Regarding parking downtown: currently it is very easy and inexpensive. My solution: build the light rail and commuter rail lines. Have inexpensive park-n-rides at the ends of the lines (Millbrook Rd in North Raleigh for the light rail, Garner for the commuter rail). Increase parking fees downtown to encourage transit ridership – or to help pay for it from the stubborn drivers.

What do all these great to decent cities have in common? Sports and entertainment downtown. What does Raleigh have downtown? Restaurants, bars and museums.

The Mudcats and the stadium NEED TO BE DOWNTOWN. Stop wasting city and county money on that boondoggle out in nowhere. Stop, yes, Raleigh could have a baseball team within the fictitious 30-mile rule from Durham. We’re two completely separate markets, and anyone with the gumption to challenge the status quo will make baseball IN THE CITY a reality by 2020.

While we’re at it, plan now to build a new arena downtown by 2025.

Also, we need RETAIL, particularly that which is mid-market. There are 3 new micro-breweries set to open in Raleigh in early ’13. Not one of which will take up the most obvious location, a previous brewery, in City Market. That’s dumbfounding. So is the fact that there are few “fast-casual” type family, inexpensive dining options in the core of the city.

Similarly, more comprehensive entertainment options must be booked at Fletcher, Meymandi, Memorial Hall and the Outdoor Amphitheatre (which is the perfect place for a hybrid baseball-theatre venue). The schedules in these venues scale far too, in a word, geriatric. Book acts that people will come see. Keep the venues busy with events other than the Symphony, Opera and NC Theatre … all of which can be terrific, yet all of which have limited audiences. More shows. Better shows, across a wide range of demographics.

Stop gloating over Forbes’ rankings from people who don’t actually LIVE in Raleigh. Travel elsewhere and see the tremendous opportunity Raleigh has with a blank canvas in downtown … if only some visionaries step forth with new ideas instead of the cronyism for certain restauranteurs and the same ol’ same ol’ developments.

I always think it is funny when North Raleigh people complain that they cannot find parking Downtown. The actually mean parking right in front of their destination!

But our leaders need to think long term when it comes to parking. Consider what we want the City to be in 20, 30, 50 years. Think about what you regard as the greatest cities in the world – New York, Paris, London, Tokyo, San Francisco – take your pick. Would you ever take a car there? No! A thousand times No! There is too much congestion and parking is both rare and expensive. And parking garage facades are like missing teeth in the ground level streetscape.

In the longer term, the issue is behavioral change. As the central city increases in density (and therefore, by the way, in dollars per acre of tax revenue – with little required in the way of additional services), using the precious real estate to store automobiles that are not being used will become more and more untenable. People need incentives to use transit.

Today, we have an underused, but tremendously useful, R-line. How do we get people to use it? After all, it makes parking on one side of downtown and enjoying restaurants and events on the other side of downtown a snap. But Americans have been brainwashed by decades of dominance by an autocentric mindset – sold on the illusion that the automobile represents freedom. Here’s my proposal to change behavior. Have the merchants provide R line drivers with coupons that entitle riders to a discount at their businesses. After all, patrons who come to their businesses by alternative means (alternative to cars) cost the business owners less because they don’t have to provide that 9′X17′ swath of downtown real property for car storage.

As Raleigh matures, this problem will become more acute, not less. Just look at the history of other great cities through their maturation. So lets start changing behavior now. People need to know that they should free themselves of their cars and rely on other transportation infrastructure when they visit downtown. Road capacity in downtown needs to be preserved for business to business commerce and public services such as sanitation. To the extent possible, we need to rid the road of casual visitors who circle endlessly looking for a parking spot to become free.

It blows my mind how much this city lets the few real estate magnates play with the property and build up certain areas and dump off in other areas all the while, giving them huge subsidies to do so(im looking at you empire eats.)

The downtown area needs retail, this is a fact. But when we say retail, we should not mean boutique retail, which apparently are the only business willing to move into downtown. We don’t need a flip flop shop, we need a bicycle shop. We don’t need a womens boutique, we need williams and sonoma. We need retail that appeals to a mass audience, not a niche market. I walk on wilmington street every day past the limited retail that is there and the only retail business that EVER has anyone in it is that purse store with those holly aiken bags. Everything else is dead.

So yes, we need retail, but we need the right type of retail.