http://www.gogoraleigh.com/2012/04/25/mayor-announces-free-concert-series/ The Latest in Retail, Entertainment, and Development in Raleigh Mon, 24 Aug 2015 02:32:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.3

http://www.gogoraleigh.com/2012/04/25/mayor-announces-free-concert-series/comment-page-1/#comment-66577 Downtownraleighrez1 Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:43:00 +0000 http://www.gogoraleigh.com/2012/04/25/mayor-announces-free-concert-series/#comment-66577 At first I thought this was another April Fool's post. Just what Raleigh needs, more dowtown concerts to keep everyone in good spirits and avoid real discussions about a lack of jobs, downtown housing sales, business closings, etc. etc. etc. There is so much artificial money being pumped into downtown, along with a seemingly endless random list of events, which collectively still provide no sustainable long-term benefit to the downtown community. Perhaps the downtown stakeholders could urge leaders to focus on attracting companies and then watch downtown grow. As it stands now, it's the endless stories about a new restaurant replacing a closed restaurant, a new company taking an old company's offices, a boring museum getting a facelift, and on and on and on. All the money and efforts to create a vibrant downtown are only leading to similar lackluster results. None of the traffic generated from the money being poured in is predictable or sustainable. Surely businesses will have tremendous traffic during a popular weekend event, and a new museum opening will bring customers, and so will people traveling for a convention. The problem is that companies can't rely on two busy days and five slow days in a week. It's hard to operate like that, i.e. The Mint. With hundreds of millions being spent to grow downtown, I hope the city can find creative solutions to bring long-term, predictable, sustainable business to the area. Random concerts are cool, but for all the hype, downtown Raleigh doesn't even have a grocery store yet!!

At first I thought this was another April Fool’s post. Just what Raleigh needs, more dowtown concerts to keep everyone in good spirits and avoid real discussions about a lack of jobs, downtown housing sales, business closings, etc. etc. etc. There is so much artificial money being pumped into downtown, along with a seemingly endless random list of events, which collectively still provide no sustainable long-term benefit to the downtown community. Perhaps the downtown stakeholders could urge leaders to focus on attracting companies and then watch downtown grow. As it stands now, it’s the endless stories about a new restaurant replacing a closed restaurant, a new company taking an old company’s offices, a boring museum getting a facelift, and on and on and on. All the money and efforts to create a vibrant downtown are only leading to similar lackluster results. None of the traffic generated from the money being poured in is predictable or sustainable. Surely businesses will have tremendous traffic during a popular weekend event, and a new museum opening will bring customers, and so will people traveling for a convention. The problem is that companies can’t rely on two busy days and five slow days in a week. It’s hard to operate like that, i.e. The Mint. With hundreds of millions being spent to grow downtown, I hope the city can find creative solutions to bring long-term, predictable, sustainable business to the area. Random concerts are cool, but for all the hype, downtown Raleigh doesn’t even have a grocery store yet!!