by Leo Suarez

Stats From The State of Downtown Raleigh 2017, Employment

This one I look for every year. I’m interested to see how the makeup of downtown office workers are changing, if at all.

For decades (centuries?), downtown Raleigh has been a government town. In the 2015 report, government workers made up more than half of the downtown workforce. In the 2016 report, the needle moved below 50%.

However, the recent report uses 2014 numbers to show a share of 42%. The graphics are shown above.

The change seems to be a bit dramatic year-to-year but the difference in sources may play a factor. Growth in STEM seems to be the hot selling point these days and the report plays right into Raleigh’s growth in those areas.


by Leo Suarez

A Walk Around The GoRaleigh Station

Email readers: This blog post has a virtual reality image. Read the post on the blog to see it.

Bus at the GoRaleigh Station

After a year of construction work, the bus station at Moore Square, renamed to GoRaleigh Station, is now fully up and running with a new look and new amenities. Having had the same basic layout and services since the 1980s, the station upgrade is very much welcomed.

With the ribbon cut a few weeks ago, it was time I walked it and snapped some photos for the blog.

The station can be entered from all different directions but for me, I consider the entrance on Wilmington Street to the be the front door. Here, you can typically hear classical music and on this particular walk, I was greeted with the sounds of tango with Por una Cabeza.

Wilmington Street entrance to the GoRaleigh Station

Wilmington Street entrance to the GoRaleigh Station

The walkway leading into the heart of the station has changed a bit with an outdoor plaza, covered in string lights, at the base of a brand new elevator shaft and airy stairwell. This replaces the former stairwell and elevator that was situated on the eastern portion of the Moore Square parking deck, having been removed during this project.

Below is a surround shot of the plaza and walkways into and out of the station. The outdoor seating of the nearby restaurant St. Roch Fine Oysters + Bar is here as well.

Going into the station, we can see the brand new amenities in an updated office/kiosk as well as bathrooms. TV screens are plentiful and informative all throughout with route information and estimated time of arrivals.

Kiosk at the GoRaleigh Station

Bathrooms at the GoRaleigh Station

To the left and right are the various wait stations for all the routes. The ones underneath the parking deck are obviously covered but the ones outside have brand new shelters that help block wind, rain, and provide shade.

There are no longer any shelters along the road exiting on Blount Street and buses are coming and going from Hargett and Martin. This is a change from before where buses would only enter on Martin and exit on Hargett so I imagine that helps with route planning.

GoRaleigh Station

GoRaleigh Station

GoRaleigh Station

GoRaleigh Station

GoRaleigh Station

A big difference has been the feel and presence the station used to have along Hargett Street. The brick entrance gateway thing has been removed and with the new shelters and roadway, the entrance feels much more open.

With the new design, you can see the buses approaching and they can see you. This makes “negotiating” your way across the sidewalk on Hargett easier as before, it was always possible that a bus might jump in front of you at the last second.

GoRaleigh Station

GoRaleigh Station

Heading back inside, I passed back in front of the kiosk towards Wilmington Street. Wilmington and Fayetteville Streets feel so accessible with the station providing a direct shot back and forth.

GoRaleigh Station

GoRaleigh Station

Congrats to the team behind this project. I enjoy walking through the station, even if I’m not a bus rider, and hope that the people it serves are enjoying it as well. As transit in Raleigh expands over the next ten years, the station seems to be set up to handle that growth.

by Leo Suarez

Stats From The State of Downtown Raleigh 2017, Developments

Released in April, I’ve finally gotten around to diving into the 2017 State of Downtown Raleigh report for the latest figures and fancy graphs of downtown activity. I’ll spread these out over the next few weeks and share what I think are some of the more interesting and thought-provoking stats.

I’ll start things off with the development list. This includes all under construction, recently completed, and planned developments. Development fans should keep this one close by for reference.

Of course, you can jump into the whole report here.

2017 State of Downtown Raleigh

by Leo Suarez

Pic of the Week

View from the Boylan Avenue Bridge, May 2017.

View from the Boylan Avenue Bridge, May 2017.

With The Dillon starting to creep higher, it’s time to check in on the view from the Boylan Avenue Bridge. Click above for a larger, high-res panorama from the bridge taken this Memorial Day weekend.

Things to note:

  • Union Station in the foreground
  • The Dillon will dominate this view in the coming years, a given due its location
  • The Residence Inn sort of bookends the view on the right
  • A lot of earth has been moved, clearing out the shrubs around the tracks in this area. It used to look like this and going farther back, this.
  • I am pretty sure new tracks will be added to the ones on the right of the photo, leading to the platforms of Union Station.

by Leo Suarez

The Rooftop Park That Never Came To Be

Vicissitudes of the Oak City is a series taking a look at past development plans in downtown Raleigh that left behind details we can still see today. The things we plan don’t always turn out the way we thought they would and each story results from some external factor that changed things for the better or worse.

The Blount Street Parking Deck

Blount Street Parking deck, Blount Street side

This is the first in a new series I’m creating called Vicissitudes of the Oak City. Rather than a traditional history lesson, I want to write about past plans for downtown Raleigh that faced a sudden change, for the positive or negative. What I enjoy about these is that we can see evidence of the changes all around us yet we may never even notice them.

For the inaugural post, I want to highlight a detail that we can see on The Edison block, something I’ve been staring at for years.

The development of what has been called The Edison has been going back for almost ten years now. This block, currently consisting of the Skyhouse Apartments and Edison Lofts, had plans for much larger and grander buildings but the great recession of 2008 changed everything.

With permission, I’m posting a rendering of The Edison as it was seen through the eyes of 2007.

2007 Rendering of The Edison, Raleigh NC. JDavis Architects.

2007 Rendering of The Edison, Raleigh NC. JDavis Architects. Click for larger.

With a pair of 40+ story towers and two 20+ story towers, downtown Raleigh in 2007 was certainly exciting for development fans. The towers never came but the parking deck was completed. (shown in between the towers of the rendering above)

While talks of The Edison were taking place, a nearby tower was close to opening. The RBC Plaza, now PNC Plaza, opened in 2008 and the Blount Street parking deck, located on The Edison block, was used as additional parking for the office space in PNC.

If you stare up at the parking deck, the stairwells along Wilmington and Blount Street contain an extra floor.

A floor to nowhere.

You can see it on the Blount Street side, photo above, and the Wilmington Street side, photo below.

The Blount Street Parking Deck

Blount Street Parking deck, Wilmington Street side

The stairwells were built that way for a rooftop park that was never built. As part of the original Edison plans, an “amenity level” was planned for the top of the parking deck allowing patrons from the towers as well as the public to use the open space.

You can see it in this zoomed in, annotated portion of the original Edison rendering.

2007 Rendering of The Edison, Raleigh NC. JDavis Architects.

As mentioned earlier, the great recession changed everything and housing as it is today is not the same as it was before then. This lead the team behind it, as well as all other downtown Raleigh projects, to rethink development.

Could a rooftop park ever be built on top of that parking deck one day? I don’t see why not but there are no plans for that at this time.

I can’t help but think that the deck has potential, sitting there in some unfinished state. Economics may never get us there and with a nearby Dix park planned, green space is probably not hurting for downtown.

I still can’t help but get lost in thinking about something so unique for downtown Raleigh like a rooftop park with skyscraper glass views in almost all directions.

While the Blount Street Parking deck is still accessible to the public today* (7am-7pm) I encourage anyone to take the elevator to the top floor and imagine stepping out to trees, gardens, and people rather than sleeping vehicles baking in the sun.

*According to current plans, once The Edison office tower is open (no outlook at this time), planned for the corner of Wilmington and Martin Streets, the public parking spaces will be allocated to support that tower and the deck will be for private use 24/7.

by Leo Suarez

Pic of the Week

Rendering of 510 Glenwood

Rendering of 510 Glenwood

Work has already begun on some exterior renovations to the ground-floor facade of 510 Glenwood. Less columns and a more defined outdoor seating space seems to the be at the core of the plans. The original design made the entrance ways darker and less inviting, in my opinion, and I bet the new design hopes to remedy this with a more open approach.

510 Glenwood, May 2017

510 Glenwood, May 2017

by Leo Suarez

First National Bank Announces Plans to Anchor 22-Story FNB Tower at 501 Fayetteville Street

Rendering of FNB Tower

Announced on Tuesday May 23, First National Bank will be the anchor tenant of FNB Tower, the former Charter Square north project that we have been tracking here on the blog. Jump straight to the press release for full details.

The key points to pull out from the release are:

  • 22-story development called FNB Tower
  • Ground-floor retail space
  • 240 residential units
  • First National Bank will occupy 40,000 of 150,000 square feet of space
  • LEED Platinum design building
  • Groundbreaking in December 2017, completion in Summer 2019

The Charter Square projects have gone through numerous changes but this feels like a solid enough update to instill confidence in seeing a crane set up on that site later this year.

This will be a good one to watch as this view from will drastically change. City Plaza is going to be one heck of an urban space in a few years!

Charter Square south tower completes construction

Click for larger, wider view.

by Leo Suarez

Pic of the Week

Oak City Market House of Fresh

The convenience store king of downtown Raleigh, Taz, has opened up Oak City Market House of Fresh in the Skyhouse tower. The shop is part deli, part grocer with a wide selection of produce, meats, and other essentials. What I like about this one is that the items are packed in there, as an urban store should be.

When you couple this up with DGX Raleigh nearby, you have some pretty convenient options along Blount Street.