richthofen: Are we sure that 401 Glenwood isn't "distinctive"? It looks like mid century modern to me. I am fully expecting to see an article show up on goodnightraleigh.com any minute now mourning its impending loss.

http://www.godowntownraleigh.com/go/401-glenwood-ave

(If you want my opinion though, that building it's kind of a waste of space on busy Glenwood Avenue.)

12/2/2011 4:30:27 PM

^LOL. Yes, I suppose it is, isn't it? And I'm even one of the ones rather upset about 401 Oberlin being lost. Does that make me a hypocrite?

In any case, though, I just don't find it that attractive a building--maybe I should have qualified as not interesting *to me*. Kind of looks like a smaller version of Mann Hall, which I've never liked. Plus I don't think it interfaces very well with the sidewalk, being a half-flight of stairs up and slightly set back, and you're right that it's not scaled well for its site.

12/2/2011 7:41:16 PM

Someone lost control of their car last Friday morning and left a huge hole in the side of one of the new Green Square buildings downtown.

12/12/2011 9:02:59 PM

WTF

12/13/2011 4:14:34 AM

Holy shit. Hopefully no one was around when they did that.

12/13/2011 8:51:35 AM

shouldn't those exterior walls be more sturdy? are they not made of thick concrete?

12/13/2011 10:50:39 AM

^ If they hadn't of been as sturdy as it is, the entire car would have made it into that room.

12/13/2011 10:55:44 AM

I saw this last week driving to work, they have already cut out a large square portion of the building facade and they are beginning repair work. I couldn't tell at first glance if it was a car/accident, or if they were sledge hammering out a portion that needed to be redone.

Wonder if the guilty party was drunk?

12/13/2011 11:05:04 AM

^^ I remember that part in Lethal Weapon 4.

12/13/2011 11:34:13 AM

hahaha

12/13/2011 11:44:01 AM

Quote :

"shouldn't those exterior walls be more sturdy? are they not made of thick concrete?"

they're metal studs, drywall, exterior sheathing/insulation and roughly 1" or 1.5" thick granite panels. overall it's a strong system against normal building forces (wind, snow, rain etc) but certainly not designed for a car to hit them.

12/13/2011 2:07:00 PM

oh shit, you just gave the terrorists the vulnerability they've been looking for!!!

12/13/2011 2:13:24 PM

Quote :

"are they not made of thick concrete?"

Are you looking at the picture? Do you see thick concrete? Does that answer the question?

12/13/2011 3:12:11 PM

That hole doesn't look big enough to be car. It was likely a golf cart or possibly a segue. This was an inside job

12/13/2011 4:05:42 PM

Yeah, the granite is just aesthetic and the structural integrity wasn't compromised.

The conference room will be ready by friday. No timeline on the replacement granite panels.

12/13/2011 10:11:34 PM

I walked down Fayetteville Street last night on the way to a holiday concert at Meymandi, and I must say that City Plaza looks pretty good for the holidays. With the big tree they've got down there, the light towers with red and green illumination, and the wreaths all the way up Fayetteville to the capitol, it's quite the cheerful vista.

12/14/2011 9:20:49 AM

Tyler's Taproom is now open @ Seaboard Station

12/16/2011 7:03:37 AM

The one time I went to Tyler's Taproom in Durham I was convinced the cook had accidentally poured an entire bag of salt in my food

12/16/2011 10:13:07 AM

The food at the Carrboro Tyler's was pretty good, as I remember it. Used to go there frequently when the girlfriend lived nearby. I've never had anything other than cheese fries at the Durham one though--maybe the kitchen was having an off night.

12/16/2011 11:29:51 AM

I was told 80 beers on tap at Seaboard.

12/16/2011 12:06:58 PM

with that many beers on tap, how long is each keg left tapped?

12/16/2011 12:09:28 PM

Each keg is exactly one pint.

12/16/2011 12:12:29 PM

makes sense.

12/16/2011 12:16:26 PM

Raleigh's new mayor on the future

http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/video?id=8487999

[Edited on January 2, 2012 at 8:34 PM. Reason : ..]

1/2/2012 8:33:18 PM

She seems to be a pretty bad interview and a bit scatter brained. Also, ABC-11's website and or my wifi sucks ass, took 15 mins to watch that clip. Meeker has done a pretty good job growing the area intelligently during his tenure but that may be a struggle for McFarlane.

1/2/2012 10:08:58 PM

I believe she wants to take Raleigh in the right direction, especially in regards to public safety and transportation. If anyone slows things down it will be some of the other boneheads we have on the city council, Crowder in particular. That dude seems to oppose anything that is for the improvement of downtown or Raleigh in general.

1/3/2012 8:41:30 AM

Possibly another hotel downtown?

http://dtraleigh.com/

1/25/2012 12:41:40 PM

Possibly another Buku downtown?
http://raleigh2.com/oro-to-open-in-the-rbc-building-p3113-1.htm

Fuck.

1/25/2012 12:52:45 PM

2/5/2012 5:45:51 PM

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/this-is-what-job-creation-really-looks-like/253255/

Quote :

"This Is What Job Creation Really Looks Like In Washington, tax-cut conservatives face off against stimulus-now liberals to raise employment. In the real world, party orthodoxy crumbles and working solutions defy easy categorization. RALEIGH-DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA -- In two small, unassuming offices here, Bob Robinson and Eric Buckland are quietly making heroic efforts to help the American middle class. But American capitalism -- and the American government -- serve them both poorly. The two men, the small businesses they painstakingly nurture and the difficulties they encounter are on-the-ground examples of the broad economic challenges the United States faces. Their stories do not present easy answers. Instead, they put the lie to Republican and Democratic orthodoxies regarding economic growth. Start with Robinson. He is the executive director of the Raleigh Business & Technology Center, a primarily government-funded effort to help the poor and middle-class residents of southeast Raleigh start small businesses. The center -- and the neighborhood it calls home -- shows how a high-tech boom that has made Raleigh-Durham the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the U.S. nonetheless misses large segments of the population. Southeast Raleigh has an unemployment rate of roughly 14 percent, three times that of Chapel Hill and other nearby affluent communities. Many local residents lack the education and skill levels needed to obtain high-tech jobs. Instead of trying to launch Internet startups, Robinson helps local entrepreneurs open flower shops, auto repair garages and bakeries. Over the last two years, he has also trained and placed 30 people in construction jobs. His new goal is to train people for entry-level jobs at Wal-Mart and Wells Fargo. "It's not all about technology," he said. "We need jobs immediately." Just down the street from Robinson's center, the South Wilmington Street Center for the homeless is filled to capacity. Frank Lawrence, the shelter's director, said a decline in the construction industry hit local lower-middle-class and poor households hardest. At the same time, residents of other cities have flocked here after hearing of Raleigh-Durham's boom. "A lot of people moved here thinking there are jobs," Lawrence said. "But they don't have the skills to get them." Robinson's center, though, doesn't neatly confirm liberal assumptions about the failings of the private sector. Bo Marshall, one of the small businesspeople Robinson's center trained, glows with pride when he calls himself a "serial entrepreneur." An American sense of self-reliance, not dependency, bubbles among the center's graduates. The magic of owning a small business that Republicans love to extol is palpable. "They give us the essential tools," Marshall told me. "But it's up to the individual to get up and run with it." Robinson said the center, which opened in 2000, tries to combine the strengths of the private and public sectors. It helps inexperienced contractors bid for public and private construction projects, trains small business owners in marketing and introduces its graduates to local banks. "The best solutions that we are involved in include government employees who are knowledgeable and capable of aligning policies and procedures with small business owners' needs," Robinson said. "Along with banks that we ask to reinvest and sustain." A few miles to the north, Eric Buckland is trying to create middle-class jobs as well, but in a completely different way. Buckland is the president of Bioptigen, an 18-employee high-tech startup that manufactures handheld retinal scanners used by eye doctors and researchers. The company is based in the Research Triangle Park, a famed public-private partnership that over the last 50 years used skilled graduates from nearby Duke University, North Carolina State and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to draw major corporations. Now, as multinationals trim research-and-development budgets or ship such efforts overseas, park administrators try to keep rents low to accommodate small, high tech firms like Bioptigen. Buckland's company relies on a combination of sales, private "angel" investors and federal research grants to function. Buckland says he is confident about the company's future, but it struggled with cash flow during the recession, dropping from 18 employees to eight. Like hundreds of thousands of other small businesses, it does not offer the quick returns and high profits that draw venture capital. "It can't just be about billion-dollar wins that VCs target," Buckland told me. "We need investments in small and medium-size companies that feed the ecosystem." At the same time, the Food and Drug Administration is blocking the sale of Bioptigen's clinical device in the United States. The scanners are sold in four European countries, India and Australia but are still awaiting approval from Washington. "You have to balance two mutually exclusive goals," Buckland said. "One is promoting innovation in the economy and the other is protecting consumers against their fears. And the balance has shifted more toward protecting consumers against their fears." Buckland's views, though, don't fit Republican dogma. While complaining about overregulation, he says the Obama stimulus definitely worked. Research grants included in the package helped his small business sell high-tech products to universities. And Buckland blames budget brinksmanship by conservative Republicans for delaying a $2.7 million research grant he expected to receive in December. "It's really horrible," Buckland said. "I think Congress has no idea of their impact on small business." Both men expressed exasperation with Washington partisanship. Robinson defended both the private and public sectors so vigorously that I struggled to peg him politically. Buckland, despite complaining about overregulation, said he leaned Democratic. Both called for pragmatism. "My neighbor is a staunch Republican," Buckland said. "And we both agree that if you can get reasonable people to sit down together, they can reach an agreement." "This polarization is killing us," he added. "We've got to get through that, if we're going to get through this malaise." I concur. Out here on the ground, party orthodoxy crumbles."

(the headline from the home page of the Atlantic:

What Congress Can Learn From Raleigh
North Carolina favors solution-finding over party orthodoxy.)

2/17/2012 1:46:30 PM

Quote :

"Possibly another Buku downtown? http://raleigh2.com/oro-to-open-in-the-rbc-building-p3113-1.htm Fuck."

lol and it's like what, two blocks from Buku? I can only hope that their menus are vastly different otherwise I can't see two of the same thing surviving for very long.

Quote :

"RALEIGH-DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA "

[Edited on February 17, 2012 at 2:12 PM. Reason : a]

2/17/2012 1:57:46 PM

And we get a "pan-asian" restaurant in the same building, which happens to be in the same block as Sono.

2/17/2012 3:08:46 PM

^ I think that place is even owned by the same restaurant group as Sono. Has it finally opened? I feel like it was under construction for a long time when I was still working down there.

2/17/2012 3:28:26 PM

They wouldn't make Oro a mirror of Buku, that's not very "foodie"--it'll be small global plates but with a different culinary focus (hopefully). If not, well, indeed, fuck.

2/18/2012 2:16:03 AM

Raleigh getting international recognition: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17107653

2/23/2012 12:31:44 PM

http://www.newraleigh.com/article/feelgoodz-shoe-retail-shop-downtown-raleigh/

Great news on the retail front

AND

http://www.newraleigh.com/article/market-restaurant-and-escazu-moving/

While not directly downtown, this area has a ton of potential. Coupled with the rapid fitness taking over the old dollar general this could become a really cool area!

2/23/2012 1:34:43 PM

Yeah I think it'll be really interesting to see what happens with that block. Right now it's a whole lot of nada.

2/23/2012 2:27:56 PM

Yeah, Peace girls need a place where they can go out without getting dressed up.

Wait no, that doesn't help anyone.

2/23/2012 3:21:13 PM

A possible 20+ story appartment building downtown...

http://blogs.newsobserver.com/raleighreport/sandreuter-adds-high-rise-to-downtowns-edison-project

3/28/2012 1:27:04 AM

^thats good and bad news. It will take the place of a portion of the original Edison project. It is far better than the 6 story, full block apartment complex proposed a few months ago. It's taller and leaves space on that block for another large building in the future, however, it's not what everyone wanted for the initial Edison vision.

3/28/2012 7:28:46 AM

Yeah, the initial Edison project was going to be a total badass. If I remember correctly, it would have been two towers side by side, both taller than the PNC building. And then two smaller "towers". Oh well, I'll take this 20 story building over that cookie cutter apartment building any day and I haven't even read that link yet!

Looks like this building will be in addition to the 6-story building.

[Edited on March 28, 2012 at 8:18 AM. Reason : ]

3/28/2012 8:16:08 AM

Skyscrapers are fun to look at but functionally don't really seem to contribute a lot. I used to be obsessed with how the skyline looked, but lately I've started to realize that my favorite parts of every city I ever go to are usually the more mid-rise or even 3-4 story neighborhoods. The Edison renderings did look pretty cool, but I'm no longer that concerned about losing it. Just keep getting more residential and street level retail in and downtown will continue to grow nicely. What is the greatest about that article is that the developer is offering free rent to a grocery store; it would be massive if someone took him up on it.

[Edited on March 28, 2012 at 9:06 AM. Reason : .]

3/28/2012 9:06:25 AM

Quote :

"thats good and bad news. It will take the place of a portion of the original Edison project. It is far better than the 6 story, full block apartment complex proposed a few months ago. It's taller and leaves space on that block for another large building in the future, however, it's not what everyone wanted for the initial Edison vision."

The 6-story bullshit is still in the proposal. This isn't replacing that idea unfortunately.

Quote :

" What is the greatest about that article is that the developer is offering free rent to a grocery store; it would be massive if someone took him up on it."

Too bad the grocers are apparently not taking him up on the offer which blows my mind.

[Edited on March 28, 2012 at 9:33 AM. Reason : a]

3/28/2012 9:32:35 AM

I don't know. It would be awesome and all but if the grocers say the market isn't there then it probably isn't there. It would probably take every current resident of downtown Raleigh that lives within walking distance to shop there in order to make it successful. And you know that wouldn't be the case since most people would still stop by a HT on their way home from work. There just aren't enough people living downtown for it to be viable at the moment.

Another thing, I believe the amount of residential growth that downtown Raleigh sees will eventually be limited until the rail is put in. Right now, every apartment unit that is built downtown also has to have a corresponding parking space. I'm guessing that model can only be sustained for so long. Thankfully, I don't believe that point will be reached within the next 10 years and by that time I think rail, or at least portions of it, will be in place. If Raleigh had gotten its shit together a decade ago in regards to passenger rail I believe downtown would look much different today.

3/28/2012 10:46:26 AM

http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/13/students-make-raleigh-more-walkable-with-homemade-qr-code-signs/

i think someone posted this already but i dint see it in this thread so there you go

4/13/2012 11:22:20 AM

I just had an interesting idea. What if we could get some pro sports team to build a stadium in downtown and build a light rail infrastructure from around the Triangle to support it? Would massive use of the system once or twice a week make it worthwhile enough to operate all the time? Think of all the businesses that would spring up to support the area around the stadium.

4/21/2012 3:35:02 AM

wat

4/21/2012 8:42:44 AM

That sounds fucking terrible.

4/21/2012 9:08:01 AM

Anybody been to the new nature research center yet?

4/21/2012 9:13:27 AM

Went last night, really nice

4/21/2012 10:36:55 AM