14.8 billion in profit last year, up from 2009 and 2008. Takes a whole lot of start-ups to match that.

Edited by ctl
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None of these will affect the overall vibrancy of downtown. Its the people that actually *live* downtown that make it a great place. The jobs lost will most likely be people living in 4000 sqft homes in Cary or North Raleigh amounting to a few dozen people or a hundred-ish. Red Hat would offset this with no problem.

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None of these will affect the overall vibrancy of downtown. Its the people that actually *live* downtown that make it a great place. The jobs lost will most likely be people living in 4000 sqft homes in Cary or North Raleigh amounting to a few dozen people or a hundred-ish. Red Hat would offset this with no problem.

Jones I can't believe that you're saying this. You're totally glossing over the bigger issues.The lose of these three companies is no small deal. It's not only about the lose of jobs. I'm sure that these new owners will have no allegiance to Raleigh.

After all of the effort that Raleigh put into luring Centura from Rocky Mount, the city should have at least put in an equal amount of effort to keep it there after investing so much in that bank. It's like investing in a 401K plan for 20 years and then having it taken away from you in a divorce settlement.

I think that what concerns me the most is the city's attitude towards all of this.

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Jones I can't believe that you're saying this. You're totally glossing over the bigger issues.The lose of these three companies is no small deal. It's not only about the lose of jobs. I'm sure that these new owners will have no allegiance to Raleigh.

I think that what concerns me the most is the city's attitude towards all of this.

I think it's this whole business of "Triangle" and "Triad" . Imagine if you could fold up Durham and put it in Raleigh. Fold up Winston-Salem or Greensboro into one another. Raleigh and Winston-Salem/Greensboro would really give Charlotte (And other US Cities) a run for their money. I think Being part of the Triangle and Triad is hurting the anchor cities and stifling the growth of the major anchor cities. Charlotte's growth leads to more growth based on momentum (As with a lot of cities and places and everything else in life) and I would think that if if it was just "Raleigh" and not "The Triangle" that Raleigh would have that same momentum to and downtown Raleigh would be a different place if they kept touting the "Raleigh" horn instead of the "Triangle" horn.

That's my outside opinion of being part of a Triangle (or Triad, etc.). I think Raleigh needs to make more of a case about Raleigh being a place to do business instead of "The Triangle" to attract and maintain jobs of different industries. I'd love to hear someone's opinion from Raleigh because I think their opinion would be a lottt better than mine since I'm an outsider.

Edited by AirNostrumMAD
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I think it's this whole business of "Triangle" and "Triad" . Imagine if you could fold up Durham and put it in Raleigh. Fold up Winston-Salem or Greensboro into one another. Raleigh and Winston-Salem/Greensboro would really give Charlotte (And other US Cities) a run for their money. I think Being part of the Triangle and Triad is hurting the anchor cities and stifling the growth of the major anchor cities. Charlotte's growth leads to more growth based on momentum (As with a lot of cities and places and everything else in life) and I would think that if if it was just "Raleigh" and not "The Triangle" that Raleigh would have that same momentum to and downtown Raleigh would be a different place if they kept touting the "Raleigh" horn instead of the "Triangle" horn. That's my outside opinion of being part of a Triangle (or Triad, etc.). I think Raleigh needs to make more of a case about Raleigh being a place to do business instead of "The Triangle" to attract and maintain jobs of different industries. I'd love to hear someone's opinion from Raleigh because I think their opinion would be a lottt better than mine since I'm an outsider.

You raise a VERY good point and one that i've thought alot about over the years. This area really does need to move away from these various nomenclatures (i.e. Raleigh-Durham, Triangle, etc.) and focus on making Raleigh the central city. It may be good for attracting families that want a subruban lifestyle outside of the traditional urban environment, but it is TERRIBLE for big business. There are many reasons for this, which I won't elaborate on in this thread. That is one of the reasons why Charlotte has been successful in areas where Raleigh has not.

They also have true movers and shakers. Raleigh does have a few (i.e. Jim Goodman, Jim and Ann Goodknight, etc.), but everytime they step up and try to help the city raise it's image as a city with some culture and sophistication, the local yocals raise a fuss and they are faced with a wall of resistance. Remember the Plensa debacle?

Having said this, I can honestly say that the above points are not the main reasons that Raleigh finds itself in the situation that it is currently in. The main isssue results from it's history of leadership, or the lack thereof. Both on a political and business level, Raleigh lacks the kind of leadership needed to grow a city. We need people who have vision and can make tough decisions...people who can make things happen and get things done! They need to be able to talk the talk and walk the walk, so to speak. This is what has hurt Raleigh more than anything and will continue to hurt Raleigh until this issue is addressed. The city already has a brand, name recognition, an educated and intellectual segment, stable financial assets...now the city just needs to figure out how to utilize its resources in a constructive way.

Hopefully the lose of these three headquaters will be the needed wakeup call.

Edited by RALNATIVE
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