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For more than a decade, rehabilitations of historic warehouses have been major projects shaping downtown’s emerging new vitality. A host of smaller renovations have helped breath new life into a streetscape long moribund.
New construction, certainly, has figured heavily – first the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, the first two Diamond View buildings and the enormously important Durham Performing Arts Center, a year-round magnet to downtown.
Increasingly, activity will be dominated by such new building.
How do you think this will change the personality of Durham? I find the prospect that Durham is becoming a more vibrant, urban place really exciting. This is the sort of development that I saw a lot of in Portland that helped it on its way to becoming one of the most livable cities in the US. Hopefully people actually fill up all these places and add even more liveliness to Durham.
Now if we only could get the same level of public transportation as Portland. It's a nice thought, but we have a long long way to go before we're Portland in any capacity
Anyway, there are a lot of typos/inaccuracies in the Clarion article, but it gets the point across. This progress is positive as long as everyone's parking needs are taken into account. Although we can't wait for the improved view on Main St from the Woolworth-site tower, it seems as though residential stakeholders like us are afterthought in all plans, unless they want more revenue for parking.
Meanwhile, large projects like several in the article are getting handed whatever spots they (will) need in existing structures, despite the $200K parking study the city commissioned that recommended that future projects incorporate any parking needs into their design.
What is the opposite of NIMBY where we beg for parking AND smart development in our back yard? Bring on the jackhammers and pretty buildings. Just don't ignore the people creating the downtown culture now. If everyone's needs are accounted for, it's going to be an exciting time for Durham.
I personally can't wait for 21c hotel to be finished. They are going do things right with the Hill Building for sure.
Now if we only could get the same level of public transportation as Portland.
We'll have to talk to Wake County about that!
I agree that parking is important to take account of, but overbuilding parking (waste of valuable land, money, potential vitality) can be just as harmful and underbuilding. How tight is parking for current downtown residents? My understanding is that most every apartment has at least one dedicated spot, and current regulations seem to dictate "1 per bedroom, but no more than 2 per unit."
As Durham becomes more dense, more folks will probably elect to have fewer/no cars and instead walk/bike/bus around town too. But really, if Durham's going to become a more urban city, parking will become more difficult. There's no thriving downtown that I know of where parking is a trivial thing to do.
I agree that parking is important to take account of, but overbuilding parking (waste of valuable land, money, potential vitality) can be just as harmful and underbuilding. How tight is parking for current downtown residents? My understanding is that most every apartment has at least one dedicated spot, and current regulations seem to dictate "1 per bedroom, but no more than 2 per unit."
As Durham becomes more dense, more folks will probably elect to have fewer/no cars and instead walk/bike/bus around town too. But really, if Durham's going to become a more urban city, parking will become more difficult. There's no thriving downtown that I know of where parking is a trivial thing to do.
Sorry to be so long-winded, but this is a subject on most of my neighbors' minds right now.
I'm taking about the downtown loop proper, not an extended area like in the Clarion article. Basically, with the folks on our block of Main, things are currently quite tense with City Council's sneaky ordinance over the summer to eliminate the residential parking incentive in three months (despite the parking study not being finalized and despite only 135 residential parkers being on the books: not exactly critical mass there). Also, people are still stinging from the price tag of the $200K parking study that's conveniently being ignored in parts (as said above).
The parking study illustrated that parking is not tight at the moment in the loop, except for surface lots, but they're assigning a ton of spots to 21c and Woolworths tower in Corcoran garage, which will shift everyone else around. Developers are also eying the existing surface lots, which will also squeeze things if any plans come to fruition. These things don't happen in a bubble and there will be real consequences to the folks who already live and park in the immediate area. Church garage is a ghost town because of the Justice Center opening, but after they renovate the old courthouse, that might not be the case in a few years. Centre garage is underutilized. Chapel Hill St garage is under construction so parkers are in Church instead, and Church is still a ghost town.
As you can probably tell, I disagree with your assessment that a thriving downtown has to squeeze out residential parking. What really seems to happen is, despite $200K parking studies recommending otherwise, new projects take more parking than they're willing to build, all the parking they need, and then existing residents have to fight for scraps in the future as their spots are taken and resold out from under them. That doesn't seem right or smart at all. Without greed it's possible to have new developments that keep everyone happily parked. The new buildings don't exist yet, after all, so the notion that developers can't build parking for those currently using the spots into their plans I do not accept.
Your original post asked about what development will do to the personality of Durham? Well, I'd say when talking about the existing personality, the historic buildings help create it and those of us in them didn't have the option of adding parking to the building. I'd love to have a dream job downtown where I could walk. I'd love to take a train to where I work. I'd love to bike everywhere and not worry about getting hit on our crazy streets. I'd love to have somewhere to safely park an ELF. I'd really love Durham to be Portland, but our reputation (just see may of the posts on this board) and residential base is not anywhere near that yet. If the city wants to eventually be more like Portland, they can't create an adversarial environment from the start when it's still very much a pioneering situation.
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