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Marbles Kids Museum


ncwebguy

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Is the little charter middle school attached to it gonna keep the name Exploris? I can't imagine anyone saying "I go to Marbles Middle School". :lol:

Sounds like the new merger will work...Playspace was immensely popular and from what I can tell the new museum has more of their type of stuff in it than Exploris's. I hope they still offer some of the same world culture events and performances though, and other educational features. I'd hate to see it become just one big playpen.

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I hope the new place retains some "museum" aspects and is a space to learn and play.

There is learning through playing well with others, but as mentioned in today's Ruth Sheehan's column praising the new space, there are education opportunities that are lost (for now). I think tying the pirate playship to Edward Teach and his cohorts' time on the NC coast would be interestingl, but that may be the same kind of "boring" that scared people away from Exploris. Since they current space was put together in a month, I hope these educational aspects were only put on the back burner, not disposed of with the rest of the "old" exploris.

Playspace moved from the North/Glenwood corner, to the creamery to its current location on Moore Square. It has always been busy, and now with the larger space should be able to at least break even. With exhibits that don't depend on computers (that seemed to be down a lot in Exploris), most/all of the museum will be usable for less in maintenace costs.

Where does this leave the future of the Imax theater? I hope it won't become blockbusters only (Transformers and Harry Potter are now playing) and their Imax website shows a mix of movies and documentaries -- hopefully that will continue.

I also hope the gift shop can be accessed by the public and not patrons only. It would be good to have a toy store close to the rest of downtown, Moore Square and the museum's visitors.

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I support the idea of a good childrens museum downtown, but I have to agree with the sentiment that Exploris was a boondoggle from the start. Their exhibits were panned as absolutely horrible from day one, and in recent years, the entire place had become not much more than a very expensive banquet hall (they probably made more money from renting the place out than operating it as a museum). It was another one of those "top down" approaches to downtown deveopment that rarely work: "hey lets build a big childrens museum. Who cares that we don't really know what we want to put in it....those are just details that will come later." Contrast with Playspace, which came up with a concept that people loved and supported, and were willing to support, even as it now moves into its fourth location over the years (City Market, two locations in Glenwood South, and now Moore Square) Exploris was a good idea that was horribly executed, and I say good riddance to it and welcome to Marbles.

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  • 3 weeks later...

They should have renamed it "Marblis!" (sounds like "marvelous")

This will be a supreme test in the East/West downtown thing. Mothers still do not feel safe on weekdays around Moore Square with their children. Thos same people who used to wander into Black Dog Cafe and mess up the bathrooms are still hanging around with seemingly absolutely nothing to do. The Glenwood South area, however, feels very safe. People around there keep moving. There was also a convenient parking lot for Playspace.

The Exploris building has always been frustrating to me. They did that great marble wall but it is stuck up there where nobody can see it It's a missed opportunity.

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We went to see Transformers at the IMAX a week ago and enjoyed it. The carpet in the IMAX lobby is starting to get fairly worn in some spots and could use some replacement. I think they should spend some money and advertise some more that there is actually a theater back in there. Not many people have a clue that we have an IMAX. Maybe stick a cool/retro marque out on the Moore Square side of the building. Nothing gaudy, but maybe a giant cartoonish film reel? To play into the whole childrens musuem theme.

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I think they should spend some money and advertise some more that there is actually a theater back in there. Not many people have a clue that we have an IMAX. Maybe stick a cool/retro marque out on the Moore Square side of the building. Nothing gaudy, but maybe a giant cartoonish film reel? To play into the whole childrens musuem theme.
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This will be a supreme test in the East/West downtown thing. Mothers still do not feel safe on weekdays around Moore Square with their children. Thos same people who used to wander into Black Dog Cafe and mess up the bathrooms are still hanging around with seemingly absolutely nothing to do. The Glenwood South area, however, feels very safe. People around there keep moving. There was also a convenient parking lot for Playspace.
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I recommended a Rialto-like marque during a moderated "what can we do to make Exploris better" focus group a few years ago. Obviously, they didn't listen. But with the new Marbles name (and Playspace leadership/interest), hopefully they'll reconsider. I don't think the theater can be spun off as its own entitiy, but could be branded better. Marbles Movies? IMAX Marbles? A neon (or LCD) sign with rolling marbles could be neat.

As for parking, there is the lot between the building and Morgan. As an added bonus, the minivan set won't have to see any of those "other" people! There is also space in the deck between Blount, Hargett, Wilmington and Morgan (convinent to Dos Tacquitos Centro, Rivera, etc.), free on weekends. It has a good urban form and adds something different to the mix of bars and restaurants downtown.

The area has a lot changed a lot since the Black Dog Cafe days. Heck, Playspace started in City Market (riffing on the Artspace name) around that time or shortly after. They later moved to expand in the Cherry/office furniture space when that section of Glenwood wasn't nearly as "safe" as it is now. The Moore Square area has two middle schools (Exploris Middle and Moore Square Magnet Middle), yet no kids (and only one adult, in the Progress Energy II parking deck a few blocks away) have been kidnapped/killed/raped/shot/whatever for years. How many years does Moore Square have to be incident free before those fears and biases *can* be dismissed? Did I accidently wander into the WRAL message boards?

They aren't the most kid-oriented, but Cafe Luna, Tir Na Nog, Duck and Dumpling, Artspace, etc. manage to succeed in the area as well. This despite the several mentioned services offered to the downtrodden, the bus hub, and the mental health faility a few blocks down East Hargett. The bus station is there because it is (somewhat) central and the people who need the social services can ride the bus and walk.

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With Project Homeless Connect going on across the street, is Marbles closed today? There was quite a crowd at 9:30 this morning when I drove by.

A few years ago there was a proposal to "fix up" Moore Square by installing a permanent stage/bathrooms/concession stand set up somewhere in the park, either smack dab in the middle or along Person Street facing back towards downtown. This was originally intended for Artspace and other events, and was suggested before the Raleigh Downtown Live concert series. I think it never officially got out of the planning phase due to a lack of funds and wanting to leave Moore Square as flexible as it is now.

With Marbles' new "play together" focus and they city's focus on City Square and the field west of the new convention center, Moore Square stage is not going to happen. Moore Square is long overdue for a facelift, but there appears to be no money for it in the recently passed parks bond. At night it is lit enough to see/not trip over the bumps in the asphalt paths, but the center ring of plants limits the field of vision through the center of the square.

There are people with nothing to lose and nothing to do everywhere. It is acceptable for some groups (teens/college students at the mall/movie theater/wherever) but not others (poor white trash wandering around wal-mart, homeless, gangs). When thousands of people are around -- Artspace, First Night, concerts -- no one notices. But there will never be large numbers of "acceptable" people out and about in public spaces on a weekday afternoon (Marbles closes at 5). It is sad that members of a society feel they have to lock themselves up in their own prisons to feel safe from the rest of the world. Exploris, and now Marbles, seems to be created to re-establish the modern day face-to-face (as opposed to device to device provided by phones, comptuers, etc.) village, but there needs to be willing participants to pull it off.

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I work for a nonprofit that works with many of these homeless people. Some of you seem to have this over-romanticized vision of the noble singing hobo a la Boxcar Willie. Fact is, nearly all these people either have serious mental illnesses (untreated due to our state's pathetic mental health system of care) or substance abuse problems, or both. We have a constant problem with clients breaking rules or stealing things, and this is from an agency and staff that is there to serve them. For you to compare them to disaffected suburban teens hanging around a shopping mall reflects a serious lack of understanding of the reality out there on the streets. I do not begrudge suburbanites' fear of places with lots of homeless people one bit.

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^Many of these people also have extensive criminal records. The good folks over in Chapel Hill (that adamantly defend panhandlers rights) were mortified to find out that many of these same people were rapists, convicted child molesters, and attempted murderers/convicted murderers.

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If downtown is going to be the core of a city, and not an office park above a bar/restaurant entertainment district, it needs places like Marbles. Without things to do for kids, families won't come downtown, and downtown will struggle to live on adults alone. It won't be "Children of Men"-level lack of hope, but the next generation will have a hard time going to a place they've never been. A lot of older suburban types don't know what is going on downtown for this very reason. Playspace knew what they were getting into -- a return to their roots.

I live a few blocks east of Moore Square, or maybe we should start calling it Murder Square? The rate at which people knock on my door to ask for money has gone down, but it is still there. Some are needy, some are con men and women dressed better than me. People have urinated in my yard and on my sidewalk while I sat on the porch 20 feet away. A couple of weeks ago, a man was clutching a fence across the street because he had too much to drink and couldn't walk home. For years I couldn't walk three blocks without getting asked for money. Now the chances of being asked for money is roughly 50/50 on a long walk across downtown between Union Square and Raleigh Memorial Auditorium. I don't think aggressive panhandling should be tolerated, and tell people who ask me for money that I donate to several downtown charitites. When I say no, they back off. Period. If that reflects a serious lack of understanding of the reality out there on the streets on my part, so be it.

Just because someone steals something from an office set up to *give* them treatment, etc., they won't automatically steal everything else. And a murder who has paid their debt to society won't kill again the first chance they get. Fact is that while most homeless people have a laundry list of issues (and don't understand the concept of laundry), the overwhelming majority on the street have not attacked anyone.

Meanwhile, disafected teenagers hanging at shopping malls, the ones all wearing the same color, are in a gang. It isn't coincidence that they made similar wardrobe selections. How can they afford such items? Stealing, dealing drugs, and prostitituion. If Moore Square was tagged with grafitti and had groups of teenagers yelling at each other in groups, I would be a lot more worried that I am.

Somehow these disaffected teenagers, and the ones who turned 540 and the US 64/440 flyover into their own high speed playgrounds, are less of a danger to society than the homeless. Don't tell the kids at Wakefield everything is ok in suburbia.

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Somehow these disaffected teenagers, and the ones who turned 540 and the US 64/440 flyover into their own high speed playgrounds, are less of a danger to society than the homeless. Don't tell the kids at Wakefield everything is ok in suburbia.
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My point is:

It is wrong to use the one data point of the Rocky Mount story for months/years as justification for how it unsafe to go to *any* downtown that has a homeless population under the banner that they have nothing to do so they are probably going to assault/rape/kill. A trip to Marbles in downtown Raleigh is unsafe (despite the police presence and two nearby middle schools) and the whole enterprise is a boondoggle.

while

Suburban kids who have nothing to do are OK and safe to be around, despite several more data points to the contrary. It is a tragedy when someone dies young. Period. But when there is a pervasive culture where teen drinking/driving is tolerated or brushed off as an isolated incident/someone else's kids, history repeats itself. The cycle repeats itself, but teens are not considered a danger to society.

Despite being painted with a wide brush, I object to urinating in public and agressive panhandling. I also donate money to charities with the hope that no one *needs* to panhandle. The decision of suburbia to abandon the city core is why the city needs to have a ten year plan to end homelessness. If those ten years are spent holding meetings, there will still be homeless people in the city and county.

The suburbanite decision to avoid downtown led to shifting the overwhelming majority of city investment in infrastructure, police, social services, parks etc. to outside of 440. Downtown suffered and is only now starting to recover from the problem of a few homeless people in the 70s and early 80s that grew to the zombie army of the late 90s and beyond.

Marbles is a place that fosters creative playing, alone and with others. Building social skills without sports, alcohol, or a combination of the two. Hopefully kids who can play nice at an early age will take that with them going forward. Constrast that with a teen raised in their parents' self-created prison, suddenly receving the freedom a driver's licence provides. Are they going to play "Fast and the Furious" on 540? Go the kegger at the "cool kid's house" or beach house on spring/fall break? Yep.

The lack of social interaction across the city, state, and country created by decades of suburbanites choosing to avoid communal gatherings fostered by downtowns has led to the e-mail/instant messanger/my space isolation that "the kids" are rebelling against. The rise of lifestyle centers like North Hills is due to their provide the 'fake-real' downtown experience; no climate control *and* no poor people. Hooray! I won't condem suburbia's fear mongering -- their kids are already doing it. I don't like the "my mind is made up with my own facts" that paralizes people for fear of an unseen boogeyman.

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The lack of social interaction across the city, state, and country created by decades of suburbanites choosing to avoid communal gatherings fostered by downtowns has led to the e-mail/instant messanger/my space isolation that "the kids" are rebelling against. The rise of lifestyle centers like North Hills is due to their provide the 'fake-real' downtown experience; no climate control *and* no poor people. Hooray! I won't condem suburbia's fear mongering -- their kids are already doing it. I don't like the "my mind is made up with my own facts" that paralizes people for fear of an unseen boogeyman.
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There are probably a fair number of teenagers that are happy with how things are now, though many just want some reason to hate their parents (:P ) and living in "boresville" is an easy target.

Almost all of my exposure to North Hills has revolved around weekend afternoons (lunch, movies, Target) and early evenings (dinner at various places). The teen crowd is present, but hardly out of control. I wonder how busy North Hills is after whenever the "curfew" kicks in... other than the theater, Starbucks, and Fox and Hound, there isn't much that attracts a late night crowd as it is. Several other resaurants have bars -- South, Firebirds, JK's, Vivacie -- but it doesn't seem to be a go-to district (yet). That could change with the hotel and NHE, if then. In contrast, we went to Southpoint last weekend and it was full of teens and pre-teens from 9-10, though most of that was the area between the bus stop and the movie theater.

Would a Marbles-type place be able to afford the rent at a North Hills? I don't know, but doubt it. Maybe it could be a good reuse of an abandoned big box (the former World Gym and Hannafords/Lowes Foods sites on Wake Forest near Six Forks?) but those seem destined to attract better paying tenants -- Trader Joes and Lifestyles fitness center.

I haven't surveyed Moore Square late enough to see how many people are sleeping there (or not). Though there are a lot of people who "nap" there and/or lug their shopping cart/suitcase of possessions, which discourages other people from wanting to socialize there.

Marbles is only open till 5, so it will never be covered in the shoud of darkness, weather permitting. Patterns may change, but for now the majority of the homeless spend their time south of Hargett, closer to City Market than Marbles. If Moore Square was reconfigured to allow walking from the mid-block soup kitchens on Person to the bus station, there would be little affect on the Marbles/Cafe Luna area. If they want to encourage use of the parking decks, they should allow guests to come through the corner shop and set up a wall so people who want to go to the museum would be funneled to the check in desk. As it stands now, there are signs pointing museum visitors to the courtyard by the IMAX theater.

The "homeless traffic count" near the Morgan/Blount and Morgan/Person/New Bern corners is a lot lower than that through Moore Square proper. There is the possibility of migration patterns to change if the traffic for Marbles increases. But if that happens, the downtown ambassadors and/or police should step up patrols in that area, at least during Marbles' hours of operation.

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