Category / Featured

by Leo Suarez

Buses, Bikes, and Sidewalks in the Downtown Transportation Plan

Last week, the most recent version of the Downtown Transportation Plan was released to the public and those behind it are looking for your feedback.

Dive right into it at goraleigh.org/downtownplan

What is BRT? Click for larger.

This downtown plan attempts to lay out the groundwork for how our future transit system will work within the downtown area. The future bus network of Raleigh will consist of bus-rapid transit lanes and higher frequency bus routes that are running longer hours. Combined with an expanded bicycle network, the downtown portion presents some pretty unique challenges.

The streets aren’t getting any wider so reallocating space is a community-driven conversation that is currently starting. When we talk about dedicated bus lanes for faster service that means less space for other things on our downtown streets.

Online survey feedback shows a desire for non-car mobility. Click for larger.

Full build out is planned for 2027 and with portions relying on state and federal funding, applications are being prepared right now!

When you look at the plan, you’ll see near, mid, and long-term plans for the downtown portion of the bus rapid network. The routes aren’t set in stone as different variables and decisions that haven’t been made may impact those routes.

Below are the maps for the three plans, meshed together for easier viewing. Click for a larger view.

Planned to be up and running in 2023, the east Raleigh BRT line is the first of the rapid transit lines to come online. Moving east/west down New Bern Avenue and Edenton Streets, this route has the least amount of impacts from a historical and infrastructure perspective.

I also think it’s sort of the most obvious when you look at serving the eastern portion of the city. Plus, the current bus route along this corridor has the second-highest ridership in the system. (only behind the Capital Boulevard route)

Mid-term, the BRT routes serving the west and south will come online connecting at GoRaleigh Station. The route down Western Boulevard is also most direct while a choice still exists for the routes to the south. Saunders, McDowell/Dawson, and Wilmington Street could all be possible entry/exit points to downtown. There are still two many outside variables that need to be determined so this has been left open.

Last, parts to the north have many variables in play here, leaving several options on the table. Integrating Raleigh Union Station’s bus facility and the west street extension could play a role in how this route helps tie the network together.

Along side all of this is a greatly expanded bicycle network. A mix of protected lanes and non-protected lanes will be added as a way to compliment the bus traffic moving throughout downtown. This is shown through another map below.

Full build out bicycle facilities. Click for larger.

There is a lot to consider here when looking at the plan so far. As unpopular as it may sound, I worry about the fact that downtown is on a path to having two bus stations with GoRaleigh’s recent renovations and RUSbus being planned to integrate into train travel (Amtrak and future commuter rail) at Union Station. Won’t this bifurcate the system as it approaches downtown? I fear this may slow things down canceling out the improvements we’ve provided through dedicated lanes.

This BRT plan is still only one layer, one lens of the entire thing though. I’ll be really interested to see the full build out and future plan with all modes coexisting. That means with local bus, rapid bus, commuter rail, and bicycles lanes, the system just might function more robustly and speedier than I think.

What do you think? We have a huge discussion going on the Community. Come share.

by Leo Suarez

Plans for News and Observer Property Include Multiple towers starting with Nexus Tower

Rendering of Nexus Tower

Announced in February with site plans submitted shortly after,
Acquisition Group, the developers behind the 3-acre, former N&O property, have released plans that include multiple towers for office, hotel, and residential spaces.

The first phase includes a 15-story, 250-foot office tower called Nexus which will, generally, be replacing the parking deck along Salisbury Street. Plans show a new parking deck below and behind the tower with street-level retail spaces.

Salisbury Street. February 2019.

Future developments after Nexus could be situated along a new internal street for accessing more retail and public spaces. The hotel and residential towers would all have access to these new mixed-use areas.

The future plans are still a work in progress as only the Nexus tower has been submitted. No rezoning is needed and the tower is planned to open in 2021.

With a collection of buildings and new public street, this is a pretty exciting thing to see. The mix of building uses should keep the area lively at different times of the day and week.

Rendering of Nexus Tower

A street that doesn’t really serve as new transportation means the area should be more human-scale. There’s no need to speed through making the area more walkable and bike-friendly. With the right design elements, the developers have an opportunity to make it look special compared to the streets that come straight from the Raleigh Department of Transportation playbook.

Expect to see the area cleared out and demolished sometime this year.

by Leo Suarez

A Walk Down South Saunders Street

Intersection of Lake Wheeler and Saunders Street

With lots of eyes looking at the future of Dorothea Dix Park, there is sure to be new development and plans to help connect it to downtown Raleigh. Between the two, one of the largest such projects announced so far is along Saunders Street so I thought it a great time to walk the area.

We’ve talked about a lot of new stuff taking place near the intersection of Saunders and South Streets but going away from downtown, there are buildings and land available for new projects.

A local development firm, Five Horizons, plans for something special in the mostly wooded area along the eastern side of Saunders. Residential towers with skyline and park views plus ground-floor restaurants may one day make up this area. See the map below to get an idea of where the group is making plans.

Planned development is shown in orange. Click for larger.

Roughly nine acres in size, the area is mostly undeveloped with some businesses facing Saunders and the Rocky Branch creek on the northern edge of the property.

From the intersection of Lake Wheeler to where McDowell Street begins, a series of auto-repair shops and light warehouses line the streets. Some are open, some empty.

For this area, the Five Horizons project will create a transformation.

When looking at the currently open rezoning request, the developers are planning for an appropriate zoning that allows buildings between 12 and 20 stories tall with the shortest being in front of the creek.

In addition to a new interior public street, the buildings will be laid out so that every floor has a great view by design. This was mentioned several times from the design team at the CAC meeting I attended.

Starting with the creek, the developers are looking in to ideas to create a public space, such as a boardwalk, here. Bridges from the new development over the creek to the existing greenway could happen as a way to make the downtown skyline view available to all.

Rendering with building massings. Click for larger.

The development could have a mix of residential, office, and retail to create activity throughout the day and night.

The new street will be planned narrower as a way to create more space for people and make it more walkable.

Street and block plan. Click for larger.

After presentations and conversations at the CAC over the last few months, the response has been pretty positive towards this project. This month, the CAC has voted in favor of the rezoning for this project.

Five Horizons say that they are still years away from starting on the first parcel so I imagine this area will certainly take time to be fully built out. I expect that change may also take place nearby so Saunders could become a new downtown district in the near future.

by Leo Suarez

Administrative Alternate Shows Rendering of Nash Square Hotel

Rendering of the Nash Square hotel. (AAD-4-19) Click for larger.

The hotel planned for the southeast corner of Martin and Dawson is working its way through the approval process. Posted to the city’s website is an Administrative Alternative Request, see AAD-4-19, which shows a nice rendering of the hotel.

The request shows off the setbacks planned above the third floor and suggests some outdoor terrace, possibly for a restaurant or lounge.

Dive in to the request for more details.

by Leo Suarez

Longleaf Hotel Planned for Lane Street


Last December, 2018, the Days Inn on West Lane Street closed. Later, construction fencing went up around the old motor lodge and next-door deli space. A lot of folks took notice and it turns out that local developers have bought the two properties with plans to renovate it all.

Loden Properties plans to create a boutique hotel called The Longleaf Hotel as well as overhauling the former NC Deli into Ish Delicatessen.

The buildings won’t be demolished but the renovation will be pretty deep so I imagine this year we’ll see the lot looking pretty bare. Reports say the job will take around 9 months so hopefully visitors can start booking towards the end of this year.

Google 3D image of West Lane Street. Click for larger.

Looking around the area of West Lane Street, the hotel is a few blocks away from some of downtown’s latest developments but nothing exciting is directly nearby. A great location either way and easy walk to Fayetteville Street and Glenwood South, the new hotel would offer a more authentic Raleigh experience compared to a corporate hotel such as the ones near the convention center.

It would almost be good to review some of the street paint on this block of West Lane Street. The street is incredibly wide for the amount of car traffic and a sidewalk is missing right in front of the hotel.

No sidewalks along West Lane Street. No reason on-street parking wouldn’t work here also.

The grassy, shrubby “arch” to the north of the hotel is owned by the state so I expect nothing to change there.

The cool thing to see with a boutique hotel like this is that it is going after a more local, unique experience, trying to attract travelers who want the “Raleigh experience”. That should present well with Ish Delicatessen next door as it’s being run by Matt Fern, a veteran of the Raleigh food scene.

I’m excited to see how this goes and see some new activity to this area on the weekends.

by Leo Suarez

A Walk Around Seaboard Station

In December 2018, it was announced that a developer had been selected to buy parts of Seaboard Station from the owner, William Peace University. Plans for new development are underway including apartments, hotel space, and more retail.

From the press release:

PN Hoffman, the developer of premier urban communities across the Washington Metropolitan Area including the $2.5 billion Washington, DC, waterfront neighborhood The Wharf, along with William Peace University and TradeMark Properties today announced PN Hoffman’s purchase of Seaboard Station in the north end of downtown Raleigh. The expansive $250 million project will be built in three phases and consist of approximately 800,000 square feet of mixed-use space at full build-out.

….

Additional details include:
Approximately 650 Apartments
Approximately 150 Hotel keys
Approximately 90,000 square feet of new retail space and a total of 135,000 SF of retail space at full build-out

see Press Release

With this news, Seaboard Station has the potential to really break out from just a destination but into a district with its own personality. I thought this would be a good time to walk around and grab some photos of the area.

If you are not familiar, Seaboard Station consists of a hodge-podge of brick buildings from the 1950s and 1960s with Peace Street acting like the main “frontage” of the area. In addition to the former railroad station that now houses Logan‘s, a long-running garden shop, the businesses here make up Seaboard Station and are marketed as a destination.

Aerial shot of Seaboard Station from Bing Maps. Click for larger.

With the buildings built slowly over time, it’s doubtful that a master plan for the area ever existed so we have a frankenstein-esque retail area that represents the car-centric era that it was built. With a stagnating downtown in the 60s, you can see that no real urban feel exists in Seaboard Station with the development at that time.

Bolstered by downtown’s growth and surge of new residents in recent history, Seaboard Station has had a big increase in new tenants. Renovations have brought existing spaces to market but no new space has been built.

The one-story buildings dominate the landscape here with streets that are awkward to navigate and parking plentiful. There’s no real public space and even gravel parking lots sit empty giving the area a dull, uninteresting feel at times.

It’s best to just drive in, get what you want and leave.

Plenty of parking at Seaboard Station

The potential here though is that all this space can be used for wide sidewalks and plazas. Building upward is almost mandatory.

Indeed, the new owners have announced that the first phase of the development will include a hotel. Hotel visitors will want to be able to walk to places so anything nearby within Seaboard Station would be highly considered.

In the future, as Peace Street gets its road diet and Smokey Hollow continues to extend Glenwood South closer to Seaboard Station, Peace Street might become a destination street linking both areas together.

We’re following Seaboard Station in-depth over on the Community so come join the conversation.

by Leo Suarez

Warehouse District Residential Tower Planned for Surface Parking Lot

Surface parking behind 307 West Martin Street. December 2018.

Clearscapes is planning a new building near their properties over in the warehouse district. They recently gave a short presentation at a Central CAC meeting about it and while the address of the project includes some of the brick buildings facing Martin Street, the real work will take place on the surface parking lot behind them.

307, 309, 311 and 313 West Martin Street are currently zoned for 5-story development. Clearscapes wants to rezone it for 12 in order to bring a residential tower to the parking lot behind the buildings.

As I shared on the Community, here is my sketch of the project as well as additional photos to help readers understand the location. 

Sketch of the proposed project location.
Brick buildings along West Martin Street
Parking lot behind the 300 block, Martin Street facing buildings.

Clearscapes envisions a 10 to 12-story tower with residential units. The first two floors will be parking however the top floor of the parking is actually at the same level of the lot shown above.

That means the tower’s parking garage will go underground and that can be done more easily due to how this lot sits above street level. You would enter the garage on Commerce Place, a street that is one-level below the current parking lot behind the buildings.

Commerce Place. The Martin Street brick buildings are seen in the left background.

Between the tower and brick buildings along Martin would be a public plaza as a means to tie the tower and warehouse buildings together

Next steps for the project is the rezoning and with Clearscapes’s solid Raleigh reputation, the fact that the Martin Street buildings will be untouched, and only surface parking being removed (private parking by the way) I hope the rezoning goes through smoothly.

by Leo Suarez

Plans for Smokey Hollow Phase 2 Bring More Residential and Office to Glenwood South

Rendering of Smokey Hollow Phase 2

Rendering of Smokey Hollow Phase 2. Click for larger.

While the community actively watches the first phase of Smokey Hollow rise out of the ground along Peace Street, plans for more buildings have been submitted. Phase 2 will contain additional buildings along West and Harrington Streets with residential and office components.

The highlights:

  • 280 Residential units
  • 225,000 sq. ft. of office space
  • 40,000 sq. ft. of ground floor retail

The rendering above shows the key pieces of the second phase of the three-phase project for the area. With phase 1 (currently under construction) delivering the anchor, a Publix grocery store, phase 2 brings more community and placemaking around it with an office tower, more retail spaces, and overall just a more interesting place to be.

It looks like West Street will become a residential street with the addition of a five-story building. The new building will stretch from the West at North tower all the way to the new Johnson Street intersection. Retail spaces will be mixed along West with even more along a new private drive that goes through the development.

The “intersection” of Tucker and West will have a private drive that cuts through to Harrington as well as pedestrian-only plaza towards Johnson. Here, more retail and outdoor spaces will be made to create a sense of place. The renderings below will help to visualize the concept.

Rendering of Smokey Hollow Phase 2

Rendering of Smokey Hollow Phase 2, West Street at Tucker St. Click for larger.

Rendering of Smokey Hollow Phase 2

Rendering of Smokey Hollow Phase 2, Retail along the “interior”. Click for larger.

Rendering of Smokey Hollow Phase 2

Rendering of Smokey Hollow Phase 2, Retail along the “interior”. Click for larger.

All of this should drastically improve the sidewalk experience in the area. West and Harrington will become two key urban streets, something we’ve discussed before, and Smokey Hollow basically becomes the northern gateway to downtown Raleigh. In the future, as a BRT line goes through this area, the flow of people through it will become more obvious.

Rendering of Smokey Hollow Phase 2

Rendering of Smokey Hollow Phase 2. Click for larger.

Tightening the fabric between Smokey Hollow and the rest of Glenwood South would really make the area lively and I’m hoping that the office tower does very well. More workers could really bring more streetlife to the daytime hours here and give Glenwood South that 24-7 feel. Mix in the future Devereux Meadow park north of Peace and the area should really take off!

More to come on this one for sure!