Geoff Bradford: Better planning needed for Sunday events

Once again, we saw the tension: Another “outsider” event (the Ironman Triathalon) shut down access to downtown. Poor planning or poor execution? I’m not sure.

Either way, once again churches and local businesses and local residents seem to be losers in these events. How does this keep happening?

As a pastor of a local church on West Street, across from Citrix, I can attest to how frustrating this is to our parishioners. We want to be good neighbors. We volunteer with Artsplosure. We are involved with Jobs for Life, Neighbor to Neighbor. We want to be a significant part of the life of downtown Raleigh. But road closures and no communication with the many churches in downtown for these events are not good neighboring, not good planning.

I love seeing the revitalization and growth of downtown and consider our own community a small part of such. But these all-to-frequent events that absolutely close off downtown are bad for Raleigh, its people, businesses and churches.

The city council needs to do something about this. Are there better ways that promote our revitalized urban core without completely shutting it down several times a year on Sundays?

This story was originally published June 1, 2015 at 5:26 PM with the headline "Geoff Bradford: Better planning needed for Sunday events."