Cary Town Hall Campus Redevelopment

[SFspiderman]

West doesn't cross the tracks...it's stubbed on either side. The next crossing to the west of Harrison isn't until Dixon.

That said, it doesn't look like the town is trying to acquire anything beyond West, so boarding and other activity seemingly wouldn't occur beyond there.

[paytonc]

Full RFQ package: https://www.ips.state.nc.us/IPS/AGENCY/PDF/15399600.pdf

The package mentions that negotiations over sites like First Baptist Church have taken 15 years. I'm guessing that the development would be phased, with the fire department & transit center sites occurring first and the Town Hall site a good 10+ years from now. IIRC, the oldest buildings on the campus are from the 1980s, so they'll be 50+ years old by then -- certainly eligible for replacement.

The current zoning height limit in Cary is ~8 stories, but the renderings are showing 12+ story structures. Guess they're assuming they'll do their own PUD.

The renderings appear to show a pedestrian bridge at Walker St (e.g., between Page-Walker and Dom's Bagels) but don't show a RR bridge at Harrison, as has been suggested in the past.

Originally Posted by twingles

The schools here cannot handle anymore growth and we are running out of room to build new ones.

Montgomery County MD found that 77% of additional students lived in existing homes that had been resold, not in new housing. Less than 2% of new students lived in new high-rises.
https://montgomeryplanning.org/blog-...th-prosperity/

[SFspiderman]

The mayor made a few brief comments on this at the most recent council meeting after some people spoke about it during Public Speaks Out.

He acknowledged that the town should have done a better job communicating this but also lamented that the media has presented it as a plan that is already moving forward. He emphasized that nothing has actually been planned and the renderings are just examples for the RFQ is to get developers thinking about what they might want to propose. He did suggest that a pedestrian bridge at Walker is a priority for him and that certainly makes sense for stitching all of the downtown redevelopment together.

(Around 15 years ago, Cary was planning a tunnel to extend Walker as a full street through to Chapel Hill Rd, but that never got off the ground when cost estimates came in at like $15 million and they couldn't justify funding it. They tried applying for various grants for a number of years and weren't successful.)