A. To get to Poole’s diner for Saturday brunch.
I didn’t have a choice because there is no sidewalk access for pedestrians to get to Poole’s. Surrounded by construction on all sides, with three lanes of traffic on McDowell Street zooming by the front door, customers are forced to take their lives into their own hands by walking/running/scampering across McDowell in the middle of the block if they want to try this great new restaurant. Right now, the lack of pedestrian access doesn’t appear to be deterring folks from trying Chef Ashley Christensen’s newest creation – her superb reputation obviously precedes her. But there are obvious reasons to be concerned.
First, it is a clear safety and liability issue. Just weeks prior to Poole’s opening, there was evidently safe pedestrian access that allowed customers to cross McDowell at Davie St. and then walk down the half a block to the restaurant. However, Barnhill Construction, builders for the “L Building” project at the corner of Davie and McDowell, threw up a fence that now covers up the sidewalk and goes all the way to the curb on the Poole’s side of the street. So if you park on Davie St., the lot that Poole’s leased across McDowell, or the city’s deck, you have no choice but to scamper across three busy lanes of McDowell. Interestingly, a little digging suggests that Barnhill might not have had the required permits to obstruct the sidewalk without providing an alternative—yet the City appears to be doing nothing about it. If a pedestrian were struck, lawsuits against Barnhill and the City would be likely and potentially costly. As a taxpayer, I find that troubling. I also hate the idea that one of the state’s biggest construction companies could willfully disregard the rules.
Second, the City’s lack of intervention to ensure safe and easy access seems to run counter to its goal of fostering a vibrant downtown economy. Here we have a talented chef and entrepreneur doing exactly what Raleigh is hoping more folks will do—open a business that will attract folks to downtown in the evenings and on the weekends. One would think that the City’s leaders would bend over backwards to help an entrepreneur who is willing to invest heaps of time and money into this type of project. In fact, the City’s own tourism website is quick to promote Christensen as a key part of the city’s new dining scene. But still, they won’t even ensure safe pedestrian access to her new restaurant.
Someone with Christensen’s talent and resume (profiled in Food & Wine, named Best Chef of the Triangle two years in a row by the Independent) could be opening a restaurant anywhere in the country—Austin, San Francisco or, of course, New York City. Yet she has chosen instead to invest her energy and talent in the reinvention of a downtown Raleigh institution and inch our fine city’s burgeoning food scene further along. The least the City could do is make sure customers can get there safely. Otherwise, people like Christensen will start looking elsewhere.