Sir Walter Raleigh spelled his name several ways – Rauley, Rawleyghe, Ralegh – and his namesake city has also had several versions of its signature street.
Fayetteville Street, extending from the State Capitol to Memorial Auditorium, was once a bustling commercial center, then a closed street mall, then an emerging entertainment district and then – COVID.
Now there’s a new plan for reviving Fayetteville Street and adjoining blocks by connecting the city’s core to other more vibrant parts of downtown. The plan, described as “an economic development strategy”, was compiled by Interface Studio, a city planning and urban design practice hired jointly by the Downtown Raleigh Alliance and the City of Raleigh.
It’s a bold blueprint brimming with ideas drawn from interviews with focus groups, public meetings and surveys. Its proposals range from changes in street design, to fostering small businesses, to making downtown thoroughfares more bike and pedestrian friendly and one day,moving Central Prison to make way for other uses, perhaps even a ballpark.
For an assessment of the plan, I sent it to Ron Blatman, the executive producer of a documentary series called “Saving the City: Remaking the American Metropolis.” The project’s website says it seeks “to learn how to improve the urban experience by seeing what works and what doesn’t in cities across North America.”
Blatman gives the downtown plan two thumbs up. He is fascinated by how the downtown core can be connected to the nearby 308-acre city park being developed on the grounds of the former Dorothea Dix Hospital. “Dix Park has the ability to be an enormous boost for downtown,” he said. “It has the ability to draw people from 50 miles away.”
The current proposal for a “strollway” linking downtown and the park is a good idea, he said. But a more distinctive connection could also be added, such as a “meandering waterway” with boats in the style of San Antonio’s River Walk.
Blatman, who has a master’s degree in planning and formerly served as director of business development in the San Francisco mayor’s office, offered observations about downtown development that he’s gleaned from touring other cities.
Mass transit, biking and walking are important to making downtowns accessible. The downtowns of two of Raleigh’s peer cities – Nashville and Austin – “are both traffic messes with limited mass transit,” Blatman said. Nonetheless, he said, many people will drive and parking should be free or low cost. “I think it’s a mistake to jack up parking. Use parking as an incentive. Maybe make the first two hours free.”
Hybrid office work is here to stay. “I don’t think we’ll see five days a week in the office,” he said. “A lot of people are going to go to work only three days a week.”
Raleigh made a mistake not putting its major sports arena downtown, he said, and the plans to build up an entertainment option around the former PNC Arena won’t help. “It’s going to keep downtown from developing faster,” he said.
Perceptions of downtown crime are spurring the development of satellite mixed-use centers such as Raleigh’s North Hills or Cary’s Fenton. Businesses, he said, are “offering an urban kind of experience in suburban locations.”
The cure to worries about downtown crime is adding more people, not more police.
“If you have too many cops it sends the wrong message. You start wondering: Why are there all these cops here?” he said. Instead, have more downtown festivals and events. “When thousands of people are in the streets and nothing happens, the word kind of gets out that it’s OK to go downtown.”
Ultimately, the way cities revive their downtowns post-COVID is not about plans alone. It’s about being a catalyst that makes it easier for businesses to form by streamlining permitting and zoning. “Cities need to get out of their own way,” he said.
Sir Walter never set foot in Raleigh. But with a good plan and bold imagination, downtown Raleigh could daily draw thousands of explorers.
Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@ newsobserver.com
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