Yesterday, a group from the City of Raleigh, NCDOT, and Clearscapes were hosting the public at the Contemporary Art Museum to show off some updates to Raleigh’s upcoming Union Station. This is part of an ongoing effort for citizens to take part in the design process of downtown’s new train station.

The last public meeting was only two months ago so I wasn’t expecting much to be honest. Clearscapes did have slightly new renderings and one interesting slide about the feedback that they have collected.

Almost half of the comments collected so far are related to connectivity, mainly pertaining to pedestrian and bicycle traffic. The design of the new station is attempting to be easily accessible by a variety of modes and from many different directions. In addition to obvious connectivity off West Street, the architects are tossing around the idea of connecting a walkway westward up to Boylan Avenue.

Parking was another concern from the public. There’s no real concrete solution for Union Station parking at this time. The site plans show that only 36 spaces can fit on the site. All parties agree that this is far too few to adequately serve the station. There’s work being done behind the scenes to try and find a solution in the surrounding properties so more details are to come for sure.

The rest of the comments cover a couple of other things. People are interested in really making the entrance way an iconic space, especially the plaza. Use of natural light was also commented on and is leading to designs with more glass.

Here’s a new sketch that I haven’t seen before that shows the gateway from the civic plaza. The cross section shows the possible flow of pedestrians from the plaza and into the station. It also shows how the station will work “around” the in-use freight track that runs between the plaza and the station.

Here’s the latest site plan for you to geek over. Click on it to see it large. I didn’t realize how long the Amtrak platform really is.

Last night, Raleighites had a chance to hear a presentation about the upcoming Union Station and to comment on some of the high level concepts being drawn up for the new station. This was the first of several meetings to show off the work as it progresses towards a more complete design.

I want to reiterate the fact that this meeting was indeed very high level and nothing concrete has been put into plan. The presenters spent about 30-45 minutes going through slides of the warehouse district and the viaduct building itself. Maps showed very rough concepts that the station will have, things like a mix of gathering space, retail, and operations space.

The presenters emphasized that they wanted the entrance to be grand and inviting. Borrowing from a plethora of examples from around the world, it felt like Raleigh’s Union Station will try to have that big and open-style entrance that others seem to have.

The very first concepts, the ones that have been out way before this meeting, of the station layout are actually being challenged. More emphasis on the gathering space, making it bigger and more voluminous, was shown in the drawings. There also was, what appeared to be, more thought put into the parking lot layout than before.

Here’s the original layout of the station area.

Notice the parking lot layout relative to West Street.

And now here is the original floor plan for the interior.

Here you can see the breakdown between the gathering space, shown in blue, the retail space, orange, and the office space, brown.

Last night, we had this new plan on the table.

The same blue area in the image above shows an elongated gathering space that goes from the front to almost the back of the building. This comes from a different layout of the offices and incorporating some of the upper floors of the northern part of the building. The larger gathering space, suggested to be lit up with lots of natural light, is a great idea and I hope the planners can deliver it.

The parking lot has been rethought with a second entrance to West Street and a traffic circle in front to keep vehicles moving and avoiding conflict with parking. This is definitely a step in the right direction as car/bus traffic flow is being thought of in a smarter way.

I’m hoping the entrance in the front, with a pedestrian plaza, will really get some extra attention. As soon as travelers arrive at Union Station, they will be stepping into downtown and the plaza needs to make a statement. I’m hoping visitors will stop for a quick second and feel like taking a photo of themselves.

Great stuff so far. Expect more details during the next presentation.