Create an Area Plan for New Bern Avenue

Create an Area Plan for New Bern Avenue

The solution is simple. You are half way there. You have exempted one and two story homes from the TOD. Well done! Now, fix the core of the problem by amending TC-17A-20 so that NCODs, HODs and residential properties take precedence over the TOD! You amended this ordinance once. Let’s send it back to the drawing board, amend it again, and put equity and neighborhood protection back in.

Public Forum: Will New Bern’s Mass Upzoning Revitalize Neighborhoods or Eliminate Them?

Public Forum: Will New Bern’s Mass Upzoning Revitalize Neighborhoods or Eliminate Them?

Join us on Sunday, January 21st at 2pm at the Tarboro Road Community Center (121 N. Tarboro Street, Raleigh) to learn how you can help stop the city’s urban renewal of New Bern Avenue. Stand up for Raleigh’s Black history and for revitalizing existing neighborhoods and businesses along the New Bern Avenue Bus Rapid Transit line rather than forcing them out.

Don’t make the Urban Renewal mistake again. History will tell on you.

Don’t make the Urban Renewal mistake again. History will tell on you.

If carried out, this effort will destroy established historic neighborhoods and community identities, it will displace residents from existing affordable housing with no realistic hope of replacement; generational wealth will evaporate. It threatens the city’s tree canopy; it is a sickening reboot of the 1960’s and 70’s Urban Renewal projects that decimated neighborhoods and cultural identities in downtown Raleigh.

December 12, 2023 City Council Meeting

December 12, 2023 City Council Meeting

Highlights Despite previously guaranteeing 3 minutes per speaker at Public Comments and establishing a special meeting to accommodate that, Mayor Baldwin instituted a one-minute limit per speaker because 108 people had signed up to speak. Four councilors voted for...

New Bern BRT: Bait & Switch or Just Action?

New Bern BRT: Bait & Switch or Just Action?

In 2017, ‘The Color of Law’ landed like a bombshell in progressive housing policy circles. In Raleigh, powerful development interests saw the opportunity to adopt — some would say co-opt — Richard Rothstein’s anti-segregation message by promoting pro-density zoning rules that not only lifted exclusionary zoning rules, but went much further. By 2020, a new alliance of developer money, self-righteous Council aspirants and their white privileged adherents provided the lubrication to fast track pro-density zoning proposals. Novice Councilors were assured that pesky public input needn’t impede this sweet deal to meld profits and equity.

Don’t Break Raleigh’s Transit Promises

Don’t Break Raleigh’s Transit Promises

If their egregious zoning case, Z-92-22, gets a positive vote from City Council, it will usher in the worst kind of Urban Renewal. Affordable homes will be scraped off, to be replaced by luxury apartment buildings that only the affluent can afford to live in. Picture a stretched-out North Hills, replete with restaurants and bars – and parking decks – but with no room for the working-class.

New Bern Avenue Bus Rapid Transit: Urban Renewal 2.0?

New Bern Avenue Bus Rapid Transit: Urban Renewal 2.0?

The difficult question for the Planning Commission and City Council is this: Rather than continuing to chip away at the overlay zoning’s many inequitable impacts, are you willing to call for an alternate staff proposal that puts less emphasis on rapid economic redevelopment and more emphasis on best practices that will achieve equitable revitalization without dislocation?

Let’s not replicate the mistakes of Glenwood South on the New Bern BRT

Let’s not replicate the mistakes of Glenwood South on the New Bern BRT

As we look back at the changes of Glenwood Avenue over these past twenty years, it would be wise to reflect on the decisions that created this Frankenstein monster that can no longer be controlled.  The Glenwood entertainment district did not just pop up organically, it was nurtured through rezoning.