Proposed Dix-NCSU land swap sets up a tussle

Sides differ on plans for big field

RALEIGH -- A big fight is brewing over a big field on Dix Hill.

Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker wants to trade the 47-acre grassy field with N.C. State University and allow houses and townhouses to be built on the state hospital property, which is just southwest of downtown.

But park advocates say that would compromise their vision of a grand urban park.

They say the field should be kept as open space, perhaps as an outdoor amphitheater such as one in New York's Central Park. They say condominiums and townhouses should be built only outside the property's current borders.

"There is real confusion about what they call a park and what we call a park," said Greg Poole, a retired Caterpillar dealer who is a major organizer of park advocates. "We want a destination park for North Carolina, not just another community park for Raleigh."

The dispute comes as the city has begun lobbying state lawmakers to sell it the 300-acre Dorothea Dix hospital campus for an estimated $40 million. The city would then create a nonprofit group to own and run the park.

In 2008, the state will close the hospital, which dates to the 1850s. For the past three years, state and local officials have wrestled with what to do with the site afterward. In October, the state hired the nonprofit Urban Land Institute to draw up a plan.

Panelists suggested trading the flat, grassy field just west of the ridge for the northern part of the Centennial Campus, an academic and research park run by N.C. State on land west of Dix, saying it did not have any intrinsic value as parkland.

Under their plan, all or part of the field would be given to N.C. State. In exchange, the university would give the nonprofit in charge of the park a similar amount of land in the Spring Hill area of Centennial Campus.

Meeker and N.C. State officials said they do not know exactly which land would be swapped.

Meeker praised the idea of a trade, saying it would help create a 215-acre park that is larger than any of the previous proposals. He said park advocates are being inflexible in demanding the site be kept to its current borders.

"You really can't negotiate with them," he said.

But advocates say it is those who want to develop the land who are being obstinate. They note that multiple proposals drawn up for the site have called for extensive development, even though polls and public meetings have shown that to be unpopular.

"I don't understand why we're trying to build another Triangle Town Center at Dix Park," said Jay Spain, board president of the Friends of Dorothea Dix Park.

Heart of the campus

The big field has long been at the center of the debate over the future of Dix Hill.

Since the state announced three years ago that it would close the hospital, some Raleigh residents have argued that the entire site should be turned into a major park that would be a tourist attraction for the state capital.

For the most part, they are talking about the field, which in decades past has been used as a cornfield for a hospital-run farm and baseball fields for a staff team.

That is because there are few options for other parts of the land.

Hospital buildings, state offices and parking lots are already on about 75 acres of the campus. An old landfill is now topped by soccer fields, and the area along Rocky Branch Creek is in a flood plain, so neither could be developed.

But proposals have varied greatly on what to do with the big field.

A Charlotte planning firm hired by the state in the summer of 2005 recommended carving out a corner of the field for new offices, but it also turned in an alternative that called for a community garden and ball fields there instead.