RALEIGH -- For the past 10 years, the mayor of Raleigh walked to work - a nine-block jaunt from his front porch in Boylan Heights to his law office halfway up a downtown skyscraper.
In that decade, Charles Meeker watched the skyline add three new towers and a shimmering oak tree wall on the side of a $221 million convention center.
He saw downtown add an amphitheater where Grammy-winning acts such as Wilco played to a nearly sold-out crowd. And he led the drive to tear out a 30-year-old pedestrian mall that kept cars off Fayetteville Street.
But those were the Meeker years, when downtown dominated city politics, scoring its highest-dollar project and its highest-profile debates. On Tuesday, voters will launch a new era in a very different Raleigh.
The next mayor will likely drive to City Hall - from far up Creedmoor Road if voters pick Nancy McFarlane, off Dixie Trail if they choose Billie Redmond, down Lassiter Mill Road if Randall Williams gets the nod.
The candidate to replace Meeker will inherit a city stretched so far north that some neighborhoods are just as close to downtown Durham, and residents there are more likely to rave about the fenced-in playground at Oakboro Park than the sidewalk cafes.
Neighborhoods there, such as Falls River-Bedford off Durant Road, boast populations larger than the town of Knightdale, and trips downtown usually mean taking the kids to Marbles or the free museums.
"We mostly hang up here," said Mary Beth Cristinziano, a mother of three who lives in nearby Wakefield. "I don't know what that street is downtown with all the coffee houses. What's it called?"
With a population topping 400,000, more than 40 percent higher than Raleigh's total on the day Meeker took office in 2001, no mayor can afford to focus on the city's traditional core.
Already, neighborhood activists point to shopping and eating hubs buzzing far from downtown in neighborhoods once considered Raleigh's far-flung outposts.
"People are more focused on what's in their backyard," said Jay Gudeman, chair of the Northwest Citizens Advisory Council. "Brier Creek and North Hills and all sorts of things like that are probably more of a regular focus or magnet than downtown."
A mayor for all?
None of this will surprise this year's candidates for mayor, all of whom live far out of downtown walking distance.
McFarlane represents a City Council district in the fast-growing wedge between I-440 and I-540, where voters worry about traffic on Six Forks and Falls of Neuse roads. On those streets, unlike downtown, you never see police officers on horseback.
She has billed herself as "Mayor for all of Raleigh."
Redmond lives near Crowley's on Medlin Drive in an older neighborhood west of downtown. She runs one of the largest commercial real estate companies in the Triangle, which keeps her in tune with property all over the Southeast, not to mention North Raleigh.
The reality, she said, is that city has busily spent money improving its outskirts - just not on anything as noticeable as a convention center.
Williams, a gynecologist who lives and works near North Hills, often jogs from Nash Square into the streets of Southeast Raleigh, most of which haven't enjoyed the same prosperity as their downtown neighbors.
He believes the downtown-outskirts split is largely a myth, and that "a rising tide raises all boats."
Far from downtown
Whoever takes the mayor's seat will have to pay attention to Falls River, 13 miles north of City Hall.
"We feel like we have so much up here," said Cristinziano, who added that her family gets downtown six or seven times a year. "We have the parks. If we want to see a musical, the schools put on musicals. We go to Wake Forest. You get a nice meal there. Probably not the caliber of the ones downtown."
Recall that Raleigh in the decade before Meeker's five terms took a different attitude toward big downtown spending.
Mayors Tom Fetzer and Paul Coble opposed building the convention center, for example, focusing instead on keeping taxes as low as possible. The convention center plans dragged for years until Meeker's push from the mayor's seat.
Meeker, meanwhile, wouldn't classify his years as downtown's heyday.
The city is nearly finished with the first phase of revamping Falls of Neuse Road, a $25 million job that adds a new Neuse River bridge.
"Biggest road project ever undertaken" by the city, Meeker said. "Three times the size of the first phase of Fayetteville Street. Virtually no recognition."
In his time, Raleigh built community centers at Brier Creek and Barwell Road - each costing roughly $7.5 million.
"Not the first mention of it," he said.
A look at Raleigh's infrastructure shows that the most water and sewer lines, by far, lie in District E - the northwest. The most parks sit in District C, which includes part of downtown, but nearly all the open space on that list sits in areas south and east of downtown.
"Public spending outside of downtown doesn't get much attention," said Meeker.
The candidates for mayor all say the downtown-outskirts split in Raleigh has been at least partially exaggerated.
But the idea of downtown advocates getting whatever they wanted crumbled last year with the rejection of a 17-story, $205 million public safety center, which would have added another tower to the downtown skyline. None of the candidates for mayor back that idea anymore.
Meeker says now that big public investment downtown is largely finished, and private dollars must follow.
Even before Meeker leaves office, Raleigh voters are defining his legacy by the growth downtown. But much of the growth during his tenure comes from residents who describe downtown as a haul.
Yet as Raleigh continues to rank highly on "best-of" lists, the picture that accompanies the news always shows the downtown skyline. In 10 years, at the end of the next mayor's tenure, you might see another choice for Raleigh's portrait.
News researcher David Raynor contributed to this report.
