Raleigh

Community-focused posts

There are 776 posts filed in Raleigh (this is page 19 of 78).

Century Drive Solar Farm

Century Drive Solar Farm (click to embiggen)

Century Drive Solar Farm (click to embiggen)

Now that the leaves are off the trees I’d been eyeing this solar farm near the Crabtree Boulevard exit of the Beltline. My daughter Hallie and I took a little time this afternoon to explore this installation.

According to the Raleigh Public Record story on it last year, the Century Drive Solar Farm was approved by the City Council in May 2013. At the time the property owners, J.T. Hobby and Son, stated that it could be 10 to 15 years before the land could support solar panels due to the land being a former landfill and in a floodplane to boot. Apparently they worked out some of the engineering issues because the panels have been present since the end of October, at least.

Raleigh Public Record says there are 4,000 panels here and the filing with the state public utilities commission [XLS] says the solar farm is 1 MW is size. Pretty cool to have a large solar installation in such a high-profile location!

Cheap Thoughts: Parking meter app

Dinosaur

Dinosaur


Paying for parking? There’s an app for that. Or at least there should be.

Walking down a downtown sidewalk this week, I pondered a sawed-off pipe near the curb where an old-fashioned parking meter once stood. A few years ago, the City of Raleigh got rid of all the traditional coin-based parking meters and put up new electronic parking kiosks instead. Drivers simply note the painted number for their parking space and enter that into the kiosk along with their payment.

Simple, right? Instead of collecting coins from hundreds of meters, parking staff simply empty the money from kiosks, which take credit cards and paper bills in addition to coins. Drivers can also refresh their parking time from nearby kiosks, avoiding a trip back to the kiosk nearest the car.
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Highlights of 2013: Volunteering

The year 2013 was a busy year for volunteering. Most of my attention was devoted to Little Raleigh Radio, both as a boardmember and as a volunteer. We obtained equipment and set up a studio on St. Mary’s Street. I configured a music server and helped integrate it into the studio. We worked together in the fall to locate suitable transmitter sites and filed our FCC application.

Then the filing window closed and we saw we were one of five groups to apply for our frequency. Not only that, we were the youngest organization to file, meaning we almost certainly lose out to the others when the FCC grants its license. We’re still plotting our next steps but it’s depressing to see this opportunity slipping away with little we can do about it.
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Charlene Willard retires

Charlene Willard and me

Charlene Willard and me


Charlene Willard retired this week from the City of Raleigh’s Community Services department after a 25 year career. I was very happy I could attend her retirement party Thursday afternoon.

Charlene has been a big influence in my life. It was one morning in 2008 when I first spoke with Charlene when she was calling to tell me I had been accepted into the city’s Raleigh Neighborhood College (RNC) program. Originally there had been no openings but Charlene told me another participant had just canceled, making a spot available to me. I enjoyed the next 12 weeks of RNC classes with Charlene and then went on to work closely with her as the Community Services liaison during my three years as chair of the East CAC.

Charlene’s is the kind of person who has to be involved in something so I expect we’ll see her keep busy with some deserving projects around the area. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to work with her again!

Oakwood North progressing

The Oakwood North subdivision is progressing nicely, though the schedule is quite aggressive. The first two homes are due to be built by February, which doesn’t leave a lot of time. Crews have cleared and graded the property and septic lines have been installed. The cut-through has been cleared and work has now begun to connect the Edmund Street end to State Street. A crew was working yesterday on a wall on the back of the second lot. I assume this is part of the temporary retaining pond but it could be a drop in elevation (the tree protection area is right behind it).

A huge pile of tree debris remains on the property. I heard the tree stump grinder, a huge machine, was busy working on the pile when the cutter surface shattered, sending metal shards flying. The contractor has been working to repair this machine, causing a many-day delay in removing the debris.

This week, KB Home put up its sign at the edge of the property, announcing the subdivision. Strangely, the sign is angled towards Edmund Street rather than State Street, where it would gain more visibility.
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The Jesse Ford Taylor Plantation and Lotus Villa

Belvidere Park and Woodcrest neighborhoods recently had a neighborhood get-together where I shared some of the history of the community. I had learned much of this at the East CAC’s “history night” at our October 2009 meeting, when a descendant of the Taylor family shared a family history.

I’d had this history tucked away in paper form ever since that 2009 meeting. At the recent get-together I decided I needed to share it with the neighbors. Putting our new multi-feed scanner to use along with some optical character recognition software, I reformatted the document into one much more easily read. As far as I know this document does not exist anywhere else on the Internet.

Here’s part of the rich history of East Raleigh: the story of the Taylor Plantation and Lotus Villa as told by Eliza Lindsey Baucom in 1956. Read it all here [PDF}.

Raleigh’s special events office

The city recently created a special events office, coming in response to the Color Run fiasco, among others. I think this is a wonderful approach, as I think Raleigh should do its best to accommodate the growth of running in our city. Hopefully with staff dedicated to managing events, we can find a way to let runners run and showcase more of our city to the participants.

RALEIGH: North Person Street business district fills up fast

Here’s a story about the growth the Person Street business district has seen in the past few years.

RALEIGH — Craig Heffley first visited the North Person Street business district about a decade ago, around the time he was opening Wine Authorities in Durham. He spotted a series of vacant storefronts amid two thriving historic neighborhoods, and he made a mental note.

“This would be a great space if I ever opened in Raleigh,” he recalled thinking. “It’s got spunk to it. It’s a good mix of neighborhood people and people who are driving through on their way to downtown.”

I found a big goof in this story, though:

And more neighbors are on the way to fill prescriptions with James, sip wines in Heffley’s store lounge and dine at Piebird. Peace Street Townes, an 18-unit townhouse development, is under construction near Krispy Kreme. Even Oakwood is expanding with a new subdivision called Oakwood North.

Oakwood North is in no way related to the Historic Oakwood neighborhood. It just has Oakwood in its name.

via RALEIGH: North Person Street business district fills up fast | Raleigh | MidtownRaleighNews.com.

Nextdoor getting mixed results

Earlier this week I saw someone forward a notice to a neighborhood listserve which had first gone out over Nextdoor. The forward was prefaced with this comment:

This was on nextdoor. I hate nextdoor, I need another social network like I need a hole in my head.

I responded to the poster, asking her to elaborate. She was happy to do so:

I don’t really want my neighborhood communications shunted off into a stand-alone platform, I thought email worked well for [Belvidere Park – Woodcrest.] When I do get email notifications from nextdoor, I have to click through to see the whole thread, which I don’t want to do on my smartphone. If Nextdoor were integrated into FB, which I’m already resigned to, that would be one thing. I have zero interest in ramping up conversations in a new platform. I felt like I had to join it to stay looped into Oakwood/Mordecai events, where my office is located, because they opted into Nextdoor entirely.

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Fritsch: RTP has lost its edge

Highwoods CEO Ed Fritsch says what I’ve long said: RTP is a dinosaur.

Ed Fritsch, CEO of Raleigh-based real estate company Highwoods Properties NYSE: HIW, is blunt in his take on Research Triangle Park.He says RTP has lost its edge, and he questions whether there’s time to get it back.Fritsch, speaking to a crowd at Triangle Business Journal’s Power Breakfast at Prestonwood Country Club in Cary on Thursday morning, doesn’t pull any punches.Years ago, “we would show RTP properties and say, ‘this is the heart of the economic engine,’” he says.No more.

via Fritsch: RTP has lost its edge Video – Triangle Business Journal.