For downtowners, this is the only photo that should go viral. There are a select few coffee shops and restaurants that are open during this winter storm. Enjoy it and stay safe!
Confusing Parking Signs in Downtown Raleigh
Examples of parking signs. Hourly on the left, metered on the right.
I get asked for help all the time while walking the sidewalks in downtown Raleigh. People ask me for directions most of the time but sometimes for an ATM location or for a nearby place to eat. This happens either because I walk so often or I just have a friendly face. My bet is on the first theory.
Another question I get asked about a lot are parking related questions. You may have seen this exact scenario yourself. A person banging the buttons on the parking meter like it was an arcade machine. That person looks like they are losing. They are losing because it’s the weekend and it hasn’t hit them that parking is free.
The frustrated parker is a common occurrence in downtown Raleigh and the plethora of signs on each block are responsible for informing a visitor of the rules. I’m going to say it straight up that there is a lot of room for improvement in signage around downtown, not just for parking but we’ll stick to just one topic for this post.
This is why a project by Nikki Sylianteng caught my eye. Highlighted in The Atlantic Cities, the New York City designer is attempting to make the parking signs more informative there. Nikki built a prototype and put it out on the street with a comment box for real-world feedback.
Here are some photos of Nikki’s work, borrowed with permission.
Current city signs on the left and Nikki’s design on the right.
On her project page, Nikki writes:
My strategy was to visualize the blocks of time when parking is allowed and not allowed. I kept everything else the same – the colors and the form factor – as my intention with this redesign is to show how big a difference a thoughtful, though conservative and low budget, approach can make in terms of time and stress saved for the driver. I tried to stay mindful of the constraints that a large organization like the Department of Transportation must face for a seemingly small change such as this.
*Parking Sign Redesign via nikkisylianteng.com
I’ve always thought that the main problem with parking signs is that they do not tell the whole story. For example, the Raleigh signs indicate the hours of enforcement, those being from 8am-5pm, Monday to Friday. They do not indicate what to do outside of those hours. A more ideal sign leaves no doubt during any time of the day, any day of the week.
The Raleigh signs also emphasize the wrong information. “2 Hour Meter Parking” is in the largest font on the sign with the hours being smaller. To the eyes of a driver, the “2 Hour Meter Parking” is most likely all they can read while cruising down the street. With more distractions in downtown compared to the suburbs, drivers have only so long to look at small signs. This portrays that parking enforcement occurs always and the sign is not clearly informing drivers.
What Nikki’s designs show is a 7 day week, 24-hour picture indicating to a parker whether they should be there or not. While the sign is still difficult to read from the driver’s point of view, it more accurately helps someone after they have parked.
During hours of free parking in downtown, I’ve always felt that nervous parkers feel better if they are reassured in some way that what they did was legal. No one wants a parking ticket and this keeps new visitors on the alert because there’s the possibility of a ticket when parking in downtown. Signs must instill confidence in people that they know how the system works and they can avoid the big bad parking ticket.
So there’s clearly room for a design overhaul here. An alternative would be to rethink the parking enforcement system entirely or perhaps throw more technology at it, a suggestion one of our city councilors has brought up.
New Downtown Plan Kickoff Event, Feb 11, 2014
Moore Square with Skyhouse Raleigh under construction in view.
The next downtown Raleigh plan is in the works and here’s your chance to participate. Next week is the kickoff event for a process that may take most of the year. Public comments on ideas and suggestions are needed to shape what downtown Raleigh strives to be over the next ten years.
Downtown Plan Kick-Off Event
Date/Time: Tues., Feb. 11 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Meymandi Concert Hall
2 East South Street
Raleigh, NC 27601
919-996-4641
You can see a lot more information about this on the city’s website. I’ll of course be following any released materials throughout the year and put them up on the blog for discussion.
Downtown Plan – City of Raleigh
Market and Exchange Plaza Schematics, We Dive Into The Specs
Exchange Plaza
Last month, the city had a public meeting at the Raleigh City Museum and showed off more firm plans for the remake of Exchange and Market Plaza. This is a project that coincides with the renovation of 227 Fayetteville Street, announced almost a year ago. First, background reading if you need it:
*Innovate Raleigh Opens Up 227 Fayetteville Street, Renovations Underway – January 25, 2013.
In addition to the work being done at 227, the plazas to the north, Exchange Plaza, and south, Market Plaza, of the building are getting a refresh. Here are the plazas in Google Maps.
Market and Exchange Plazas – Google Maps
Market and Exchange plazas still have the look of when Fayetteville Street was closed to traffic and was a walkable mall from the 1970s to the early 2000s. Any new readers should know that the current design of Fayetteville Street was implemented in the mid-2000s and ended the era of the Fayetteville Street Mall. However, the same planters, benches, and pavers still exist on these two plazas from that mall time period.
Market Plaza
This year, we expect construction to start on the remake of the two plazas. There’s more information about the entire project on the city’s website.
Here’s my attempt to break down the latest information.
Overview
Like I’ve mentioned before, the two plazas are around the currently under renovation 227 Fayetteville building and the new designs attempt to both compliment the adjacent buildings and bring unique public space to downtown Raleigh. There are plans for outdoor seating for nearby restaurants as well as public seating similar to what City Plaza currently has.
Overview map of Market and Exchange Plaza. Click for larger.
Visibility was a key focus here. The plaza designs attempt to trim back some of the greenery in order to give pedestrians a deep line of sight through the spaces. Adding extensive but tasteful lighting will hopefully make the spaces feel comfortable and friendly during nighttime use.
Programming was also considered. There are plans for how to fit different sized tents on the plazas for small events. The next Beerfest won’t be setting up here but smaller arts, maybe First Friday gatherings, would be more appropriate.
Click for larger.
One important obstacle that I thought was interesting was the need to protect the 227 basement. If you look at the sketch above, you can see how the basement protrudes a few feet underneath both Exchange and Market Plazas. A heavy car or truck can’t set up on top of that so the design has to prevent that.
Exchange Plaza
The new Exchange Plaza will be more about walking and seating rather than events. The space is somewhat divided with a low wall for impromptu sitting as well as comfortable separation between the retail seating, that of current restaurant Bolt, and public space near 227 Fayetteville.
Here are some renderings for the possible future of Exchange Plaza.
Only two trees are planned for the plaza. This is to help with that visibility factor, to allow pedestrians to see all the way through the plaza and feel welcomed to walk through it. The area around the tree roots would be appropriately landscaped.
The planters you see, on the right of the first two images, would not be permanent and can be moved if this space fits the need for some small event. Outside of events, the planters will accompany seats and tables, the same ones on City Plaza, for downtowners to enjoy.
Lighting would consist of overhead bulbs in a grid-like pattern. There was indication that special care would be taken into the lighting to make sure it wasn’t overpowering but at the same time bright enough to make the area feel safe.
Market Plaza
Market Plaza, true to its name, offers more of an opportunity for events. In my opinion, there’s a bit less desire here to stop and hang out but walking through looks like it’ll be a nice experience.
The renderings.
The new plaza is more uniformly shaped with a more defined public space compared to Exchange Plaza. This allows for more flexibility and physical space for event setups. It’s almost as if the new plaza is built for walking down a market with vendors set up on your left and right.
The plaza is planned to have a few shelters, a bad comparison would be something similar to a bus shelter, offering pedestrians something comfortable to gravitate too. The same public seats and tables would be scattered around the 227 side of Market Plaza as well.
One compromise here is with the electrical boxes that are placed closer to the Fayetteville Street side of Market Plaza. It was deemed too costly to move or bury them so this piece of infrastructure stays and will be hidden in a creative way. You can see how one rendering proposes projecting some video onto the wall of First Citizens Bank from that piece of utility.
The lighting would be similar to what was proposed at Exchange Plaza.
Wrapping Up
I’ll admit my first reaction to the plans are of enthusiasm as any decent plan to activate the plazas is better than what we have there currently. I’m a little skeptical on how the plazas will function during events. Market Plaza seems like it has a better chance and I don’t see much happening at Exchange Plaza when it comes to proper programming.
Still, events are not the only thing that happen in a downtown and I think these spaces only enrich urban Raleigh. They help set the stage for random encounters, those serendipitous moments between pedestrians, that can’t happen anywhere else in the city. It’s fitting to create these spaces around 227 Fayetteville, a building that will host entrepreneurs and people that believe in that kind of urban business ecosystem.
This project’s timeline has construction planned for late Summer 2014 and completion in Spring 2015.
RalCon Turns Seven Today, Stride Isn’t Slowing Down
Downtown Raleigh in July, 2006.
Lucky number seven? The blog has made it another year and maybe this time I will figure out something to do to celebrate it. A Raleigh beer perhaps?
What I do like to do is use this time to dig into the photo vault and take something out. Sure we all like the real historic photos but it can be amazing to see the difference in just a few short years. Above is a shot from the Wilmington Station Deck looking south on a warm July day in 2006. What’s different?
I’m thinking of throwing a party at number 10. Until then, we can plan for it and enjoy the downtown. Cheers!
Land Sold For New Convention Center Hotel
During Tuesday’s Budget and Economic Development Committee meeting, a deal was approved for the City of Raleigh and Summit Hospitality Group to move to the next step in bringing a new hotel to the convention center area. The current lot on Salisbury Street, just south of the convention center and facing the Performing Arts Deck, would be the future home of a Marriott Residence Inn.
As part of the deal, the city-owned land would be sold for $1.73 million plus other requirements. No new parking will be built to support this hotel as they plan to lease spaces out from the Performing Arts Deck. This means that the deck will get a more formal parking control system compared to its less structured operation today. Visitors will be able to enter and exit the hotel directly from it.
The hotel is planned, at this point, to have approximately 140-154 rooms and ground floor space for retail and/or restaurant. If you look at the floorplans above, the bottom floor is predominantly comprised of that retail/restaurant space in addition to the lobby. The second floor, also shown above, are guest services, the lounge, etc.
The hotel also plans for “A rooftop level consisting of heated space and a terrace with views of the City.”
Happy to see this project move forward as we haven’t heard a thing about it in about a year.
Weekend Listen: City Planning In One Of The Fastest-Growing U.S. Cities
Listen to an interview of Raleigh’s Chief Planning Director, Mitchell Silver on our growth and how to handle it. If the embedded audio doesn’t show for you, click here.
With a quarter-century of experience, Silver is well-placed for this job. Since 2005, he has been working to turn Raleigh into a world-class city with a modern transit system and livable neighborhoods. He says the biggest challenge is adapting his planning to the city’s growth.
*City Planning In One Of The Fastest-Growing U.S. Cities via Here and Now.
Pic of the Week
A sunny, winter day along Hillsborough Street.
The rotund building on Hillsborough Street that we all either love or hate has some news this week. The former Clarion hotel has now changed back to a Holiday Inn. This coincides with some renovations to the lobby, rooms, and front entrance including a new sidewalk plaza out front.