During the July 1, 2025 city council meeting, there was an update on a collection of projects, most taking place in the downtown area and I thought briefly touching on these projects here would be a nice way to summarize what’s going on and coming up. If you want to dive in to the presentation itself, the video is above or can be seen here.

New City Hall

The new city hall, also known as the new Municipal Campus, is 25% complete. Construction has been ongoing all year and is expected to complete in March 2026. For more about it and fantastic updates straight from the city, you can check out this page here: City Hall Project Updates

Fire Station No. 1

I’d heard about it but hadn’t seen much about the new Fire Station No. 1 so this update piqued my interest. The project is currently in the concept design phase and in addition to the new fire station, the building will also have a backup 911 call center. It looks like this project is planned for a city-owned lot along Salisbury Street, next to the performing arts center near MLK Boulevard.

Red Hat Amphitheater

Work on the Red Hat Amphitheater is underway as utilities are being put in place on South Street. Some small design details are working toward completion but the plan is to have the 2027 season open in the new amphitheater.

Convention Center Expansion

Nearby, the Convention Center Expansion, planned for the current location of the Red Hat Amphitheater, does have a schematic design that is on budget and plans to now move into the development design phase. Renderings of this were mentioned to be delivered later this year. The plan is to have this new convention center up and running in 2029.

Chavis-Dix Strollway

Planning and design for an urban heritage trail between Dix Park and Chavis Park continues. We should be seeing more community engagement events over the next year with a concept for the full trail next Summer. The route hasn’t been fully identified, whether it uses Lenoir or South Street or some combination of both.

Phase 1 of the Strollway will get started, however, and connects Dix to McDowell Street via South Street with a focus on the historic Fourth Ward neighborhood. Funding is in place for this and right now a consultant has been selected.

Heritage Park

The Raleigh Housing Authority is working to add more houses in Heritage Park and the slide shown above indicates the phases, indicated by the blue-highlighted numbers, of the transition from the old buildings to new. While some phases may need some more work and a possible rezoning, this project aspires to get almost 1,000 houses here on this property.

MLK / Saunders Revised Interchange

Adjacent to Heritage Park is the interchange of MLK/Western and Saunders Street. I didn’t realize that there is some serious thought into reconfiguring this interchange to offer more connections. This spurred some good conversation and opinions by council. While staff was proposing minor connections and changes, council seemed interested to see larger updates to this area with the intended outcome to unlock more developable land in the area.

Personally, I’d like to see this entire interchange go away and the grid brought back, connecting previously cut-off neighborhoods and yes, creating more land that can be built with an urban form. This will be an interesting one to follow for sure.

Downtown Pedestrian Safety

The push for pedestrian safety continues with the phase 2 portion of a plan being executed by the city and NCDOT. Phase one, already in place, consisted of lowering the speed limit to 25 mph all across downtown as well as disallowing right turns when the lights are red. We should now be getting some raised crosswalks on select blocks across downtown next year. This keeps with the theme of safety for pedestrians.

MLK Boulevard is also getting some pedestrian improvements. Additional signals, crosswalks, and bump outs are planned for select places between Blount and Poole Road. It’s nice to see those connections within downtown but the safety network has to keep going towards the neighborhoods around downtown so this is a good thing to see.

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