Things are looking up for Raleigh

Many hope new office towers, hotels will perk up downtown's sleepy image

RALEIGH -- After almost two decades with little change in its snaggletooth skyline, downtown Raleigh is growing a big new do. More than half a dozen new office and hotel towers under way or planned will pump up the ragged skyline's north-south core along Fayetteville Street. They'll also stretch the skyline east toward City Market and west along Hillsborough Street toward the Glenwood South leisure district.

The development surge is part of the gradually increasing density of the Triangle's downtowns, including Durham and Chapel Hill.

In Raleigh, it's drawing thousands more workers and residents to the Triangle's urbanizing heart, with the promise of more to come.

Amateur Web sites track the growth spurt with project renderings and construction updates.

And the blossoming of Raleigh's downtown has painters, publicists and civic boosters gearing up for the new view's fresh promotional opportunities.

For the first time in almost a generation -- a period of booming suburban sprawl but little downtown development -- new postcards will be needed to show off North Carolina's capital.

"Over the next five years, we're going to have a very different skyline, and it will be part of our city's identity," said Mitchell Silver, Raleigh's planning director. "We're moving toward a 21st-century skyline. From east to west, you'll have beautiful views."

Raleigh is pushing past what some consider its underwhelming 1980s skyline of mid-rise offices, hotels and a county jail flanked by two modest skyscrapers, the BB&T and Wachovia bank towers, both about 30 stories. When they were finished 16 years ago, Raleigh had about 40 percent fewer residents than it does now: about 220,000 then versus 360,000 today.

"We bring friends down from New York and say, 'Look at the big city' -- and laugh," said Darlene Stewart, 39, of Garner.

Stewart delivers mail in downtown neighborhoods, and she likes the idea of landmark towers and new life in the city's center.

"To me it's really good," she said. "It takes me home."

Raleigh writer and artist Carrie Knowles, who lives on downtown's southwest corner and works on its northeast side, likes the skyline's evolution, too.

"I can see downtown being built all around me, which is very exciting," said Knowles, 57. "We're aspiring to be a vital urban area. I think it's fabulous. It begets a richness of ideas and people and opportunities."

Not everyone agrees. Thousands of Raleigh residents rarely venture inside the Beltline, if ever. Others do, but aren't moved by lofty talk of image and verve.

Raleigh is a fine small city, they say. There's no need to compete with Charlotte, Richmond, Va., Atlanta, or any other metropolis. Let's enjoy what we have.

Advocates of what some call a downtown's renaissance argue that embracing the new doesn't mean ditching the old; it means making the most of both.

"We've been scared to think big, but that is beginning to change," said Ernest Pecounis, 39, a state government computer programmer. He created and runs the Web site raleighmsa.com. "Now we're seeing the slow, steady rebirth of downtown. It shows Raleigh growing from a small city to a mid-size city."

Progress Energy's 19-story headquarters building downtown, completed three years ago, wasn't a blip. It was a harbinger.

RBC Plaza, a 33-story bank and condominium tower, is under construction along the middle of Fayetteville Street. For now, it will be Raleigh's tallest building. And it will help fill the visual gap between Wachovia and BB&T.

A cluster of three hotel and condo towers from 14 to 21 stories tall is planned for the south end of Fayetteville Street, near an imposing new public convention center under construction.