West Raleigh wins favor in Easley's budget plan

RALEIGH -- Gov. Mike Easley's budget would pump more than $150 million into West Raleigh, nearly doubling the size of the state art museum, adding state offices on Blue Ridge Road and building an engineering complex at N.C. State University.

But West Raleigh's gains would come at the expense of downtown, which stands to lose $50 million that had been planned as part of the Green Square project.

When the N.C. Museum of Art's expansion is finished, it will have a new building for its permanent collection, including a new Rodin exhibit. The building, surrounded by pools and gardens and lit with natural sunlight, would sit beside the existing museum on Blue Ridge.

Easley proposed $40 million this year for the project.

Easley's budget also would set aside $50 million to build offices for the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources on Blue Ridge.

Downtown backers had hoped those 630 workers would come to Green Square, a downtown project to expand the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences and include new offices for DENR and the State Employees Credit Union.

Easley's budget proposes $10 million toward the science museum's new research arm and $20 million for 1,200 parking spaces on the site. But the DENR workers would be shifted to Blue Ridge Road.

"I hope the General Assembly will consider putting that building downtown where it belongs," Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker said Tuesday. "The DENR building is a key part of the Green Square project."

At NCSU, the $61 million in Easley's budget would go toward moving the College of Engineering to the growing Centennial Campus. Plans call for a 166,700-square-foot building for the departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Biomedical Engineering.

Planning and design for the move, now in its third phase, got $8.7 million from the legislature last year.

"This is something we hoped would be there, and it's nice to actually see it in the budget," said Nino Masnari, dean of the College of Engineering.

If approved by the legislature, the third building in the complex should be ready in two to three years. The second building opened last week.

Plans call for the engineering complex to eventually have five buildings, Masnari said.

At the art museum, the expansion would add 100,000 square feet to the existing 180,000.

Plans change constantly, said museum director Larry Wheeler, and the exact site was still being nailed down Tuesday morning.

The $40 million is a crucial piece of the overall $67 million expansion, Wheeler said. Easley has backed it firmly.

"Big money follows big ideas," Wheeler said.

Downtown letdown

But downtown, the mood was mixed.

Science museum director Betsy Bennett said she is grateful for the $10 million to start the research arm, which will occupy most of a block on Jones Street and connect to the museum through a glassed-in skyway over Salisbury Street.

But Easley's budget scales back the project's scope.

"I'm disappointed that the Green Square project isn't going forward as planned," Bennett said. "We're still adding workers to downtown with the credit union and the natural resource center."

Easley spokesman Seth Effron said that the state owns about 40 acres near the intersection of Blue Ridge and Reedy Creek roads and that the new DENR office would go there.

As for choosing the spot over downtown, Effron said, "I think that they've been crunching some numbers to see what's the best value for the department."

The Green Square project is getting about $10 million from Raleigh and Wake County, much of it from hotel and meal taxes. Meeker said bringing workers downtown is a major incentive for Raleigh to give aid.

The loss of DENR might make the city reconsider, he said.