Raleigh Big Ideas Charrette Update

Big City, Big Ideas?

Sir Isaac Hunter’s Tavern set the precedent 230 years ago and last night, Tir na Nog filled in where city founders left off so long ago.  From designers, to planners, to bloggers, to council members, to realtors, to concerned citizens, all types were represented at the first, yet well attended, charrette in Downtown Raleigh for the 2030 plan.

The meeting began with introductions by Mitchell Silver, Dan Douglas and Ken Bowers who each presented ideas about what Raleigh has planned in the coming years as well as the hopes for the charrette.  Statistics and future projections of the city were presented, as were fantastical ideas of what the futurescape of the city could look like.  Flying cities and monorails were among these visions.  Many of the statistics were heartbreaking, including the fact that citizens of Raleigh drive 9 more miles in transit than the national average and less than a percent use regional mass transit.  It is the hope of these charrettes to bring about change in regards to such issues.

After Douglas thanked the sponsors (West at North and Tir na Nog, who even made a special 200 year old drink called the “Cherry Bounce”), he instructed the masses to yell out “big ideas” they had which would be recorded on a large note pad on stage.  This was to attempt to organize the thoughts of the crowd as well as help group persons with similar visions.  Some of the ideas included a Multi-Modal-Mecca, reclaiming Caswell Square, city/tax incentives for retail moving downtown, burying the current train system, adaptive reuse of warehouses, a library downtown, an arena downtown, a river walk like San Antonio and a streetcar system from downtown to the fairgrounds.

After these ideas were recorded, Douglas informed everyone that maps of the various areas of Raleigh proper were located on the stone wall.  With these we were to group up and develop each of these big ideas, or any others that were lingering and developed within the conversation.  Many were huddled over, others moved between tables, peeking into the ground zero of ideas, and still others seemed to like to watch and chat about the ideas that were being developed.  Everyone seemed to be having a very fun and productive time with magic markers and large maps of the city.

After over an hour of drawing, drinking and discussing, the action was called to a stop.  The ideas that were created needed to be presented.  The crowd was starting to thin but the ideas kept coming.  Maybe it was the booze?  Ideas were floated about the greenway at Crabtree.  The phrase “bluescape” was thrown out, a new term for my vocabulary.  Bike lanes, trollies, plans for outside the beltline as well as inside the beltline shared space with how to get people from RDU to downtown.  Extending Halifax Court to the Capital by demolishing the Legislative Building was another.  There was even a proposal to recondition our local heroes such as Opie, Andy and Sir Walter by adding a “No Hand King” statue to the landscape of downtown. 

As I left, presentations were still winding down.  Almost three hours were devoted on a Monday night by freewheeling citizens to the cause of Downtown Raleigh and its future.  The hope is that this charrette and future ones will be very fruitful and the public will be just as involved as the legislative body.  Think of it as the “both hand king”, the city and its people.

The next meeting will be on May 3rd at Marbles on Moore Square.

photos - Ladye Jane Vickers

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