Category / Featured

by Leo Suarez

17 Years Ago, A Connoisseur Was Born

Wasn’t 2007 a fantastic year? We saw the iPhone. Netflix starting streaming. The Raleigh Connoisseur starts publishing blog posts. All of these things are changing the world and today is a day to celebrate one of them in particular. With 1,527 posts logged, I’m happy to report that I’m still here.

We have our community, our meetup, and this space here of course for various topics around urban planning, transit, developments, and a little food and drink. There’s so much to talk about if you follow what’s going on in Raleigh and I’m happy to keep putting these thoughts out there where I hope it fosters good discussion and makes all readers stop and think.

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by Leo Suarez

2024 Will Be a Pivotal Year For Raleigh’s Transit Future. We Must Support Transit-Oriented Development.

In November 2023, the first of four bus-rapid transit (BRT) routes, years in the making, broke ground. The first route out the gate will be the eastern route. This one services the New Bern Avenue corridor between downtown, WakeMed, and parts around New Hope Road. We just might be riding around in articulated buses some time in 2025.

The increase in bus service is finally happening, kickstarted back in 2016, after Wake County voters decided to increase the sales tax in order to fund expanded transit. The second half of the transit journey comes with the accompanying land use and I think 2024 will be the year Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) becomes a household phrase. (or at least to all you readers out there)

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by Leo Suarez

Coloring Outside the Lines: Imagining Fayetteville Street’s Future

Above is a video recording (watch it directly on YouTube) of a virtual meeting hosted by the Downtown Raleigh Alliance and Interface Studio where they take attendees through some of the things coming out of the Downtown Raleigh Economic Development Strategy project currently in progress. We’ve mentioned this project earlier in the year and this video is worth watching as it focuses mainly on Fayetteville Street. The team shares ideas that may lead us to new ways to reinvigorate the street.

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by Leo Suarez

The Downtown North-South Greenway Connector Overview

I spent some time this week with a survey from the city about possible plans to reconfigure North West Street between Peace Street and Wade Avenue that could accommodate bike lanes, walking paths, and a different parking layout. If that excites you, jump right on over to that survey here to let them know what you think. If I still got you, I wanted to revisit the plans for more bicycle infrastructure along West Street, how it’s going, and what we might expect in the future.

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by Leo Suarez

Moore Square East Plans Updated With More Art, Affordable Housing Comes First

Moore Square is a such a vital part of the downtown Raleigh fabric. I love the space here as it truly feels like a space for all and you can see people from all different walks of life. The square organically caters to residents who want some open space, visitors who want to linger around the city, and events, planned or unplanned, in the various sections around this park-like square.

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by Leo Suarez

October 2023, What’s Going On at DTRaleigh HQ

Just the other day, I bought tickets to an event in January and noticed the year value on the date was 2024. “The year is almost over?” I said out loud and everyone around me agreed that things are just flying by.

I haven’t been posting on the blog as frequently lately as I have plenty of things going on in that thing called, “real life.” It’s all positive actually and I’m thankful that I’ve been able to balance work, family, social, and volunteering in somewhat harmony throughout this year that I wanted to share what is going on behind the scenes.

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