DLA members met for the first meeting of 2012 at the Urban Design Center this month. This January is special because it is the three year anniversary of the DLA. What started with just a few members has now grown to over 540 members. And the momentum continues.
At the meeting tonight, we went over a few topics:
A new draft of the Unified Development Ordinance is out for public review
Be on the lookout for new DLA shirts
In the near future, the DLA website will be redesigned with new features to keep you engaged with what is going on downtown as well as take your feedback on any issues you can think of
Two events for you to put down on your calendar are:
The next DLA mixer will be at Spy Raleigh on February 1st at 5:30pm
The next Moore Square cleanup will be on Saturday, February 4th at 11am.
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:
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.
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.
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.
Does your neighborhood have a good system for communicating? Are you able to quickly get answers to neighborhood questions? If not, read on.
Today, simple web based tools allow neighborhood organizations the opportunity to set up online discussion forums and electronic bulletin boards to foster communication with and among residents. And best of all, many of these systems are completely free to set up and operate!
While you may not run into your neighbors enough to be on a first name basis, you’ve probably at times wanted to share information with others who obviously have common concerns and experiences. Living in the same environment, you can obviously learn some useful things about maintenance issues or maybe just an answer to the question, “What was that strange noise last night”? And the need for a conversation only increases if you live in a multi-unit building, where you share common space and services. But all too often the communication doesn’t happen, either because residents don’t see each other or don’t feel they know each other well enough to have these conversations.
HOAs or neighborhood organizations of course have a responsibility to communicate to their residents about things they “need to know” about regulations and common services. But the HOA may not want to spend the time or money to develop an online or telecommunications system that they think nobody will use. So they continue to rely on snail mail or announcements slipped under the door for only the most critical of information.
If your neighborhood organization hasn’t yet taken advantage to these tools, I recommend using Google Groups working in tandem with Google Sites. I’m not a technical wiz or expert, but I was able to set up this system on behalf of my HOA, so I figure pretty much anyone can do it.
The system is easy to set up and use.
HOAs post information and residents post questions or comments by sending an email to a specific (Group) address.
Posts and replies are automatically sent to member addresses via email.
A website containing information (regulations, by-laws, how-to’s, etc.) can be posted by the HOA, searchable using keywords.
Residents control how information is delivered.
You can control how email messages are delivered, either distributed as posted or as a digest (multiple posts together).
If you don’t wish to use email, you can post and access information through the Group Homepage.
You can unsubscribe yourself from the discussion forum and/or website at anytime.
Emails and posted information is kept private.
Group members’ emails are known only to the Group Administrator and are not visible or shared. Note: Members may wish to set up a separate G-mail account for this purpose.
Members can update their email address without having to notify anyone.
The website can be kept private, accessible only by invitation.
Neighbors may not meet at the town square any more, or even strike up conversations in the elevator, but that doesn’t mean they can’t still share common interests and concerns.
My own HOA started using this system and it seems to work well. But if you have suggestions on other systems that you have found to work effectively within your neighborhood or condo/apartment building, we’d like to hear from you.
Do you have a “third place” in downtown Raleigh? We all have our first place, our homes, and then we find our second place being where we work. Our third place is referred to as the place where we go, away from home and work, to be social and spend time in a comfortable setting. Downtown Raleigh is full of places for just this kind of interaction.
Barbershops and salons, coffee shops and bars, museums and restaurants. These are all over downtown Raleigh and residents are settling into these familiar places and meeting others. I talk about the concept of the “third place” over on my blog at The Raleigh Connoisseur. The third place can be many things including your church, a specific shop, or any type of regular meetup.
This “third place” is something that many downtown residents are seeking. Most residents want a comfortable space to spend time outside of the house that is closeby, in most cases within walking distance of our homes. The amount of places to experience in downtown Raleigh have grown over the past few years.
I can’t list them all because there are lots of places in downtown but below is a list of great places to settle in. Where is your “third place”?
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