Raleigh gathers feedback on previous DMV site

Residents wrote notes on what they'd like the site to become.Photo byAlex Bass/Tribune

By Alex Bass

Alex.bass@triangletribune.com

RALEIGH – The city of Raleigh afforded citizens an initial, on-site engagement and feedback opportunity concerning the future development of the now city-owned N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles headquarters last weekend.

Access to affordable housing was a prevailing theme for nearly all stakeholders for the New Bern Avenue property’s development. “The Transit Overlay district does facilitate some greater density when affordable housing is in a project,” Deputy City Manager Tansy Hayward said of the site’s zoning.

Saturday’s event was organized by a 12-person project working group collaborating with the city’s community engagement division. The group will continue its engagement and feedback gathering efforts through the first quarter of 2025.

Desmond Dunn, a project working group member who grew up in the nearby area, articulated an early vision framework. “If you mix kind of Fayetteville Street with a smaller North Hills, it’s what we’re thinking,” Dunn said. “When people come from out of town, they come here to congregate, with kids playing in the middle, and things of that nature.”

Dunn said this project must address fundamental challenges, including the “food desert” to be eradicated by a grocery store, one of multiple vehicles for creating jobs.

“The biggest thing that I would love to see here are jobs,” said City Councilman Corey Branch, a Raleigh native who represents District C, including the site. “We lost 300 jobs when DMV moved.”

There is another imperative step. “I want the cashier to be able to afford to stay upstairs,” Dunn said.

The city, Hayward said, is developing a $4 million budget for site abatement, and hopes demolition can begin in 2025. Relevant data gathering includes planning to address needed building materials remediation and other environmental concerns. “We believe that there’s at least one underground storage tank on the site,” said Hayward, who was uncertain of the tank’s specific nature.

The city closed its site ownership proceedings in June for a building that has been vacant since 2020. Those years are few relative to lifetime memories for project participants, including Tiesha Mosley, Raleigh community engagement manager.

“I remember getting my first car and going to get all of my paperwork for my tags in there. I remember my Mom taking me to get my driver’s license,” Moseley said, along with noting her mother’s presence Saturday. “To be able to say that community engagement happened at the very beginning, those are things that make a difference.”

Attendees had the opportunity to attach sticky notes to boards collecting answers to the question, “I want to have (insert request) on New Bern Avenue.” The previous DMV site reclamation is among several ongoing city projects, including a $29.5 million redevelopment at nearby Tarboro Road Park.

The integration of affordable housing, jobs, access to public services, recreation and transportation, while preserving the area’s cultural and historical integrity, Dunn said, can yield an outcome comparable to a city upon a hill.

“I want people to be able to come in from other cities and other states and see what we did here, and how well it turned out,” he said. “Then, they go and study it and duplicate it in their cities and their towns.”