Urban design consultants to begin work in Raleigh Monday

RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- The urban design consultants tasked with reimagining what a post-pandemic downtown Raleigh will look like are visiting the city to begin work on Monday.

The company, Interface Studio, was hired by the Downtown Raleigh Alliance with funds from the American Rescue Plan Act. They've previously consulted cities such as Philadelphia, Atlanta, Fort Worth and St. Louis.

"How do we make Fayetteville Street even better? How do we improve retail? What's the future of office you know, how should the streets look and feel downtown? Those are all open questions at this point," said Scott Page, Principal at Interface.

Page and fellow Principal Stacey Chen are spearheading the firm's work in Raleigh. They both say the company's previous work consulting other fast-growing cities can help Raleigh strategize its own growth.

"New areas and new hubs are emerging. But one of the things that we really focus on is: How are they related? How do we get around to these different hubs of activity?" Chen said.

Interface says they hope to connect some of those hubs of activity, places like Five Points and the Person Street corridor -- and more recent development in Midtown.

"In a lot of the cities we've worked in that have a lot of growth, it ends up feeling like a bunch of pockets. And part of our job is to help connect those pockets. So it feels like one unified downtown," said Page.

It's a plan that downtown investors are all in on.

"We're in a bubble, and you need groups like that, like Interface, who are working with downtowns across the country to bring ideas, and they'll tell us what's working across the country. But they also tell us what's not working," said David Meeker, a partner in several downtown businesses such as Trophy Brewing and Young Hearts Distilling.

He said external input can help the city think creatively about the future of places like Fayetteville Street.

"Maybe we're in North Carolina's Main Street, where you have all the festivals and the museums and the arts, and it's where people stay when they come to visit, but maybe we need to change our expectations from being a prime retail street and really change the definition of success," Meeker said.

Page and Chen said their first trip to Raleigh will form the foundation for their action plan. They estimate it will be about a 12-month process before that plan is submitted, but added they should have targets for Fayetteville Street by the end of this calendar year.