Greenville Area Developments (Raleigh: homestead, hotel, homes)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The Triangle Beach Music Festival will be held in Greenville this year. It was held in Garner for many years but as far as I know most of the sponsors were from this area. The festival says they have outgrown the Garner property so they're moving it here, to the fairgrounds.
More information of the city council meeting last night. Lots of input about the Town Commons:
Quote:
The city’s long-term plan for the development of the Town Common needs to be updated, the Greenville City Council decided during its meeting on Thursday.
Representatives from Rhodeside & Harwell Inc. (RHI), a landscape architecture firm in Alexandria, Va., presented the council with two schematic design alternatives for the Town Common Phase I Design and Development project. The project is part of the Town Common Master Plan.
The city’s 2015-16 budget included $250,000 for Town Common Phase I design development. RHI was contracted to design the first phase for $98,686. The remainder of the money budgeted would be used toward Phase 2.
In January, the city and design consultants from RHI held a series of public-input meetings where residents could provide suggestions for potential Town Common improvements and the city’s overall plan for the park.
Suggestions included: a splash park; public art; a museum; a farmers market; a beach; street vendors or carts; improved lighting; an enlarged veterans memorial; a bridge across the river; gardens; boat rentals; zip lines; campsites; and permanent bathrooms.
RHI completed two schematic design alternatives based on input from the meetings.
“We received a lot of great feedback from the community,” Ron Sessoms, an urban designer with RHI, said. ”We incorporated that feedback into our designs.”
The design concepts included a playground, a reconfigured driveway and parking area, a kiosk for kayak and canoe rentals, plans to create a “living shoreline” along the river and a memorial marking the former site of the Sycamore Hill Missionary Baptist Church.
After RHI presented the design alternatives, District 3 Councilman McLean Godley said the city needs to revisit the Tar River Master Plan, which was established in 2009, before moving ahead with Phase 1.
“This area has changed dramatically in the past six years,” Godley said. ”This plan needs to be updated.”
Councilman At-Large Calvin Mercer was concerned that updating the plan would put the redevelopment project ”on a shelf.”
“We had a plan in 2009, and now we are pulling back,” he said. ”We have something we can move forward with.”
The council voted 3-1 to use the remaining funds budgeted for the project’s design to include plans for the entire redevelopment of the Town Common. Godley, District 4 Councilman Rick Smiley and Mayor Pro-Tem Kandie Smith voted for the measure. Mercer voted against the measure. Godley had to leave the meeting before the vote, and District 2 Councilwoman Rose Glover was unable to attend.
However, parts of the Phase 1 design, including a memorial marking the former site of the Sycamore Hill Missionary Baptist Church, can be implemented. RHI submitted three alternatives for a memorial, which included a bell tower, an interpretive garden and a meditative labyrinth. Each incorporates different elements to honor the historic church.
“The church needed to be more carefully integrated into the master plan,” RHI architect Elliot Rhodeside said. ”It deserves to be celebrated in the overall plan.”
The church, founded about 1867, was first called the African Baptist Church and is one of the city’s oldest congregations. Members changed its name to Sycamore Hill Missionary Baptist Church in the 1880s. In 1912, a cemetery was started on an acre north of the Tar River, and by 1917 a large brick church was completed at the corner of First and Greene streets.
As a result of the Shore Drive urban renewal project in the late 1960s, the church building was sold to the city’s Redevelopment Commission, and the congregation was forced to move to Eighth Street in 1968. In 1969, the old church building was destroyed by an arsonist.
Members of the church — now on Hooker Road — have proposed recreating the church’s bell tower at the site.
“Progress must reflect an entire city,” Lillian Outterbridge said. ”It must reflect economics, and it must reflect culture. I ask this council to strongly support the Sycamore Hill Bell Tower Project.”
Sam Barber, a local historian and author who has studied the church at length, said the city committed “cultural genocide” when it forced the congregation to relocate, and a fitting memorial should be placed at the site.
“There is no compelling reason this council can’t erect a bell tower,” Barber said. ”Now is the time to act. ... It is the moral thing to do.”
These look fantastic. However, I feel like they've been talking about this for damn near ever. Is there any time frame for start/completion?
Yea that does look great, but it looks like the plan has changed even from a few months ago. I thought the Amphitheater was going to be in the corner near the boat dock, now it looks like they may not have enough space for it.
I don't mind the amphitheater being where it is, but I think it needs updating pretty badly. I wouldn't mind seeing the city create a new amphitheater somewhere else in the city (River Park North?) to host events.
After RHI presented the design alternatives, District 3 Councilman McLean Godley said the city needs to revisit the Tar River Master Plan, which was established in 2009, before moving ahead with Phase 1.
“This area has changed dramatically in the past six years,” Godley said. ”This plan needs to be updated.”
I have to say - I have been on Godley's side on most of all he's presented thus far in the council, but I'm sadly with Mercer on this one (gasp!)...please get this thing started...if they want to reevaluate the Master Plan that's going to take some serious time, it'll be years before anything is done...the money is available & the first phase looks nice enough to me.
This is a good start on the Town Commons, I mostly am looking forward to whatever phase they remove the existing Amphitheater & put in a decent one in another spot (if that is still happening since the photos show a bit different configuration from the original Master Plan.) From the pictures of the Smashmouth concert at PirateFest, it can be a great location for live music & if the area is nice enough by then, maybe they could draw decent national talent.
Quote:
Uptown is going to be one giant construction site before long...and I love every minute of it
Right there with you! Over the next few years what do we have to look forward to that is currently known:
1. Transportation Center
2. Student / Residential Housing on Dickinson (removal of old Pugh's building)
3. ECU One Stop Student Services Building
4. Uptown Hotel
5. Town Commons Renovations
6. 1st Street Trillium Building Renovation & move in.
7. ECU Student Center / parking deck on 10th Street
8. Upscale Student Housing Development on 10th street across from Student Center
9. 10th Street Connector construction / completion
10. ECU Millennial Campus Projects on 10th Street
I'm sure I'm missing something - but man, that is a lot of activity in a small part of town. So very excited for what Uptown will be in 3 years!
Looks to me that the Amphitheater area and potential bridge crossing the river would be another phase entirely. I don't disagree with that. Get your entrance, your river access, your memorial and your playground in place...get people using it.
THEN, do a project like Little Rock, with an event lawn....and incorporate a Riverfront Farmers Market into that. Ideally that would mean elevating and turning the amphitheater with the river to the side to maximize lawn space for larger events...Really like the see through nature of the one in LR.
Then watch as First St re-develops.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
