On a beautiful sunny Saturday, members of the DLA met up in Moore Square and picked up trash. If you don’t know already, the DLA has adopted Moore Square and will be planning more cleanups in the future. Typically the cleanup lasts an hour with a lunch outing immediately afterwards.
Thanks to all the members who showed up as well as the new friends from Activate Good.
The DLA held their mixer at The Downtown Sports Bar and Grill this week. Lots of members showed up to enjoy a free drink, food, and participated in a raffle to win a 32″ LCD TV. Plans for the next mixer are still in the works but expect it to be in January of the new year.
Make sure to sign up for future updates and mixers or check the calendar.
Downtown residents should take note of a new startup that’s operating in the triangle and customers are already participating here in downtown Raleigh. As you are probably aware, the city and county take care of our trash and recyclables but currently do very little, if anything, in collecting our compostable materials. All of that organic matter can be put to use and after talking it over with Matt Rostetter, mastermind behind the Raleigh startup Compost Now, there is a big benefit to our neighborhood if all that organic trash was collected.
Compost Now is currently serving customers around Raleigh but Matt has a vision for bringing the service to a new level. To acheive his goals, new customers can join on the company’s Ripple campaign site, where monetary pledges help Compost Now reach their goals and give you a discount on the service for helping back it. The link to the Ripple campaign is:
Compost Now Fundraiser via Ripple.com
The service is simple. For a monthly fee, residents would receive a bin to place all their compostable trash in and it is collected every week, replaced by a fresh bin. The advantage to this service compared to similar ones in other cities is that Compost Now will give you fresh soil in return.
Matt estimates that for every two pounds of materials collected, residents would be entitled to one pound of soil. You can request soil at any time and have it delivered anywhere. So even if you won’t use it at home, you can send your soil to a local urban farm. Downtown residents should note the upcoming Raleigh City Farm and the many Community Supported Agriculture services could be potential recipients of your soil.
In the near future, Matt envisions a website showing users statistics including how much weight in trash has been kept out of landfills, how much soil you are entitled to and other data to really bring people into using the service. Travelers shouldn’t worry as the service can be put on hold when out of town. You won’t be charged for not using the service for those weeks and you can schedule when bins should start showing up again at your door.
Compost Now is a resident based composting service which keeps waste out of landfills and can really supply our neighborhood community gardens with the soil they need. Check out the campaign for this growing Raleigh startup.
The state of eating and drinking continues to change and expand here in Downtown Raleigh. New restaurants are opening while others are re-inventing themselves. It’s just part of the always growing revitalization that is happening here and residents are enjoying it in a big way.
A new twist on the food scene for downtown is the food trucks. The City of Raleigh is wrestling with ways to allow them to operate in our city fairly and safely. The debate has continued on for more than a year and the Downtown Living Advocates are making a case for the city to finally amend its zoning permits to allow food trucks to operate in downtown Raleigh with limitations on placement.
Click through the slides for a brief overview of the survey results and ideas.
A recent poll of DLA members shows a mix of responses supporting food trucks with and without certain limitations. The main concerns for DLA members are operating hours and places of operation.
Food truck support comes from well over 95 percent of the DLA responses, but members felt differently on the issue. The first concern about food trucks is where they operate. This is the second largest response (30 percent) after the most popular option of no restrictions. (39 percent) Only a small amount, 5 percent, felt that hours were the only concern about the food trucks in downtown.
Nineteen percent of respondants favored restrictions on both placement and hours of operation. Finally, only about 6 percent of members wanted food trucks only during major events or not at all.
The data speaks for itself: DLA residents of Downtown Raleigh want food trucks operating in our center city.
The DLA Supports The 100-foot Rule.
There are some food business owners within downtown who have expressed concern about the operation of the food trucks here and how it may affect their business. The DLA is in support of the 100-foot rule that has been discussed by city council. This rule limits the operation of a food truck to areas outside of 100 feet away from the front door of a restaurant. We feel this rule would be fair to both our current neighbors and those who wish to operate here soon.
The DLA has created a visual map of downtown Raleigh, showing surface parking lots and an approximate area of where those food truck operation areas would be under the 100-foot rule. Please refer to the map below.
;)
Purple = Downtown Raleigh, Yellow = surface lots, Red = 100 foot area, no truck operation
All distances approximate. Click for a larger view.
The map helps us visualize what the future operation of food trucks could be under the 100-foot rule. It is important to notice that the Glenwood South area and Fayetteville Street are completely covered in red, meaning no food trucks will be allowed in this area. This then creates a fair operating environment to a majority of downtown’s food businesses, which are in these areas.
The surface parking lots, shown in yellow, present an opportunity for food trucks. These lots are typically underutilized for most hours of the day and can then be re-used during off-peak hours. The food trucks can park in those lots, outside of the area created by the 100-foot rule, and bring activity to an area that typically sees little traffic or pedestrian activity. The DLA encourages the city to look into this option so a compromise can be made.
DLA residents are all neighbors with the businesses in downtown Raleigh and support a fair compromise with the 100-foot rule. We encourage everyone, member or not, to write to the Raleigh City Council to voice their opinion on this matter. Please copy and paste the letter below and send it to the entire city council at the below e-mail address to let them know where you stand.
Support Food Trucks In Raleigh
Dear Raleigh City Council,
I am writing to you today to urge you to take a closer look at the ongoing food truck debate and to please support the operation of food trucks in Raleigh. Along with the clear support of the Downtown Living Advocates (DLA), a resident-based group in Raleigh, I, too, support the food trucks in my city. I encourage you to visit this link and see the DLA’s results and thoughts on the issue.
Strong Support For Food Trucks By DLA Membership via RaleighDLA.com (http://theraleighcommons.org/raleighdla//home/2011/8/25/strong-support-for-food-trucks-by-dla-membership.html)
I support a compromise between food truck and food businesses with the 100-foot rule so that each can operate fairly in our city. I feel that the surface parking lots all over Raleigh are very underutilized and pairing them with mobile food options makes a lot of sense.
Please come to a conclusion on this issue and support this growing food industry in our city.
Regards,
Raleigh Citizen
The next step in the Moore Square Redesign takes place next week with a meeting for public comments on the draft master plan. Download a pdf report of the plan from the city’s website (at ‘DRAFT Master Plan’ in the right sidebar) or here directly. The meeting to go over the plan and have an opportunity to ask questions and submit comments is at:
5:30-7:00pm
Thursday February 17th, 2011
Chavis Community Center
505 Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard
Diving into the draft plan, we see estimates for how long this project will take and how much it will cost.
The Master Plan process is coming to a close soon with this final review and plan. Funding is needed to continue to the next step of schematic and design development, an estimated eight month process. Following this, another eight months is needed to create construction documents and another year after until that construction is complete on the square.
Schematic and Design Development: 8 months
Construction Documents: 8 months
Construction: 1 year
Estimated completion: Summer 2013 (funding dependant)
The total cost of design, earthwork, park fixtures, and many other elements that are planned to go into the park; about $14 million. Individual costs are broken out in the report so please take a look and voice your comments at the meeting next week or directly to the city on their website. (there is a contacts section in the right sidebar)
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