Raleigh will look to improve safety where car crashed into businesses in Five Points
The city will look for ways to make Glenwood Avenue safer in the Five Points neighborhood, where a car plowed through empty seating areas outside a coffee shop and restaurant and into an art gallery over the weekend.
The Glenwood Avenue Corridor Study was launched before Sunday evening’s crash, which left mangled tables and chairs where people would have been sitting had Lilly’s Pizza and The Third Place coffeehouse been open. Business owners on the block say the crash was not a one-time freak event and hope the city can find ways to get drivers to be more careful.
“They really need to do something,” says Larry Carter, who opened Lola’s, a beach-themed bar and restaurant, three years ago this fall. Carter says he has witnessed several accidents in front of his place, including two fatal ones, and once smashed a window to help pull two teenage girls from a car that overturned on Glenwood.
“All you have to do is sit out here any afternoon, 5 or 6 o’clock, and it’s like a drag strip,” he said.
Police say the driver of the car that ended up on the sidewalk Sunday was coming inbound on Glenwood at a “high rate of speed” when he lost control and hit a utility pole, then veered off the right side of the street. Glenwood was closed for several hours while the pole was replaced.
Police have not released a report on the wreck or the name of the driver, who was cited with speeding, according to spokeswoman Donna-maria Harris. The driver, who was alone in the car, was not injured, Harris wrote in an email.
Neither Lilly’s Pizza nor The Third Place was open when the car came through their seating areas.
“Thank God Lilly’s was closed for the holiday, because they always have people sitting out there,” said Leslie Jandrain, who owns the art gallery where the car came to rest next to the coffee shop.
Jandrain was at the beach Sunday, preparing for an evening of barbecue and fireworks, when she got texts and phone messages about the crash shortly after 6 p.m. By the time she got to her shop Tuesday, the landlord had boarded up the front window and her husband had swept up the bits of glass that had covered the gallery floor to the back wall. Miraculously, her painting of several fish that had been in the front window suffered only a few nicks.
Jandrain moved in to the space March 1 and hasn’t seen an accident like this here before. But she heard about the intoxicated driver who hit two pedestrians outside Lilly’s two summers ago and she’s seen the way people drive past these businesses headed toward the Five Points intersection, “flying down here like a highway.”
Jandrain says she has an idea for a new painting, based on one of the photos the police gave her of the car in her gallery window. She plans to call it “Slow Your A** Down.”
Neighborhood businesses along a busy thoroughfare
The city’s Glenwood Avenue study came at the request of David Knight, the City Council member who represents the area. Knight, who has lived in Five Points for years, says Sunday’s crash only adds to longstanding concerns residents and business owners have about safety at the intersection.
“We’re so fortunate that nobody was there,” he said. “This just shows that we have to get moving on this, and I hope the pace is as quick as we can make it through a public process to get some results on the ground.”
The neighborhood takes its name from the confluence of Glenwood, Glenn Avenue and Whitaker Mill and Fairview roads, which creates five, sharp points (the sixth, where Hayes Barton Baptist Church stands, is more of a traditional 90-degree corner than a point). Restaurants, small shops and other businesses cluster around the intersection, but Glenwood is also U.S. 70 and N.C. 50, a busy route for commuters going in and out of the central city.
The study will look at both improving safety and aesthetics along Glenwood in Five Points, said city Transportation Director Michael Moore. The City Council approved $325,000 to hire a firm to do the work, which should get underway this fall and take six to eight months to complete.
In the meantime, Moore said the city is taking steps to address a common type of crash at Five Points, where outbound drivers on Glenwood Avenue misjudge the curve after the intersection. The city has installed new warning signs and plans to put down new pavement markings to make it clearer where drivers should go.
Moore says the study will look at crash reports and the volume and movements of cars and pedestrians. It will also evaluate the consequences of turning the six-way intersection into a roundabout. He said any significant changes would need the cooperation of the N.C. Department of Transportation, which owns and manages Glenwood Avenue.
“It’s a really complicated intersection right now, and it does lead to a lot of ambiguity and a lot of uncertainty,” Moore said. “Any results that come out of this study that lead to safety are something that’s going to help us.”
Would a roundabout work?
Knight says he likes the idea of a roundabout, because it slows traffic down without stopping it.
“It’s actually a more efficient way to bring vehicles through busy areas,” he said. “So I hope we really take that seriously and look at that.”
Jandrain, the painter and gallery owner, says her sister did some research into ways to calm traffic on city streets, and Glenwood Avenue already has many of those features, such as wider sidewalks with seating, trees and on-street parking. She’s not sure a roundabout would work, but she thinks more speed enforcement, like the two Raleigh motorcycle officers she saw on Glenwood on Tuesday, would.
Carter, the owner of Lola’s, says he’s not sure what to do either. Perhaps a roundabout would help, or maybe speed humps. Certainly more enforcement, he said.
Carter wonders how many people would have been hurt or killed if the driver in Sunday’s crash had slammed into his outdoor seating area on a busy Friday or Saturday evening. He began counting the empty chairs Tuesday.
“That’s 20 people,” he said. “I guarantee you half of them would be dead.”
This story was originally published July 7, 2021 at 11:07 AM.
