Pedestrian Mall Removal Breathes New Life Into Downtown Raleigh

"Downtown Raleigh, a joke more than a location for the last 30 years, is rumbling back to life at last. With each new hole in the ground, the sound is building to a roar. The city counts nearly $1 billion in public and private investment either under way downtown or starting soon.

So what happened? Was it the decision to rip out the Fayetteville Street Mall, and reopen it to cars? Yes and no, says Dan Douglas, director of the city's Urban Design Center. He thinks it was the fact that opening the street also required tearing down the old Raleigh Civic Center, which unaccountably was built right across the middle of it in 1979. 'It was like taking out a dam and letting the river flow again,' Douglas exults."