{"id":89728,"date":"2016-05-11T10:37:42","date_gmt":"2016-05-11T14:37:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/raleighpublicrecord.org\/?p=89728"},"modified":"2016-05-12T09:05:37","modified_gmt":"2016-05-12T13:05:37","slug":"a-brief-history-of-brier-creek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/news\/2016\/05\/11\/a-brief-history-of-brier-creek\/","title":{"rendered":"A Brief History of Brier Creek"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than a quarter century ago, Raleigh officials set out to encourage a new urban center, near highways, near the airport and on the other side of a large state park away from the city\u2019s existing downtown.<\/p>\n

What they got instead was Brier Creek, a wide-ranging suburban development with some high-density and mixed-use elements. It\u2019s not quite the same as the suburbia that surrounds it, nor is it remotely as distinctive as city officials first intended.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

Ted Strong<\/p>

A map of the plans for Brier Creek<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWe were trying to create a more walkable, urban-style environment,\u201d said George Chapman, who was the city\u2019s planning director from 1981 to 2005. \u201cI\u2019m not sure how terribly successful we were at it; there are parts of it that are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Planners also wanted to put in a rail transit system that would include a loop to the airport and Brier Creek connecting to a main line between Raleigh and Durham, Chapman said.<\/p>\n

But the political will for such a system didn\u2019t exist at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat, of course, has not materialized and doesn\u2019t look like it will,\u201d Chapman said.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s plans were driven by the long-term needs of the area, but the realities of development helped dictate what went up when the trees that once blanketed the site came down.<\/p>\n

\"Traffic<\/a>

Traffic is a constant in Brier Creek<\/p><\/div>\n

By the 1980s, Research Triangle park was thriving, with firms such as IBM and Nortel. But workers had to commute from nearby cities.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone was coming from Durham and Raleigh, primarily,\u201d said W. Stacy Barbour, now a development review manager in the City\u2019s planning department. He dealt with many of the approvals at Brier Creek as a young planner.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, after numerous planning efforts at both the Raleigh\u00a0and the regional levels, a decision was made: Raleigh would cede zoning authority in some areas of Wake County, to Durham, primarily those areas where water and sewer could more efficiently be sent in from Durham. Durham, in exchange, would do the same for areas that could better be served by Raleigh.<\/p>\n

That decision worked well with Vision 2020, the long-range plan the city had adopted in 1988. It designated three \u201cregional intensity areas\u201d for focused, dense growth, said Chapman. The were downtown, the area near Triangle Town Center and the area that became Brier Creek.<\/p>\n

By 1996 a request to rezone a 1,999-acre property, then known as \u201cthe airport assemblage\u201d to allow high density development was before city officials.<\/p>\n

At the time, planners hoped the area might sprout a large number of high-rise buildings. At the same time, those in the real estate community didn\u2019t necessarily expect the area to take off the way it did.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one expected it to be as big as it was,\u201d said Mark Parker, president of the Richmond Regional Association of Realtors.<\/p>\n

As the decade drew to a close, the first plans for development took shape. Plans included a shopping center, and Toll Brothers got permission to build a golf-course community.<\/p>\n

In about 2004, Brier Creek Associates filed a master plan for a development between U.S. 540 and Brier Creek Parkway. The roughly 300 acre project involved apartments, and thus high density.<\/p>\n

\"Much<\/a>

James Borden<\/p>

Much of Brier Creek’s development lies along Brier Creek Parkway, which intersects with Glenwood Avenue<\/p><\/div>\n

Parker praised the way the commercial, residential and office space at the project have worked together.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve done a phenomenal job of blending everything into one,\u201d Parker said.<\/p>\n

Soon after, the recession hit. There was a \u201csignificant pause\u201d in development in the area, Barbour said. That\u2019s unfrozen in the last couple of years, with a number of hotels being erected lately, he said.<\/p>\n

Parker praised the diversity of housing available in the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got everything from \u2026 relatively reasonably priced condos \u2026 to executive homes,\u201d Parker said.<\/p>\n

Chapman said he wishes there was more affordable housing at the site. Given how big the project was and how blank the slate was to start, there ought to have been more included he said.<\/p>\n

Still, he said, Brier Creek benefitted from the goals officials set for it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s better than it might have been, but it\u2019s not what we envisioned,\u201d Chapman said.<\/p>\n

\"Brier<\/a>

Brier Creek Shopping Center<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’ve ever wondered how Brier Creek, a massive mix of retail, office, residential and dining came to be developed on the western outskirts of Raleigh, you’ve come to the right place. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24005,"featured_media":89739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89728"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24005"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}