Updated Unified Development Ordinance Now Available
Another draft of the city’s Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) is now out for public comment. I’ll admit, this is a tough one for citizens to swallow so perhaps after some time, there will be some highlights about it. For now, I’ll try to inspire readers to dive into the documents over at the city’s webpage for the UDO.
If you have time, please watch this video, embedded above, from the city’s Youtube channel that talks about the new code and can maybe clear this up for more people, even if just a little.
DT Raleigh Chatter for January 6th, 2012
Municipography, Union Station and Downtown Property Loans
Municipography is a summary of current issues going through the Raleigh City Council and other municipal departments in the city. The point is to try to deliver any video, photos, and text associated with the discussions happening at City Hall or elsewhere. Since this is a downtown Raleigh blog, the focus is on the center of the city.
The first Raleigh City Council meeting of 2012 was held yesterday. The proposed Union Station was discussed and the agenda describes it just as well as I can. From the January 3, 2012 agenda packet:
F. REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION OF THE PASSENGER RAIL TASK FORCE
1. NCDOT Concept for Raleigh Rail Station
At their December 12, 2011 meeting, the Passenger Rail Task Force discussed proposed improvements to the Dillon Viaduct Building by NCDOT to convert the facility to a passenger rail station. The new station would replace the existing train station on West Cabarrus Street and would accommodate existing Amtrak service, proposed future high-speed rail service, and the proposed future Triangle Transit commuter rail service. The passenger rail station would be the first phase of a larger Union Station multimodal facility that would also provide service to local bus, regional bus, and light rail services. City staff will continue to work on conceptual designs for future phases of the Union Station multimodal facility.
After reviewing draft concept plans presented by the NCDOT Rail Division, the Task Force voted unanimously to recommend endorsing the proposed Viaduct Building rail station retrofit concept. A complete copy of their evaluation is included in the agenda packet. $3 million has been appropriated for City participation in the cost of this facility
as part of the 2011 Transportation Bond and will be available in FY13 in the draft Capital Improvement Program.Recommendation: Endorse the findings of the Passenger Rail Task Force to retrofit the
Dillon Viaduct Building for use as the rail station of Union Station.
The council voted unanimously to endorse this site and the plans recommended by the Passenger Rail Task Force. Watch the video below for more discussion about it during the meeting.
A great pdf document that goes over the concept of turning the Dillon Viaduct building into a train station is “NCDOT Viaduct Building Assessment”, taken from the Passenger Rail Task Force webpage on the city’s website. You can download it here. In this document, you can see the phased approach to adding new platforms for Amtrak, commuter rail, and high-speed rail to the Boylan Wye as well as other additions to accommodate the station.
Downtown Loan Program
The Downtown Loan Program was created for properties along Fayetteville Street, typically older structures, to be brought up to proper code for owners and potential tenants. This was an effort to help bring businesses to the Fayetteville Street area after it’s renovation a few years ago. The loan program is now being expanded to more streets in downtown Raleigh. From the City of Raleigh’s press release, the streets include:
The program will include portions of Dawson Street, Glenwood Avenue, Hargett Street, Martin Street, Davie Street, Fayetteville Street, Blount Street, Person Street and designated at primary retail Street in the Comprehensive Plan. Designated secondary retail streets include portions of Harrington Street, West Street, McDowell Street, Dawson Street, Salisbury Street, Wilmington Street, West Morgan Street, Hillsborough Street and Peace Street.
And finally more about the program:
The program is designed to create an incentive to new and/or expanding Downtown businesses and commercial property owners seeking to improve properties. To be eligible for the loan program commercial property owners and business owners must demonstrate management ability and experience. Qualified applicants must show they are unable to secure financing from financial institutions for the amount being requested from this program. To date the program has made three loans to area businesses. One of the loans has been fully repaid. Currently $200,000 is available.
The expansion was approved by the council during the consent agenda.
DT Raleigh Chatter for December 23rd, 2011
Downtown solo just cuz
at The Raleigh Times…love their shrimp burgers and Belgian beer..let’s eat
I would love to live in downtown Raleigh
- kissesfromkourt
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Downtown Raleigh 2011 In Review
Tubes of Light by dtraleigh, on Flickr
2011, what will we remember you by? All-star weekend or Hopscotch 2? Could the food truck saga of this year be the one that sticks out in your mind? Or perhaps, if affected, you may still be dealing with damage from the April tornadoes?
On planning downtown Raleigh, this past year has been pretty active with long range plans becoming more detailed, less alternatives, and more decisions. Missing was another Raleigh Wide Open but there were plenty of events that kept spirits high. One of the biggest feather in downtown’s hosting cap was the 2011 NHL All-Star game, bringing a new format from years past and was reviewed very positively across the hockey world.
As always let’s first start with the 2011 wishlist. This list only consists of items that can be done in one year’s time.
- Bookstore
- More Hours
- Counter Service Food
- Food Markets
- Mass Transit Plan
For a second year in a row, a bookstore has not happened. Reading articles about Amazon selling a million Kindles a week this holiday season really isn’t helping new bookstores open especially an independent store in a relatively low traffic, downtown area. Probably the best thing is for downtown residents and workers to support the Wake County express library on Fayetteville Street. The library is open Monday to Friday from 10am to 6pm so if you can work it into your schedule, give this location a shot.
I feel some businesses have tried to expand their operating hours this year. I didn’t keep track of this one very well so correct me if I’m wrong. A few examples that I can think of are The Pit opening on Sundays, Wilmoore Cafe having weekend hours, Poole’s Diner opening on Tuesday nights, and Mecca adding some hours as well. The wish really is to get to the point where downtown Raleigh is “open for business” at all times of the day and night so that people feel there are several options available to them. This pushes the 24/7 idea closer to reality.
Counter service food options are still out on the horizon. Chuck’s attempted counter service but later changed it due to requests. Perhaps more residents in the area will help expand the quick and cheap eats category options.
The downtown Farmer’s Market continued to serve up City Plaza each Wednesday this year during the warmer months, just like the last one. This is probably the closest thing to market style food buying that we’re going to get for awhile. There is however a produce shop over in City Market that a lot of people don’t know about. Walk over there and give them a try if you are into Farmer’s Markets.
There was plenty of transit talk this year and plans are taking steps forward. In light-rail news, the city picked their preferred alternative which involves a light-rail line to enter downtown from the west on Morgan Street and hang a left on to Harrington Street to exit downtown to the north. A comprehensive bus plan has also been released with plans to significantly expand bus service around Raleigh and the rest of the Triangle. High-speed rail is also moving along with a new plan to bridge the trains over Capital Boulevard into Glenwood South as they head for Union Station in the warehouse district.
Construction in 2011
New building construction moved along in 2011 with projects continuing to take shape or break ground. Here is a list of construction projects we’ve been following all year.
- The American Institute of Architects North Carolina building on Peace Street has finished, or is close to finishing, up now as we close out the year.
- The Wake County Justice Center started the year as a formation of steel beams in the ground. The construction project will go into 2012, topped off and mostly covered up. County officials have also let everyone know that this project came in under budget.
- The Green Square project has partially finished with the rest set to open in April 2012. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources offices are fully open as well as the parking deck across the street. The Nature Research Center, with it’s eye catching globe at the corner of Salisbury and Jones Street, will open in 2012.
- Glenwood South’s first hotel, a Hampton Inn, has broken ground at the corner of Glenwood Avenue and Johnson Street.
- The North Carolina State Bar has started construction on their new headquarters at the corner of Edenton and Blount Street.
- All year we’ve watched the State Employees Credit Union building on Salisbury Street rise up and peak at about twelve floors. Glass is being installed on the building now and construction will continue into 2012.
Go here for a gallery of renderings of SECU and Green Square.
Other highlights of 2011:
- Numerous electric vehicle chargers have been installed around the city with several in close proximity in downtown. This blog is attempting to map them all.
- A large scale development project, The Edison, has scaled down tremendously.
- The still empty lot where The L Building is planned now contains attractive banners to cover up the gray wall of the parking deck.
New Bern Avenue Corridor Study Comments and Bicycle Lanes
The New Bern Avenue Corridor study has been going on for over a year and the final draft report is now available. You can view it on the City of Raleigh’s study page here. The twenty-seven page pdf goes through all the issues of this corridor and lists recommended actions to take in order to improve the study area. The city is looking for comments about it so get them in before January 2. Here’s how.
- Download the New Bern Corridor Study and send your comments to: dhanya.sandeep@raleighnc.gov
- View the New Bern Corridor Study at the Planning Office and mail your comments to:
City of Raleigh
Planning & Development
P.O. Box 590
Raleigh, NC 27602
One piece of the corridor study that I commented on was the bicycle lanes. The study recommends a new street layout. Picture of that below.
Click for larger
The one-way streets of Edenton and New Bern are laid out, going left to right, with two vehicle lanes, a five foot bicycle lane, and an eight foot vehicle parking lane. The two way section of New Bern has a similar layout on both sides with a median in the center.
This layout irked me a bit after seeing it so after some thought I did some research and commented on the plan. Here is what I sent in:
“Hello, Dhanya.
Great work on the final draft of the study. I did want to pass along some comments of mine as I read through the report, specifically about the bicycle lanes.I hope that the city can consider an upgraded plan for cycling along this corridor to be implemented either with this New Bern vision or at some later time when funding becomes available.
The plan in the report shows that a cyclist can ride in a five foot wide travel lane with parked cars to the riders’ right and moving traffic to the riders’ left. In this layout, a cyclist is at risk of injury with cars entering/exiting parking spaces as well as at risk of being “doored” by unaware drivers exiting their vehicles. Buses will also stop within the bicycle lane in order to drop off and/or pick up new riders at bus stops. Since the New Bern Corridor has the highest ridership of any Capital Area Transit (CAT) bus, the chances for this to happen is high especially in the coming years if transit grows in Raleigh.
I propose the city consider an upgraded cycling transit plan for the New Bern Avenue Corridor where bicycles can flow with equal ease as nearby buses and cars on the road and pedestrians on the sidewalk. The five foot bicycle lane should be swapped with the eight foot car parking lane. The bicycle lane should then be protected with barriers so that cars cannot interfere with bicycle flow in that lane. A picture of what I mean can be seen here:
Protected bicycle lane in Chicago (via http://theexpiredmeter.com)
(full URL at http://theexpiredmeter.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Protected-bike-lanes.jpg)
Clearly, other modifications are needed to make the bicycle lane flow smoothly through intersections and bus stops. The planned bus stop bump outs should then be modified into “island” platforms where waiting riders can step onto the bus at the same floor level. This helps the ease of entering/exiting passengers, especially wheelchair riders, and helps make any future bus rapid transit (BRT) or streetcar system flow much more smoothly. A picture of a bus platform with a bike lane around it can be seen here:
Bus platform with bike lane in Portland (via http://www.miabirk.com)
(full URL at http://www.miabirk.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Platform-on-SW-Moody1.jpg)
Regarding conflicts with bicycles crossing an intersection and vehicles making right turns, more research needs to be done on a way to have both parties yield correctly to avoid any nasty incidents. Other cities have found ways to accomplish this and I’m sure Raleigh can implement it as well.
I really think there is an opportunity for cycling in Raleigh to continue to grow with changes like these. If something like this existed from downtown all the way to WakeMed, a distance of three miles, then I think this corridor would be a truly mixed use transit corridor and spur lots of the great development that many participants in the study area asked for. This would allow for people to get around in many ways and helps preserve the neighborhood character on both sides by keeping the area at a more human scale.
Hope to see something like this in the future. Thanks a lot.
Leo Suarez”
So the dedicated bicycle lane in the recommended plan may not really improve things for cyclists then the current layout of New Bern Avenue and Edenton Streets. In my opinion, the current layout of three, and in some places four, travel lanes with no parking spaces allows a cyclist to move down the street more safely. Cyclists can travel with the curb to their right and plenty of space on their left for cars and buses to pass. The recommended layout with the bicycle lanes may force encounters between cyclists and cars parking as well as buses making their stops.
I think if Raleigh was really serious in building cycling infrastructure, the New Bern Avenue corridor needs more study on this topic. I hate to see similar problems in this area to the ones on Hillsborough Street’s bicycle lanes. If anyone has more knowledge on the topic, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
DT Raleigh Chatter for December 16th, 2011
It’s barely 9 but I just saw some Actual Raleigh Punks walking around downtown, having mohawks. Where do they hide during the day?
The skyline and Raleigh is so sexy. I’m on 40 and I see it
- DjPj_919
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Pic of the Week
Christmas Story Time by dtraleigh, on Flickr. Best if viewed large.
Santa and Governor Perdue read a story to children around the Christmas tree on the Capitol grounds. The tree was lit last week.
