I’ve been waiting patiently at work to hear about Campbell’s announcement of moving their law school downtown. Mayor Meeker gave the announcement on the capitol grounds today at 10:00 A.M. Yesterday, officials from the school were downtown and were taking pictures of The Hillsborough Place building at 225 Hillsborough St. The rumor was that this building will be sold to Campbell early next year. It looks like this has now become more concrete but no real details yet, just speculation. From the WRAL article:

Raleigh — City officials confirmed Thursday that Campbell University’s law school would relocate to a downtown Raleigh office building by 2009.

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Raleigh is the largest state capital in the U.S. without a law school.

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Essary, Campbell University President Jerry Wallace and other faculty members were downtown Wednesday afternoon, having their photo taken in front of Hillsborough Place, the office building at the corner of Hillsborough and Dawson streets that will house the law school.

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Tenants of the building, which is owned by former state lawmaker Art Pope, said they were notified by letter Wednesday that the 107,000-square-foot building would be sold to Campbell by early next year.

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[UPDATE]The News & Observer also has an article about the move. They have the same information but add to it somewhat. Read it here.

A letter to tenants of the building had said that the sale
should be final by March; renovations will begin next summer.

The move will bring an infusion of young people to the state capital just months before the city plans to open its new $221 million convention center, a Marriott Hotel and an underground parking garage.

In all, $2.5 billion in private and public investment is being pumped into downtown. Supporters say those efforts to remake Raleigh into a 24-hour city are working.

Wow, that investment number just keeps going up. I remember in 2005 when it was just $1 billion in investments. Campbell made a great move here. 350 students plus faculty and staff will be a big boost to the downtown area. Having met some students who go to the law school currently, I can say this move will be a step in the right direction to get more life downtown after work hours and weekends. Here’s the most important question of the day; when students are burned out from all that reading, what bar will you find them all hovering over some pints?

The Exploris Museum has now merged with Playplace at its Hargett St. location to create The Marbles Kids Museum. The Opening was on Saturday; go to WRAL for more details or watch a video.

Raleigh — Wake County has a new hot spot for kids. Marbles Kids Museum at 201 East Hargett St. in downtown Raleigh welcomed its first visitors Saturday.

The museum’s opening comes after the merger of the former Exploris and Playspace museums in July.
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the Marbles Kids Museum is in the 83,000-square-foot former home of Exploris.

Close to 11,000 people were estimated to have rolled into the museum on Saturday. Chris Babson took his four daughters to the free celebration, which featured kids’ bands, clowns and magicians.

There was a lot going on downtown this weekend. We’ll go over it all throughout the week but let’s start first with the Bike Fest on Fayetteville St. Fayetteville, Martin, and the streets surrounding Moore Square were taken over by bikers from all over. It was like a mini-fair with tons of food vendors and shops. Two stages were set up with music being played later in the day. I had fun just walking around checking out the scene. Will this be Raleigh’s largest event, the one the city is known for? More pics from WRAL.

Mayor Charles Meeker released some good information about the new convention center. From an article in the N&O:

Raleigh officials are trumpeting progress on the new downtown convention center, which they said today is now 75 percent complete.

The convention center is expected to open in September 2008, along with a new Marriott Hotel and an underground parking deck. The hotel is currently 50 percent complete, while the parking deck is 85 percent complete.

Downtown boosters say that first-year booking of the convention center has reached 164 percent of their goals, including 23 conventions. There are 58 events scheduled for the second year so far.

From WRAL:

Twenty-three conventions have been booked for the first year of operations, and 58 events have been lined up for the second year, officials said. More than 63,600 nights in the four-star, 400-room Marriott hotel next to the convention center have been booked in the first year, they said.

This obviously sounds like a success story and we are still one year from opening. Based on the numbers from WRAL, 63,600 hotel nights in the 400 room hotel means that the Marriott could be at capacity on an average of 3 nights a week just for the first year. This is also just the Marriott, I’m curious to see if the Sheraton and Clarion have seen increase in bookings. I would imagine they have. Perhaps a successful convention center, once up and running, will get the Winston Hotel Project and the LaFayette into the fast lane as these hotels have been quiet recently.

As a side note, if you really want to read a different opinion of this news, browse through the WRAL comments. Most of it is just bashing the fact that the convention center exists, with the exception of a few supporters. I am obviously no expert and am not claiming to be, but it should be great news that such a huge investment is showing great signs of being successful. The fact that thousands of people are now traveling to Raleigh for a convention is a positive thing for our city. They and their businesses will spend money in restaurants, shops, the airport, hotels, rental cars, and other services that all have a tax in some way. This tax is added revenue for the city to be used on other projects, like infrastructure or schools. I do not want to get into a numbers battle to see if the $220 million spent is worth it but thinking about it this way makes sense to me. Everyone has their own opinion and that is fine. Heck, $220 million could have gone towards a nice rail line, similar to the old proposed TTA light rail, but this is the way our city leaders went. Let’s just be happy it is a success and be proud of the city we live in.

I saw this new sign while walking around downtown. I promise you I have never noticed it here before. Is this really where a ‘Welcome to Raleigh’ sign should go? The sign is on Hargett St. right after crossing West St. I know the new signs for downtown have not yet been implemented so I have no idea where this came from. Correct me if I’m wrong but has this always been here?

I’m looking forward to the Peace Street Streetscape Project, mentioned earlier in this post. As well as the street being upgraded, the owner of the McDonald’s that sits on Peace and Boylan wants to tear down the restaurant and re-build a more modern one. This plan was proposed in November, 2006 and has been going in and out of city council meetings.

I bring this up because the N&O has an article on the situation and how the final decision has been delayed yet again to approve the plan. The article states that some members of the council are pushing toward a more pedestrian friendly design while others, including a frustrated council member James West, seem to want to approve a design and move on.

Faced with the prospect of delaying the approval of a new McDonald’s, council member James West said Wednesday that enough is enough.

Declaring that the Raleigh City Council has a bad habit of “putting things in committee and committee-ing them to death,” West took a stand for expeditious government review.
“I see no sense in us delaying this another two weeks,” he said.

I can agree with both sides of this argument. I applaud the mayor for calling for more pedestrian friendly designs near downtown but is it necessary to delay this for so long? I also agree with Mr. West, he is practically calling out the council’s “do-nothing” attitude of discussing and fine-tuning designs. There needs to be a more take-action attitude instead of delaying decisions and inevitably delaying progress downtown. If Raleigh has a council with this kind of attitude then developers may be less inclined to work with them.

A pedestrian friendly design would consist of the new McDonald’s to be built right up next to the sidewalk. The original Streetscape plan does not look like this will be the case. Below I have the current sidewalk and the planned sidewalk.

You can see that there is no real change. The lanes going in and out around the island tell me that there will be lots of traffic. There also may be parking spots lining the sidewalk. This is just speculation and to be honest I cannot think of a good way to accommodate the McDonald’s and pedestrians. How do you think it should be built? Could a 3 or 4 story building with the restaurant on the ground floor with condos or office space work at this location?

Last week the Downtown Raleigh Alliance released some data about downtown. WRAL has the information covered here:

Thirty-eight businesses opened, 92 residential units were created and 155,000-square-feet of office space not occupied a year ago were leased, the group said.

I expect those numbers only to rise over the next year.

Well not just for the college kids but I guarantee you if you ask a bunch of them on a Wednesday night at Rum Runners, they will have no idea how to get home. There is even a facebook group entitled “Been to Rum Runners a million times and still don’t know how to get there”.

Anyway, so I have heard people complain about how driving around downtown is confusing and that they always get lost. The city wants to try and change that by helping people navigate their way to attractions and parking decks. RalCon is here for that also and I’ve got plans for a nice interactive map showing you where the hot spots are but that project is still in the works. The N&O has got the scoop here. Some quotes:

The city paid a consulting firm $200,000 to come up with recommendations and design signs for its “way-finding” capital improvement project. The firm, Corbin Design of Traverse City, Mich., proposed navy blue and white signs with an oak leaf motif to guide people — in cars and on foot — to downtown attractions and parking.

City officials hope to have many of the new signs in place by the time the new convention center opens late next summer and are eager for public input, said Elizabeth Alley, the city planner who is managing the way-finding project.

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Downtown’s system of one-way streets can intimidate newcomers, the consultant said, recommending that Blount, Person, Edenton and Morgan/New Bern be converted to two-way.

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Altogether, the city has budgeted $1 million for the way-finding project, spread over three years. The biggest chunk, $500,000, is included in the 2007-08 budget.