Opinion: Make NC Downtowns Great Again

By David Larson
Carolina Journal

My wife and I were married in downtown Raleigh five summers ago. It was a lively, attractive setting for one of the most important moments of our lives, and it felt like a completely safe place to host loved ones of all ages. Our rehearsal dinner was at the popular bar Raleigh Times; the following night, our reception was at an event space looking over the city; and then my wife and I took a horse-and-buggy down Fayetteville Street to the Downtown Marriott.

We now live on the western outskirts of the Triangle (and have since had two children), so we haven’t gone out in Raleigh much since then. But we decided to celebrate our fifth anniversary this summer by staying at the same Marriott and visiting some of the same locations in the heart of downtown Raleigh. It was quickly evident that things had drastically changed. I doubt we’d have planned the same kind of event if we were planning the event today.

After getting settled in the hotel, we planned to stroll over to City Market, where we had a reservation at a sushi restaurant. Saturday nights along Fayetteville Street used to have some raucous college students and young professionals, but it gave the area life (and revenue). Now it was eerily empty of people visiting the once-crowded bar and restaurant scene.

Instead, the few people wandering or loitering on benches, appeared to be homeless people and those intoxicated by things stronger than alcohol. Having lived in Raleigh for quite a while during my single days, I remembered that the Moore Square area had a reputation for this, but that it had been fairly well contained to that area. At the very least, the massive numbers of patrons to downtown businesses diluted their impact.

But as we wandered down to City Market, which borders Moore Square, the lawless element seemed to dominate a much bigger radius. Even when we sat down at our table, they continued to communicate with us. A man, clearly intoxicated in some way, kept waving to us, trying to get our attention from the other side of the window. I gave him a friendly nod, which he took as an invitation to come inside the restaurant and ask for money. Thankfully, he was turned away by the hostess.

Is that the end of the world? No. Did it destroy our night. Not really. But a night full of those kinds of interactions definitely changed our image of downtown Raleigh, which had been a major part of our social life when we were single and where we got to know each other.

Bringing this kind of thing up can make city boosters accuse you of whining, focusing on the negative, or exaggerating. But I’m not alone. In a recent social media post, Mayor Mary Ann Baldwin decried the possibility that Raleigh could lose its downtown amphitheater, even saying, if it happened, they “would lose the future of downtown.” She called for a “reenvisioning of downtown,” with a focus on more foot traffic and better public safety.

I figured I’d share my opinions, based on the recent experience I had, where I noticed the foot traffic and public safety issues she mentioned. And I was blown away by the responses I got. Often I get one or two likes on a social media post. Sometimes more. But this one got almost 100 retweets and many days of response and debate. It resonated with many and mirrored their own impressions.

It’s a bit ironic that the mayor is calling out these issues, since she has been in charge of Raleigh for the entire five-year period where this decline in commerce and safety have occurred. But I don’t want to focus too much on one mayor in one of North Carolina’s cities.

This problem, as the commenters on my post reiterated, is being seen across the state, in downtown after downtown. And it’s not just the conservative “law-and-order” types that are noticing and calling attention to it. IndyWeek, Durham’s very progressive local newspaper, has pinned the below tweet, from weeks ago, to the top of their account.

They cite rising rents as well, which are a problem, but businesses are closing left and right, causing the downtown to hollow out and public safety to deteriorate, making the city feel “unwalkable.”

If people don’t feel safe. They don’t come. If they don’t come, businesses lose the foot traffic needed to stay open. If they close down, even fewer people come, and the once-vibrant areas become places for vagrancy and crime.

In a John Locke Foundation public-safety call this week, a listener commented that they no longer feel safe going downtown in their hometown of Winston-Salem. A frequent opinion columnist for Carolina Journal, Algenon Cash, wrote about the problems Winston-Salem is having with business closure and poor public safety leading to a declining downtown.

Carolina Journal has published similar reports recently from frustrated residents of Charlotte and Asheville. Friends from Washington State visited Asheville this year, after hearing good things for years. When they returned, they said, “It reminded us of home [Seattle] and not in a good way,” making reference to rampant drug use and homelessness.

A new report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association shows that violent crime in both of the state’s major cities, Raleigh and Charlotte, has jumped. There is a general lawlessness that has grown into a violent crime problem and a cause of downtown deterioration and uneasiness from the public.

Progressive district attorneys not prosecuting low-level crime is a major source of the lawlessness. Another source is the distrust towards police that spiked after the killing of George Floyd. Both have made it harder to implement the broken-windows policing and community policing shown to be most effective for creating safe, thriving downtowns.

It’s not all bad news, though. There are some North Carolina municipalities seeing success as well. Cary, for example, despite growing quickly, has very few issues with public safety, often having zero homicides at the end of the year. The addition of an amazing downtown park has only solidified downtown Cary’s image as a safe, fun place to spend a day.

But overall, North Carolina may need to have a wider discussion about why so many of our cities are falling into disorder and losing their hard-won reputations. We are a desirable state to move to, which many are doing. And our natural beauty of course will continue to attract visitors. But if our cities — meant to attract our best food, arts, and entrepreneurs — become known as uninteresting, or worse, unsafe, the state will fall far short of what it could be.

David Larson is opinion editor of Carolina Journal.