by Leo Suarez

Paddy O’Beers Bottle Shop Coming To Fayetteville Street

The downtown Raleigh beer drinking scene is a varied one and the next group to step in are the folks behind Isaac Hunter’s Oak City Tavern and Coglin’s. They are planning to open a bottle shop for the retail spaces in the Alexander Square parking deck facing Fayetteville Street, across the street from Isaac Hunter’s, a popular weekend spot.

Paddy O’Beers (Patio beers???) will sell craft beers in bottles and kegs. They also plan to set up some outdoor seating in front (a Paddy O’ perhaps?) and a tasting bar so drinkers can hang for a bit.

The beer options in downtown Raleigh are extensive and continuing to grow. Expect Paddy O’Beers to open within a few months.

by Leo Suarez

Plans For 220 The Saint Bring Condos and Townhouses To Glenwood South

Rendering of 220 The Saint

There’s a development plan on the city’s website that shows some new residential in the works for Glenwood South. 220 The Saint as it’s called has a combination of 49 condos and townhomes for an awkward lot on the block bounded by Jones, Lane, Boylan, and St. Mary’s Street. (see the map)

Map of the proposed 220 The Saint

Indeed, the tetris piece you see there is one lot and is currently very underutilized. The development will replace two houses along St. Mary’s street in exchange for on-site parking and 49 units spread across three buildings, some being condos and others townhomes.

The renderings in the submitted site plan are very preliminary but do show something that’s less dense than what we may have been used to in Glenwood South. I’m referring to the nearby apartment buildings at 712 Tucker and St. Mary’s Square.

Rendering of 220 The Saint

If you look at the proposal on the city’s website, you can see that a new driveway on Lane Street will be built for access into the development, the larger building includes the parking underneath.

Other things to note from the development proposal are that the units will be 1 bedroom and the density is now raised to about 30 units per acre. (up from just 1) There are two houses that will be demolished for the development that front St. Mary’s Street and no historic significance seems to exist.

Houses along St. Mary's Street

Houses currently along St. Mary’s Street.

While not too exciting on paper, this is infill development that Glenwood South continues to attract and we may see more and more of this if the larger apartment developments continue to be successful.

by Leo Suarez

Gringo A Go-Go Coming Soon to North Person Street

Ben Shelton, the chef behind Lily’s Pizza in Five Points, is opening up a new place at the corner of Person and Edenton Streets. Gringo A Go-Go will be a taqueria with some pretty authentic Mexican dishes.

Finally, this space is being given some real TLC as the former convenience store and Reuben’s diner kind of put in half the effort. I wonder too if the new thing to do is build a unique bicycle rack out front that represents your place a bit. When I walked by to take the above photo the place looks almost finished so expect it open sometime in the near future.

As always, you can see the ever growing list of downtown food and drink on DT Raleigh Eats.

by Leo Suarez

Pic of the Week


The new North Carolina State Bar headquarters building has been completed on the corner of Edenton and Blount Streets.

What was just a surface parking lot a few years ago is now a building with classical architecture. The state bar moves out from their offices on Fayetteville Street to this new building a few blocks away. You can see a before photo of the site at this 2011 blog post when ground was broken.

New NC State Bar HQ Construction Begins, Deals Final Blow To Former Baptist University

by Leo Suarez

Parking In Downtown Raleigh May Get Easier Thanks To Open Data

Throughout the summer of this year, I’ve been part of a competition that started in April and ended yesterday with my team claiming victory. The North Carolina DataPalooza is an open-data competition where developers and entrepreneurs use open data to solve some of society’s problems. Hosted by the entrepreneurial co-working space HQ Raleigh and Forward Impact, NC DataPalooza was unique in that it was the first ever region-wide event of this type in the country.

My team’s idea? To help people navigate urban areas, showing them the best possible parking locations and offering wayfinding to their end destination. Our smartphone application, still in the prototype phase, is the first step in implementing this process. We also have a nice list of features that will make the application very helpful.

If you don’t already know, parking is somewhat of a fascination with me.

Earlier this year, stories like these arose in conversation with other downtowners. Parking in downtown Raleigh turned out to be a real annoyance to a lot of people. The ones that didn’t have a problem with parking sounded like mathematical magicians.

Parking is easy! City decks are free for the first 15 minutes then $1 per 30 minutes after that. They cap you at $12 but it’s cheaper to park on the street for 25 cents per 15 minutes. But don’t go over the limit which varies between 15 minutes and 2 hours. SO. EASY!

Whether you get it or not, the urban parking experience, when compared to the suburban experience, will always be more difficult. Hearing complaint after complaint, I found myself discussing this more with a group of Downtown Living Advocate (DLA) members. We formed a team and started looking into it.

We were motivated by finding a solution towards lowering the bar and making parking easier for casual visitors. Hopefully, this would result in citizens being more confident in navigating downtown Raleigh and possibly increasing commerce.

It turns out this issue is not unique to us.

Throughout the summer, working on this Parking Initiative we found that other areas have the same parking complaints and issues as downtown Raleigh. There are areas around the triangle and cities around the southeast that echoed Raleigh in a very similar way.

All of this research has been an integral part of our winning the NC DataPalooza. We have a busy few months ahead of us as we build up the prototype application, formalize our new company, and move towards launch. I think I speak for the team when I say “Thank You!” to everyone behind the NC DataPalooza, our advisors, and the people behind the City of Raleigh who we’ve worked with.

We feel our approach is truly unique compared to any solution out there so stay tuned, Raleigh.

by Leo Suarez

Downtown Raleigh is Just Like a Jukebox

I know I posted about taking some time away from the blog but I haven’t left Raleigh just yet and I had some time to put some thoughts together on something that I’ve been thinking about.

I went to lunch with a friend this week and we got to talking about the many events that come to downtown Raleigh. Now is a great time to talk about events because if you aren’t aware, downtown Raleigh ROCKS in September. We are at the start of the weekend after weekend after weekend event marathon and for residents like me, you notice all that activity taking place.

From my point of view, talking to other downtown residents, the vibe is a “hesitant welcome” to these events. On one side, all that activity leads to a better downtown with more restaurants, more retail, and more entertainment. On the other, it can bring fatigue when streets are closed every weekend, droves of people buzz around the streets, and noise vibrates the buildings all around us.

Here’s a schedule of some of the larger events, ones that shut down streets and such, that took place already or are coming up.

  • 8/24 – CaribMask Caribbean Festival
  • 8/31-9/1 – The African American Cultural Festival
  • 9/5-9/7 – Hopscotch Music Festival
  • 9/12-9/15 – SparkCon
  • 9/20-9/22 – Capital City BikeFest
  • 9/27-9/28 – Wide Open Bluegrass

Quite a bit of activity going on in and around September. That’s six weeks of Fayetteville Street closures. I didn’t even mention other events taking place like La Fiesta del Pueblo (9/8) in Moore Square, The Raleigh International Festival (10/4-10/6) at the convention center, and numerous Innovate Raleigh related event like Triangle Entrepreneurship Week, CED Tech Venture Conference, and DataPalooza. These events take place indoors but still bring activity to downtown.

There’s also a similar event string in the Spring with lots of others sprinkled throughout the year. Road races, corn hole tournaments, food truck rodeos, parades, the list goes on and on.

However, the diversity of these events must be appreciated greatly by residents, and all Raleighites really. It keeps downtown interesting and inclusive to everyone. There are hundreds of other events throughout the year and we’re getting close to having at least one of them touch anyone’s interest no matter how niche it may be.

I remember talking to an area music club owner years ago. He told me once, “If you run a club like it’s your own personal jukebox you’re going to fail.” That sentence has stuck with me for awhile and I think it applies here.

In my opinion, our success in downtown is in part due to the diversity of events taking place. I hope for a long time that downtown continues to be a jukebox with a variety of tunes. If our jukebox starts to sound the same, we know we’re in trouble. If a tune is playing that you don’t like, then sit that one out because one you will like is bound to play soon.

Raleigh, the jukebox of the south!

by Leo Suarez

WUNC’s Piece on the SECU

SECU Tower by dtraleigh, on Flickr

Here’s a good article about the North Carolina State Employees’ Credit Union, something readers are probably familiar with as their new tower, shown above, will be opening soon.

State Employees’ is considered a big credit union on a national scale. It is approaching $27 billion in assets and has a membership base of 1.8 million people.

*Down Economy Equals Growth At State Employees’ Credit Union

The article also claims that employees will start moving into their new offices in late September.

I’ve said it before, the SECU tower is my favorite modern building in downtown Raleigh. It’s kind of a surprise from a ‘sleepy’ institution in town but their building, as well as millions of dollars of investment in the nearby museums, should not go unnoticed. I liked this article cause it shares some history of this growing presence right up the street.