January 17, 2010 | Story by: Brent Miller | Categories: Government, News
When you’re alone
And life is making you lonely,
You can always go downtown
When you’ve got worries,
All the noise and the hurry
Seems to help, I know, downtown
- Petula Clark
By Correspondent Brent Miller
Cary, N.C. – The second and final day of the Cary Town Council’s annual retreat on Saturday was largely devoted to discussing the future of Cary’s Town Center. To begin this “visioning” exercise, Town Staff presented the current state of the Town Center Area Plan and other plans related to downtown.
THE NEW ALTERNATIVE
Planning Director Jeff Ulma, Engineering Director Tim Bailey and Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources Director Mary Henderson then unveiled a new “twist” to future downtown plans: a Staff-generated alternative framework for how downtown could evolve.
In this new alternative, Staff divided the core Town Center area into three districts:
Town Staff explained that in considering these separate districts in the Town Center, they had enlisted the help of an outside consultant to generate new ideas for “anchor” destinations to draw people to downtown Cary.
MOVING AROUND THE PIECES OF THE MAP
In particular, Staff showed how it could be possible to build a new Wake County regional library downtown, next to the planned Town Park in the Academy South district. Previously, that vicinity was the planned site for a Performing Arts Center.
Building the downtown library near old Cary Elementary would make it more difficult to build the planned Performing Arts Center and its associated parking decks in that same vicinity, so Staff showed how the Performing Arts Center might instead be built in the Downtown North district – north of the railroad tracks in the general vicinity of Town Hall. Pursuing this option might also allow for a hotel and other development, such as offices and residences, in this area.
Finally, the Chatham Street district was shown as potentially hosting retail shopping, restaurants and other attractions.
A DEFINITE MAYBE
Town Council members indicated that they were intrigued by these possibilities. Town Staff requested feedback from the Council and indicated that they had prepared an exercise to help facilitate obtaining that feedback.
We’ll report on the results of that exercise and the updated vision for downtown Cary in our next article!
Edited by Matt Young & Hal Goodtree
Wayne Clark
January 17, 2010 at 11:20 pm
Our family moved to Cary 15 years ago from the San Francisco Bay Area where there are literally dozens of small, vibrant downtown areas, each with their own unique character. We have always seen the lack of a downtown Cary as a huge drawback to living here.
The recent article in the Cary News about downtown Apex shows just how far Apex is ahead of Cary in revitalizing its downtown. And unlike Apex, Cary barely even has a core set of buildings on which to build up a downtown.
Revitalization of downtown Cary has been talked about for almost as long as we have lived here. I seriously doubt there will be anything substantive done by the time we eventually leave here in the 4-5 years.
Cary has been a great place to raise our daughter so I give it high marks for that. But on reasonable planning and growth — including a downtown — I give Cary a big ZERO.
Lindsey Chester
January 18, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Cary never had a substantial shopping district like Apex did to begin with. Unlike Apex that has the storefront architecture and sidewalk browsing potential- Cary has homes set back from the street and 2 very large Churches who own substantial downtown real estate. Couple that with Historic landmarks and your hands are tied. The Renovation of Cary Elementary is a great step in the right direction. I also think creating a large state of the art Wake County library in the place of the old fashioned current Cary one is long over due. How is it that 10 year old Eva Perry Library got a complete overhaul and Cary Library looks right out of 1971???
Donald Belk
January 18, 2010 at 6:38 pm
Building the performing arts center in the ‘Downtown North’ district is a great idea, and will lead to more investment there. Having the park and a new library on S. Academy is the right choice as well. The Historic District has been a success, not an impediment, as Chester suggests. Witness the restoration activity! The Town has the right plans in place. All that is needed now is private investment. Perhaps Council and staff can explore additional incentives to attract it.
johnb
January 20, 2010 at 12:16 am
Downtown Cary will not be “revitalized” until the storm water runoff issue is seriously addressed. Who wants to go out after a storm to see a foot of water flooding neighborhood streets? Unless the game plan is to attract private investors that are dumb enough to not perform serious due diligence in investigating the infrastructure of the area they’d be investing in there’s a latent problem with the execution of any plan that fails to address storm water.
The fact that the city refuses to concede reality and make Chatham Street a divided four lane road with the northern (westbound) side between the buildings on Chatham Street and the railroad tracks tells all of us they don’t consider access a serious issue. The only way to turn downtown around is to make it easy for us to get in and out of downtown.
Brent
January 20, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Johnb:
The Council did discuss stormwater issues downtown at the Retreat, at some length, and also discussed potential incentives for private development downtown, because developing downtown could be more expensive than building the same things elsewhere in Cary (because of land costs and required stormwater remediation). Stormwater was one of the focus topics on Day 1 of the retreat.
Regarding streets, the vision that seemed to emerge from the Retreat was for Chatham St. to be a “destination” rather than a through-traffic thoroughfare, with Chapel Hill Road being the major downtown east-west thoroughfare and Harrison Ave. and the planned Walker St. extension being the major north-south thoroughfares. Mayor Weinbrecht was adamant that automobile traffic needs to be sufficiently accommodated in any downtown plans and asked Staff to look at this in detail and come back to Council with some options.
Cheryl Handy
January 25, 2011 at 11:10 am
johnb -
How can you make East Chatham Street 4 lanes on the east side near Food Factory and BB&T? You would lose businesses.
Lets discuss cars maintaining the speed limit and not making business patrons run across East Chatham like a squirrel.