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orulz last won the day on June 9 2013

orulz had the most liked content!

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About orulz

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  • Location
    Raleigh, NC
  • Interests
    transit, biking, running, outdoors, urban development, local politics

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  1. Kildaire Farm from here south to Cary Parkway would not be a bad spot for more high density mixed use like this. In all, the town council has started to embrace the city that Cary has become and it's refreshing to see. Hopefully Ya Liu's election (she was the most anti-development of the District D candidates) won't change the balance on council too much.
  2. I think the situation I'm thinking of is where there is a protected bike lane that's behind parking. The bus stop platform goes where the parking goes, and there is a bridge across the bike lane from the sidewalk to the bus platform. Thanks.
  3. Umm.. something doesn't quite seem right about that? I thought the bike lane is supposed to pass behind the bus platform in those things?
  4. A few things going on in downtown Cary. The mixed use developments to go with the park and library are starting to show up in town planning portals. One Walker (a 6-story, 153 unit apartment complex) and One Walnut (details still unclear) are the two phases. In addition, an office/apartments/retail project at the SE corner of Harrison and Chatham recently cleared a hurdle when First Baptist Church agreed with a developer to proceed. The church's permission is needed because part of the development will go on the church's parking lot. Lately, I have become attached to the idea of large scale development in the vicinity of Cary's town hall. By large-scale, I mean "gosh Cary is actually a city" large. 10-20 stories. To that end, I think the town should consider taking some steps like issuing RFPs for redevelopment of parts of the N. Academy Street campus. Particularly the Community Center at the corner of Academy and Chapel Hill. This is a single story, 30 year old building - substantially depreciated; adequately maintained but never fully renovated - occupying a small part of its 3.5 acre lot, on a very prominent corner a block from the train station. Here is the process: (1) Plan for a new community center. How about put it where the old library is? This has great synergy with the other civic uses nearby, including the park, library, arts center, and school. (2) decide the terms of the RFP. What do we want to see there? 5 stories? 10? 15? 20? (Yes please?) Affordable housing? Market rate? Office? A PPP for some public spaces in the parking deck? Some other public amenities like a plaza? How much retail? YES to all of the above??! (3) develop the new community center (4) execute the RFP, redevelop the old community center, ba-da-bing. There is pl If the Walker Street extension ever gets built, the town hall parking lot could be next. There is plenty of underutilized land, both privately and publicly owned (including lots of town land as well as some by GoTriangle) in that part of downtown. Page Walker building is historic but that's it, I think given the context of the low-slung town hall and its gardens it should be easy to work around while being respectful. In contrast, I think stuff facing Chatham is capped at 5 or so stories, and that feels right to me.
  5. If they want sleek electric trains to SC, let them build electric commuter rail.
  6. DOTs do this sort of thing literally *all the time* for freeways. It's completely, totally routine. Including, occasionally, rebuilding or relocating schools. People don't like eminent domain, but it's a fact of life. Getting public support is a little more challenging since freeways at least have interchanges every 5-10 miles in rural areas, but HSR won't stop at all. And because a certain set of Americans have a reflexive negative reaction to trains. But there's no reason to think that assembling a corridor will be a show stopper.
  7. orulz

    N&O Site

    48ksf. It is an odd one-off 1.5 story layout. Seems unlikely HT would be eager to copy it. I have a feeling that Kane may have given HT a pretty sweet deal on the space at NH to get them to be okay with it.
  8. orulz

    N&O Site

    That grocery store looks like it is about 120x240 which is just shy of 29000 square feet. That's too big for a Trader Joes or Aldi's (both 15k), or Lidl or Fresh Market (both 20k). This is smaller than the average new-build Whole Foods (40k) or Harris Teeter (50-60k) This *is* the size of a Publix urban format store, but since they're already going in at SmoHo, that's out. It's also about the size of a Whole Foods 365. So unless Harris Teeter has an urban format that I'm not aware of, Whole Foods 365 is my prediction.
  9. The ship has sailed on this it seems, but NC49 and Mallard Creek Church (walking distance to the university, and a potential target for an extension of the Blue Line) would have been a better spot for this IMO. They considered it but rejected it, largely because the parcel was too small if I recall correctly. Funny thing is, the parcel they wound up choosing in Harrisburg is smaller than the one they rejected near the university.
  10. There is no way council can stop this, gripes or no. It is an administrative site plan approval. The 12 story zoning is already in hand for the entirety of North Hills West. It was zoned as such during the UDO remapping some time ago. So, Huzzah!
  11. Kane has recently filed site plans for a nearly 1m square foot redevelopment of the JC Penney site.http://cloud.tapatalk.com/s/5d5b1ccb0aaf9/ASR-0059-2019.pdf
  12. Jones, I am curious, what would your opinion be of redeveloping the entire Caraleigh and Fuller Heights neighborhoods at downtown-like density? My opinion is that this is would be the best outcome. -The houses in this area are not of a type that is especially rare in Raleigh. -This is going to become teardown land in very short order between Kane and Dix. If we are going to tear stuff down, we might as well be building densely. -This is the only way to make Kane's development relatively contiguous with downtown proper.
  13. Honestly PNC isnt terrible, but: An urban Arena would replace tailgating culture with going to bars/restaurants before the game. I'd say that's pretty much six to the half dozen. Self driving low occupancy may be a big part of the future of transportation, at suburban densities and below. Not gonna work at real city density, which I presume most people here on this board haven't given up on for Raleigh. It will likely cause a lot *more* driving and make congestion dramatically worse, by eliminating the biggest disincentive to driving, which is that driving, especially in cities, sucks.
  14. You could widen Tyvola enough to put a light rail line in the median by buying out just north of a dozen houses facing the street. The impacts of doing so on Woolawn or Scaleybark would be much larger.
  15. Transit planners work in the real world and have to deal with things like cost effectiveness. Charlotte would probably need at least a half dozen, probably more new radial lines from outer neighborhoods to uptown before a circumferential line would be the next highest ridership option. The sheer number of people and jobs that can be reached within walking distance of uptown is and always will be way, way more than anywhere else in town, and building a line where riders have to transfer to get there is folly, at this point. Charlotte's CBD is so dense from a jobs perspective (and continuing to become more dense) that the city should take full advantage of that, providing rail access for *everybody* to get to uptown, and then continuing to add more density along those lines, before thinking about building rail lines to tie together outer neighborhoods where the density pales in comparison.
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