Downtown Revitalization: Raleigh, Seven Years Later

[Metro Jacksonville]

Downtown Revitalization: Raleigh, Seven Years Later



Downtown revitalization is something that Jacksonville has struggled with for 40 years now. Perhaps we are making revitalization more difficult than it has to be? During Metro Jacksonville's early years, we looked at Raleigh's plans for revitalizing their downtown.  Now seven years later, we revisit the city to see if things have changed for the better.

Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2013-aug-downtown-revitalization-raleigh-seven-years-later

[krazeeboi]

I just don't get why Jacksonville doesn't see the value in building a new convention center. I hate to say "everybody's doing it" but in this case, I think it makes the point to an extent. Raleigh's has been successful for sure and it's good to see their downtown going to the next level overall.

[thelakelander]

I think many see value or at least spin off potential.  However, no administration since Delaney has been publicly willing to lead a fight to raise taxes to fund anything related to enhancing the city's quality-of-life.  Instead the focus remains on reducing services by cutting to the bone.

[krazeeboi]

That's pretty sad. It's just mind-boggling to me that the leadership of a city Jacksonville's size has the mentality of a small-town city council. Shame...

[krazeeboi]

I'm surprised this hasn't gotten many replies. Do folks in Jacksonville just not like Raleigh? LOL

[thelakelander]

Lol, good question.  Anything about Charlotte typically generates a ton of discussion. I assume most probably aren't as familiar with Raleigh as they are with larger cities across the country.  However, in terms of scale, Jacksonville definitely has more in common with Raleigh than it does with significantly larger urban areas like DC, Miami and Atlanta.

[jcjohnpaint]

I'll tell you what, I was at the Raleigh Art Museum about a year ago and was knocked to the floor.  A spectacular collection and outdoor sculpture park.  Makes anything we have pale in comparison. 

[Cheshire Cat]

I have always liked Raleigh.  It just doesn't seem to get as much positive public play as other southern communities like Jacksonville for instance. lmao

[simms3]

I have always liked Raleigh.  It just doesn't seem to get as much positive public play as other southern communities like Jacksonville for instance. lmao

I disagree, from my perspective Raleigh is much more well known and positively talked about than Jacksonville.  I have been to Raleigh maybe 4-5 times and I personally don't like it at all.  That being said, I see much more going on there than in Jacksonville.  It's still more suburban on average...for instance, less than 2 miles from downtown the highways travel through pine forest.  That's not to say that areas like Glenwood Park, North Hills, and parts of Durham and Orange County are not booming with urban infill development of a relatively high quality in relation to the size of the area. Raleigh was the hottest multifamily development market in the country a year ago with thousands of infill mid-rise units under development in a few hot submarkets to the west and northwest of DT and in Cary and Durham, with rents approaching $2/sf.  The thing about Raleigh is that you get a lot of 6-12 month transients there on assignment, which is not the best for luxury rentals as turnover can be high if you rely on those folks and they aren't looking for luxury anyways.

Raleigh has some key assets that make it incomparable to Jacksonville in a few ways: RTP, Duke, UNC Chapel Hill, NC State, the three big hospital networks there (Wakemed, Duke, UNC), state capital of seriously important state of the union nowadays, etc.  Its airport is my favorite non-hub airport that I've ever been to...clean, spacious, intriguing design that far outshines its larger competitors across the country, its convenience to the Triangle's "downtown", which is RTP, and its affordability to fly into.

I've heard good things about its art museum, but I wouldn't travel there just to see that when you have more notable art museums in the south (the High, a couple in FL and the Nasher in Dallas as well as Houston's).

I guess in my opinion having traveled in limited quantities to each city and not knowing all the ins and outs, I believe I would undoubtedly rather live in Charlotte than Raleigh.

[thelakelander]

I have been to Raleigh maybe 4-5 times and I personally don't like it at all.  That being said, I see much more going on there than in Jacksonville.  It's still more suburban on average...for instance, less than 2 miles from downtown the highways travel through pine forest.

I guess in my opinion having traveled in limited quantities to each city and not knowing all the ins and outs, I believe I would undoubtedly rather live in Charlotte than Raleigh.

That whole Triangle area is similar to metros like Greenville-Spartanburg, Sarasota-Bradenton, Lakeland-Winter Haven, etc.  In general, they are urban areas where several mid-sized and smaller communities have sprawled together over the later half of the 20th century.  For the most part, all of the cities that make up these metropolitan areas were small towns prior to WWII.

A decade ago, I used to use this census link to help determine which cities had decent sized pre-WWII urban cores, which impacted the path of most road trips I'd select to take.

http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/twps0027.html

^It contains the overall population, density and size (square mileage) of the country's top 100 cities by decade between 1790 and 1990.  Just about any city (those that didn't go urban renewal crazy) on this list that had an overall population density of +8,000-10,000 per mile prior to 1950 has a decent sized urban core area in comparison to Jax.

Raleigh didn't crack the top 100 until 1990 with 207,951 residents spread over 88.1 square miles. By comparison, here's the list of cities between 200,000 and 250,000 in 1950. 

250,767 - 34.7 square miles - Long Beach, CA
249,276 - 34.2 square miles - Miami, FL
248,674 - 17.9 square miles - Providence, RI
243,872 - 25.0 square miles - Dayton, OH
243,504 - 50.8 square miles - Oklahoma City, OK
230,310 - 37.1 square miles - Richmond, VA
220,583 - 25.3 square miles - Syracuse, NY
213,513 - 28.2 square miles - Norfolk, VA
204,517 - 30.2 square miles - Jacksonville, FL
203,486 - 37.0 square miles - Worcester, MA

http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab18.txt

With a +40 year head start in achieving this population in more compact areas, it would be reasonable to expect they would all have larger walkable urban cores (this doesn't mean their cores are vibrant) than Raleigh today, despite Raleigh surpassing several in overall population over the last few decades.  With cities like Raleigh and Charlotte, I think it's pretty cool to see them growing up right in front of our eyes.  I can only assume what we're seeing now with them is what the country saw with cities like Detroit 100 years ago.

[Cheshire Cat]

I have always liked Raleigh.  It just doesn't seem to get as much positive public play as other southern communities like Jacksonville for instance. lmao

I disagree, from my perspective Raleigh is much more well known and positively talked about than Jacksonville.  I have been to Raleigh maybe 4-5 times and I personally don't like it at all.  That being said, I see much more going on there than in Jacksonville.  It's still more suburban on average...for instance, less than 2 miles from downtown the highways travel through pine forest.  That's not to say that areas like Glenwood Park, North Hills, and parts of Durham and Orange County are not booming with urban infill development of a relatively high quality in relation to the size of the area. Raleigh was the hottest multifamily development market in the country a year ago with thousands of infill mid-rise units under development in a few hot submarkets to the west and northwest of DT and in Cary and Durham, with rents approaching $2/sf.  The thing about Raleigh is that you get a lot of 6-12 month transients there on assignment, which is not the best for luxury rentals as turnover can be high if you rely on those folks and they aren't looking for luxury anyways.

Raleigh has some key assets that make it incomparable to Jacksonville in a few ways: RTP, Duke, UNC Chapel Hill, NC State, the three big hospital networks there (Wakemed, Duke, UNC), state capital of seriously important state of the union nowadays, etc.  Its airport is my favorite non-hub airport that I've ever been to...clean, spacious, intriguing design that far outshines its larger competitors across the country, its convenience to the Triangle's "downtown", which is RTP, and its affordability to fly into.

I've heard good things about its art museum, but I wouldn't travel there just to see that when you have more notable art museums in the south (the High, a couple in FL and the Nasher in Dallas as well as Houston's).

I guess in my opinion having traveled in limited quantities to each city and not knowing all the ins and outs, I believe I would undoubtedly rather live in Charlotte than Raleigh.

I was making a joke Simm's.  Did you notice the lmao following my comments? 

[I-10east]

I disagree, from my perspective Raleigh is much more well known and positively talked about than Jacksonville.

Calm down with using these dramatic phrases like "much more well known". Yeah, it's a capital, but it's not DC for godsakes. There is something that's called the NFL that will automatically make Jax more well known than Raleigh, not to mention the Fortune 500s, just keeping it real. Hell, most probably don't even know that the Carolina Hurricanes of the NHL play there. Charlotte vastly overshadows Raleigh in the state. Jax is on the Eastern seaboard with highways that goes through damn near all of the largest cities in this country I-10 and I-95; Raleigh is a landlocked city with I-40 going through. 

I'm not even saying that Raleigh isn't doing alot of good things there compared to Jax right now, because it seems like a pretty underrated city, but lets keep things into perspective, and not act as if Raleigh is some 'roll right off the tongue' world class mecca....

[vicupstate]

I disagree, from my perspective Raleigh is much more well known and positively talked about than Jacksonville.

Calm down with using these dramatic phrases like "much more well known". Yeah, it's a capital, but it's not DC for godsakes. There is something that's called the NFL that will automatically make Jax more well known than Raleigh, not to mention the Fortune 500s, just keeping it real. Hell, most probably don't even know that the Carolina Hurricanes of the NHL play there. Charlotte vastly overshadows Raleigh in the state. Jax is on the Eastern seaboard with highways that goes through damn near all of the largest cities in this country I-10 and I-95; Raleigh is a landlocked city with I-40 going through. 

I'm not even saying that Raleigh isn't doing alot of good things there compared to Jax right now, because it seems like a pretty underrated city, but lets keep things into perspective, and not act as if Raleigh is some 'roll right off the tongue' world class mecca....

Keep in mind that I-95 is about 25 miles (if that) from the Raleigh city limits and I-85, which is much more developed than 1-95, is about 20 or less miles away from Raleigh proper.  So for all intents and purposes they have three interstates.   

Even though it is eclipsed by Charlotte in most respects, In terms of economic development and reputation, Raleigh far exceeds JAX. 

[I-10east]

Even though it is eclipsed by Charlotte in most respects, In terms of economic development and reputation, Raleigh far exceeds JAX. 

What 'reputation' it being a world class city all of a sudden?

[thelakelander]

Lakelander:
Probably a stupid question, but I notice that on a few of your comparisons (maybe all) you state as Urban infill obstacles that State & Union Streets cut off downtown Jacksonville from Springfield.
For us newbies and non-planning experts can you explain that more specifically?

Sure. The most vibrant downtowns across the country are typically those that spill over into adjacent urban neighborhoods.  For example, in Boston at street level you don't really notice when you're out of the Financial District and in Back Bay.  In DC, you can move from downtown to Dupont Circle without really noticing an abrupt change in walkability and vibrancy. 

Before we purposely tore up the street grid and made State & Union into highways, downtown extended to Hogans Creek. There, you had a green space with Springfield forming the north border of the green space.  Right now, State & Union has become an abrupt line between what we consider downtown and areas to the north.  By finding ways to enhance multimodal connectivity and change land use patterns in the area, we can extend the walkable footprint of downtown to once again integrate with Springfield.  This will economically enhance both districts.