Clarence Lightner Public Safety Center Renderings and Council Vote

One of the first orders of business for the Raleigh City Council in the new year is a huge vote on the Clarence Lightner Public Safety Center. The council will vote on January 5th on whether or not to move forward with the new facility which will be 17 stories, 300,000 square feet and cost $205 million dollars.

The council seems split on their decision to move forward on the project. Meeker is for moving ahead, as are Mary Ann Baldwin and James West but a few other council members are less convinced. Like almost every other large scale project that has started in the past few years, the Clarence Lightner Center may fall to its knees early in the new year. Considering the fact that some of the council members want more public input and other options in taxing and funding, this process could take a very long time.

From the N&O:

But resistance could come from at least three members of the eight-member council, Thomas Crowder and newly-elected councilmen John Odom and Bonner Gaylord. Meeker will need at least four other council members to agree with him in order to move forward with the plans.

Gaylord said there hasn’t been enough public scrutiny of the project. He’s proposed seeing whether the current building on Hargett Street could be renovated. Both Crowder and Odom said they’re planning to vote to delay the project because of concerns about raising taxes.

“It hasn’t been vetted publicly,” Gaylord said. “With an expenditure of this magnitude, it really needs to have public input.”

The building is designed by the architectural team of Kling Stubbins and Cherry Huffman, both whom have offices in downtown Raleigh just blocks from the project site. The Clarence E. Lightner Public Safety Center will combine the City Police and Fire Departments, Emergency Communications and Operations, Traffic Control, Information Technology and Data, Sheriff Dispatch, Building Maintenance and Credit Union Offices all into one building.

The design looks to have evolved greatly since schematics and is much more striking than previously. Check out all the renderings below (click to see larger versions) and more info at the N&O.

• hackles10
  12/22 10:47 AM
  

  I hope this thing gets built! 

  Sooner rather than later!

• Vic
  12/22 10:52 AM
  

  well this is money well spent taxes won’t rise until 2011 being the earliest. Overall the building will be built and it’s going to be a great addition to Downtown Raleigh’s Skyline.

• Betsy
  12/22 11:01 AM
  

  I’m sorry to see the City entrenching the presence of its facility on the frontage facing Nash Square.  The first floor frontage all around Nash Square should be reserved for active ground-floor retail and service uses. 
  . 

  It’s especially unfortunate because this is the south-facing frontage, the best for sidewalk cafe seating. 
  .

  Nash Square is already sundered from its west and east facing frontages by three to four lanes of roaring, high-speed through-traffic (because NCDOT has formulated Salisbury and McDowell Streets as through-highways and not as city streets.) 
  .
  15 to 20-foot chunks of Nash Square have already been sliced off on all sides to provide for additional travel lanes and rows of parking.  (This is readily visible on aerial photographs.)
  .

  We can’t help what NCDOT does to our city streets, but I would like to see our own selves (the City) begin to treat its city squares as the prime resources they are. 
  .

  In any city, a downtown park is the prime nucleus for new housing, restaurants, and retail storefronts.  A public safety center can go anywhere. 
  .

  It is simply not strategic to locate the facility which can go anywhere on the prime location for uses that have a unique locational requirement.

• ROB
  12/22 11:35 AM
  

  yo they really need this thing i cant lie the current headquarters is wack as hell!! they built it 1959?? are you serious!? this thing should have been built in 2000 or earlier. i just hope those three city council people realize that to keep postponing this thing is the worst idea. they think they are helping but they are really hurting the city far worst! this needs to break ground def next year along with the county courthouse. mayor meeker knows what hes doin and i like him but there are too many people around here who are still in the delorean back in 1955!

• TSnow27604
  12/22 12:53 PM
  

  Betsy makes great points but the fact that it sits beside the existing facility makes it even tougher.  If it ever gets built on this spot, then get going now while construction costs, interest rates, and everything are low.

• Jeff
  12/22 01:12 PM
  

  This thing really should get built.  I was frustrated with the City Council elections because of the anti-downtown development people who got elected.  At at time when downtown really needs some new projects to start up and hopefully convince prospective developers to continue, some of these people want to delay it even further?  They should be fast-tracking this thing.  We should be writing to the holdout Council members to let them know how we feel…

• ct
  12/22 01:31 PM
  

  The city could do this project at considerably less cost if the building were sited in east or southeast Raleigh—still ITB—where it wouldn’t be necessary to build 17 stories up. Those overlooked areas badly need an economic boost.

  Meanwhile, the mayor and his allies know that taxes are a looming issue. It was taxes that led to regime change with Fetzer. Downtown advocates had better get as much as they can while they can, because the gravy train is beginning to slow down.

• Aaron
  12/22 01:40 PM
  

  Build this thangg! But no, I actually haven’t read this article yet, but I think the building is gorgeous. Raleigh has a lot of concrete in its skyline and I think this and along with the RBC Plaza will add to the modern look.

• revolu
  12/22 02:17 PM
  

  nicely rendered and the set back off the street seems to be a nice move.  i hope it helps to engage nash square across the street more.  it’s no doubt that the progression from schematics has come a long way indeed.

  i think the facade elements in the tower are interesting…somewhat hinting at some of the modernism that has been in raleigh in the 50’s while not looking too dated.

• ROB
  12/22 03:02 PM
  

  i dont know how the hell raleigh elects city councilmen who are against downtown. this is the ONLY city i know that does this!

• JohninRaleigh
  12/22 04:42 PM
  

  Building out instead of up is the complete opposite of sustainable design.  Placing a major institution on a park gives the park a jobs base and life.  If you want to criticize one side of that Park, look no further than the News & Observer’s monstrosity and the AT&T building.  THis would actually be an attractive building that would bring people TO the park.

  The article buries a key part of the spending plan - the satellite services which will be placed in growing parts of the city.  This is desperately needed, and will result in large savings of fuel from City vehicles.

  Thats what the City agreed to do when it adopted the Environmental Advisory Board’s recommendations for reducing fossil fuel usage in city fleets.

  This package needs to pass yesterday, and this building needs to be built.

• ct
  12/22 06:51 PM
  

  Building up costs much more than building sideways, in terms of foundation and building structure. The steel and/or concrete required to carry the weight of a 17-story building on a small footprint is costly. So is the foundation. The fact that building codes require a 100 mph wind load also adds to the expense of a high-rise here. Elevator costs are higher, internal plumbing costs are higher, etc. 

  As to sustainability, that’s a question of design. Shorter buildings do have more roof for the same square footage, but a lot of this building could be below grade—more than compensating for the larger roof. Besides, green roofs are in vogue these days.

• Sluv
  12/22 09:12 PM
  

  So which costs more in terms of land, building sideways or vertically?

• baffled
  12/22 10:18 PM
  

  only a complete idiot would want the police headquarters in some office park in outside of downtown.

  THere is something to be said for symbolism.

• JRD
  12/22 10:42 PM
  

  Those are some really good points made by Betsy.  It would be nice to see this building go somewhere in the middle of the warehouse district, just to get the ball rolling for urban expansion there.
  Aside from that, I definitely think it would be in the city’s best interests to build it now because of low construction costs.  That fact is partially why we can afford to build a state of the art facility such as this.

• ct
  12/23 04:54 AM
  

  Of course more land is required if the building is squat, but I’m not advocating a squat building in downtown. I’m suggesting that the building be placed a mile or two east, between downtown and either WakeMed or the satellite jail. Over there, land is cheap because it’s an economically deprived area.

  For the same reason, the county built its own office park for administrative offices in southeast Raleigh, although the county happened to pick a site just OTB. Don’t you know the Mayor is still steamed about that, but he’s not going to air out the dirty laundry in public given the current political climate with the county commission.
  The city has already established RPD precinct offices throughout the city. That’s not going to change, just because a new administrative HQ building is built. (Temporarily some of the RPD administrative offices have been moved to North Raleigh OTB in leased space, and no one even noticed.) Nor is the county moving the jail or courthouse out of downtown. Operationally, however, the RPD administrative offices and the 911 dispatchers could be anywhere.

  So now the justification for the downtown, budget-busting building is supposed to be that the architecture is attractive? Good grief.

• dsi r4
  12/23 05:05 AM
  

  Great article! There are so many people talking about this subject and yet I only have a handful of ‘go-to’ guys whose blog posts make me take notes! (Yes you’re one of them!).Thanks for a great post.It is rather interesting for me to read that post. Thank author for it. I like such themes and everything connected to them. I definitely want to read more soon.

• Betsy
  12/23 10:31 AM
  

  There’s nothing wrong with offices and institutional uses above the ground floor—as pointed out by Johninraleigh and others, city employees are an important part of the downtown daytime population.  But the ground floor of buidlings around the park should be active retail uses. 
  .

  We keep making these basic mistakes over and over and over in Raleigh, and it adds up over time. 
  .

  This park is our Rittenhouse Square.  If the city itself can’t value, use, and honor it properly in its own development plans, how can it ask private developers to do so?

• gd
  12/23 10:42 AM
  

  Everyone keeps talking about how the ground floor needs to be retail spaces.  Why?  There are TONS of retail spaces downtown not filled yet so why add more empty space?

• JRD
  12/23 11:04 AM
  

  gd,
  good point, plus it will be a government building.  Ive never seen retail in such a structure.

• revolu
  12/23 11:09 AM
  

  we need a decent local bookstore downtown.  (ie - malaprops in asheville). sorry to be off topic but kind of relates to the retail question.

• Betsy
  12/23 11:20 AM
  

  gd, that is true, and retail is way overbuilt in general, and because of this, I agree that towns tend to over-rely upon it.  However, this is prime location, a non-replicable situation.
  .
  And the converse of your statement “why build more” is also true:  we have *tons* of dead street-frontage that is empty of pedestrian interest—being occupied mainly by standpipes, utility boxes, locked secondary entrances, tinted glass, bricked-in display windows, corporate lobbies, blank walls, exhaust fans, yawning maws of parking garages, and offices at the ground floor with the blinds lowered or the windows blocked in— so why add more?
  .
  I’m not saying that the lobby of the public safety center will be entirely dead. It’s just that that frontage could be much better utilized, and its use could extend past working hours, if formulated according to the importance of that site.
  . It’s true that it is hard to imagine a public building with ground-floor businesses, espeically a public safety center.
  .

  But if we can’t incorporate a porous frontage with full-time pedestrian interest and active uses into the public safety center, then the public safety center needs to go somewhere else. 
  .

  Somewhere less prime, less crucial, less unique. 
  .

  We’re talking about south-facing frontage of one of our two best public squares.  This is a building that will last probably at least sixty years.  We need to get it right.

• Betsy
  12/23 11:40 AM
  

  I would add that the management of North Hills would never be so irrational as to place an equivalent facility on the prime frontage of THEIR ‘town square.’ 
  .

  In this case, I think the city should take a tip from the private sector.

• gd
  12/23 11:50 AM
  

  Personally, i think Raleigh needs to take a lot of tips from a lot of places. I still can’t believe we are the capital city w/ the kind of public transportation we have - super unreliable and confusing.

  I think more retail spaces that will remain empty is NOT the way to go.  Theres nothing great about that tiny park in anyway.  There is also retail space at the bottom of the Hue.

  I don’t really care anymore though.  This city isn’t changing in a way that I am for so I plan on leaving it in 2010.

• Betsy
  12/23 12:06 PM
  

  Oh, don’t give up so easily!  Anyone can move TO a great place, but it takes a real citizen to help MAKE a great place.

• Betsy
  12/23 12:12 PM
  

  The reason there is ‘nothing great about that tiny park’ is because we have not treated it like the park it can be. 
  .

  
  Look, there are only two other cities in the world that have this type of public square layout - they are Savannah and Philadelphia, and Raleigh’s squares were directly modeled on their plan. 

  .

  Now if we would do what Philadelphia and Savannah do, we would have squares of the quality of Philadelphia and Savannah, which is to say, world-class. 
  .

  Neither of those cities has the benefit of our educational and economic circumstances, yet their squares are truly great public places. 
  .

  And ours *can* be.  But as inanimate objects, our squares are not going to transform themselves; that is OUR job.  Will we do it?

• gd
  12/23 12:14 PM
  

  Betsy:  It comes down to two things here for me 1) public transportation 2) finding permanent work. 

  I’m not getting either here unfortunately.

• what?
  12/23 12:50 PM
  

  I’m not sure you’re going to find any other place where it is any easier to get permanent work.

• gd
  12/23 12:53 PM
  

  For my field I can - therse not many jobs here.  I’ve been looking other places for quite some time tryign to decide where I want to move to.  I got a couple more trips to make to visit some cities I havent been to (but checking the job market of) and I’m finding lots of opportunity in other places.

• JohninRal
  12/23 12:54 PM
  

  Betsy, I am missing something in your analysis.  Courthouses and Town Halls are on squares throughout the country.  Vibrant, thriving squares.  You’re looking at this one, which has a colectioni of bars and low-rent spaces on one side - a printing press building on the other, nascent residential/retain on the third and established municipal services buildings on the fourth, and saying we should tear down the municipal services buildings and put up… what?

  Are these plans of yours entirely subject to the fiat of Betsy?  Or can you contemplate some way in which it is budgetarily and electorally feasible for the City Council to pick up and move everything to land it does not own in an area away from the center city it just spent the last decade reviving?

• Betsy
  12/23 01:40 PM
  

  Yes, courthouses and town halls are important anchors for city squares in many communities.  This is not either of those. 
  .

  Note that I am not advocating tearing down any municipal buildings.  I don’t know where you got that.  In fact I am generally against tearing down valuable real estate, especially when it is owned by the public.

• Betsy
  12/23 01:41 PM
  

  ... as for ‘fiat,’ like everyone else commenting here, I am expressing an opinion.

• Sluv
  12/23 09:21 PM
  

  One of the great things about the municipal building’s location is its access to major streets: One can quickly get to New Bern 40 via Dawson, 440 and Wade ave. via Capital as well as several alternate routes if needed. These are important things for emergency services.
  And the county office buildings are actually located just ITB, not that it matters.

• ct
  12/23 10:06 PM
  

  > county office buildings are actually
  > located just ITB

  Guess you’ve never been to the Wake
  County Office Park on Carya Drive,
  just OTB. I suspect you’re referring
  to the county social services buildings
  near WakeMed, but Carya Drive is an
  entirely separate complex.

• Mike
  12/24 12:58 PM
  

  What would William Christmas say?

• JRD
  12/25 01:03 AM
  

  I think he’d tell us to do what we saw fit for our time.  I also think he’d tell us to expand the grid into the “Dix Campus” and to be sure it were mostly open park space surrounded by residential.

• King D-Bag
  12/25 04:38 PM
  

  Sounds like everyone wants a fun and vibrant downtown but is against creating and keeping jobs downtown.

  The two go hand in hand. A large reason that there are so many dead spots downtown where retail space can’t stay open is because there’s no foot traffic. A large facility like this will generate pedestrians that will spend money and allow us to have shops and cafes in the empty storefronts at Hue and other nearby venues.

  Clearly none of you have played SimCity.

• ct
  12/25 04:58 PM
  

  Everyone wants a fun and vibrant downtown to one degree or another, but not everyone agrees how much tax money should be spent on it in the future. When my wife and I took our first house-hunting to Raleigh in 1985, she cried (literally) when she saw downtown. Things have improved considerably since then! How much more they could/should improve—relative to other needs that the city has—is a legitimate discussion.

• ncmyk
  12/25 10:58 PM
  

  it may be a public building, but the design looks like it has engaged the street and the park - and i imagine many of those workers in the building will flow in and enliven the park during the day.  i meet many city employees out on the plaza at One Exchange and it is a horrible cold windy place.

  retail and restaurants are nice, but our government doesn’t tend to want to be in the landlord business.  lets keep all those pubs that don’t pay their architect’s fees on moore square instead.  the city recognizes they’ve got a great valuable piece of land that meets their needs if they make something better out of it.

• JZ
  12/27 11:22 AM
  

  A quick skim of the comments, I may have missed some points.  My apologies if I am redundant:  Could it be considered that by consolidating city services into one location, the long-term cost savings for Raleigh citizens outweigh the modest cost increase we may experience now?  Dunno. 

  Also, having a building that serves to manifest our cultural values in local government is a good thing, so I would say it’s heart is in the right place.  At present, the City’s buildings are NOT memorable or good civic gathering places.  Perhaps this was intentional. Perhaps this is what the city would continue to prefer -  a local government with as little presence as possible.  This is a COMPLETELY valid strategy and I don’t poo-poo it if these are the values that we hold near and dear.  However, I’m not sure that is the case.

  Also, Betsy makes a great point about the value of City Squares and the blocks that surround them.  I still do not understand the strategic relocation of Town Hall from its historic location on Fayetteville Street all those years ago (ironically, only to be temporarily camping out there above The Mint Restaurant)  While Fayetteville is the historic commercial heart to the town, I think City Hall would have a place there as well.

  Perhaps with City Government inserted between the State Capitol and the County Courthouse, we may be able to use architecture to proclaim Raleigh’s interest -nay, PRIMARY ROLE- in shaping our own destiny rather than be constantly under the boots of the Legislature and the Commissioners…..

• arthurb3
  12/30 02:17 PM
  

  Besty- I think Moores Square as our Rittenhouse Square. Its busier and surounded by resturants, ect. I like the quietness of Nash Square, although I will never go there after dark! During the day is it quiet, where as, Moores Square is busy and more like Rittenhouse Square. Nash does need to be protected from the problems that developement around it may cause.

• john beckwith
  12/31 01:44 PM
  

  I am going to mail a loaf of bread to Meeker and the city council, so they can sop up every last drop of our tax dollars. Why is it “progress” to build another jail, downtown? What is the #1 feature of downtown Durham- a jail.( with a nice view of the Bulls ballpark). The county jail in Raleigh did add significantly to our skyline- if that is your definition of “improvement”. Where is the money coming from? why dont we save that money for a rainy day? would police officers rather have a raise and new equipment, or a new office building? With the advent of computers and paperless business management, why can’t we retrofit one of those state government buildings? Have you ever known a politician so self-serving as to put their own name on a monument? Look at the new water feature on the Plaza. Maybe a new tax-funded building will give Meeker and his big-government liberal cronies another palce to etch their names-  How Tacky!?

• ct
  12/31 03:12 PM
  

  You’re confusing two different projects.

  The county is building a new courthouse adjacent to the jail that was built about 10 years ago. The site of that jail was determined by proximity to the existing courthouse. That’s also why the Durham jail was built in downtown there.

  Now the city is proposing to build a new police HQ, but it won’t have a jail in it.

• macK
  01/06 03:44 PM
  

  considering that the current police station and 911 offices are in a building intended to be city hall in 1960s, I think its more than justifiable - necessary! - to update our public saftey facilities.

• Thomas
  07/18 10:09 AM
  

  Move to charlotte and come back in 15 years…...Raleigh is stuck in a case of old vs new….. the growth of the city mainly has northerners coming to the city in droves, but they dont stay here becuase of segregation and lack of jobs…... different cultures are crying out for change…....RAleigh is like a ghost town from a movie or something….. we have only one CVS store downtown that closes at 6pm….One store!! when you have ego vs progress you have a problem! Raleigh needs a young educated bright mind to help navigate this city to greatness…....you cannot even call a bunch of buildings a city without retail….. you must have retail! DT does not need a cafe!! the city has too many places to eat! too many…. it needs councilmen that will loby for high and low end retail…. Retail would bring revenue and life, that would encourage developers, public funding and more…..no one loves a dead city unless your near it?  the interest rates are at historical lows why not build for the future?  the bright young minds at NC State will leave after they graduate to live and work in more up to date cities! but really RAleigh is about 15 to 20 years away from even being called a city its more like a big town…..

• JZ
  07/18 12:24 PM
  

  @ Thomas:  Sounds like you’re not a local or one who understands the conditions on the ground at all.  I’ve made a commitment to downtown living and working for 14 years now…and I’m one of those segregation-/lack-of-job-fearing northerners that supposedly don’t stay.  Raleigh is an emerging city, bottomline. It will all come despite fits and starts. Retail and residential are the proverbial chicken and egg. Look at any emerging second tier city, you’ll see the same arcs of development.

  But your impatient superiority complex cloaked in blanket statements about “real urbanism” isn’t helping anyone.