RALEIGH

Population: 405,600

RALEIGH PROFILE

Here’s the story, of a town named Raleigh …

Once upon a time in the not so distant past, Raleigh was a little city surrounded by a highway that residents called the “Beltline,” I440. Inside the “Beltline” were leafy neighborhoods, little shops, the capitol buildings and everything else you would expect to find in a pretty, small southern city.

Then Raleigh started growing, and “north” Raleigh became an area of new houses and nice malls and other conveniences. Then people started pouring into the north of the city, and builders struggled to keep pace and turned farm after farm and “unused” land into subdivision after subdivision. Private schools and country clubs and more shops and restaurants and a stadium followed.

North Raleigh got so big and represented so much of the wealth of the area that the tail started wagging the dog, and meanwhile Cary, next door to the west of Raleigh, was exploding as well. A new highway was planned to circle the expanded Raleigh/Cary area. That highway is I540, a six lane highway that will eventually wrap the city; it’s currently half-way done and construction is well under way on the other half.

Today it stretches all the way across the northern arc of the city, linking dozens of Raleigh residential neighborhoods to the airport, RTP, and the relatively new business centers of Cary and Morrisville. The traffic does come to a standstill for a few minutes during rush hour, but it’s not anything like what someone in NY, LA, Atlanta or DC is used to. It’s not even in the same league.

The southern half loop is currently under construction, and it will eventually service the towns to the south like Clayton and Garner, and cities to the east such as Rolesville, Wendell and Zebulon.

North Raleigh

The growth didn’t end at I540. Raleigh is still creeping north, with a ton of new, expensive ($450K and up is expensive here) home building occurring north of 540. North of 540 is now considered “North Raleigh,” and city planners are struggling to add lanes to roads to relieve the congestion that piles up as people just try to get out of their neighborhoods and get to the highway. Meanwhile, chain store after chain store goes up to serve the burgeoning population.

Sound too crowded? It is but it’s not – if you were to get in your car in a neighborhood north of 540 and drive for 7 minutes, you would be back “out in the country,” with nothing but farms, lakes and gas stations that do not have electronic pumps.  In the new “north Raleigh,” you can drive and drive and see nothing but cows … and then pass the entrance to a community of $1 million homes.

Midtown

The old “North Raleigh,” the area that is now sandwiched between 440 and 540, is now considered Midtown, and it is thriving. Midtown encompasses communities as varied as older neighborhoods, new subdivisions, and high rise condos as well as shopping (Crabtree Valley Mall has been revamped recently), office space, cultural attractions, sports facilities (most notably the RBC Center, home to the Carolina Hurricanes hockey team and NC State basketball).

“Inside the Beltline”

And of course, there’s still “inside the beltline,” or I440, which has gotten sort of snobbish about itself. Homes there go quickly and are more expensive than the new homes of comparable size in North Raleigh. Most of the residents inside the beltline are “old Raleigh” and they tend to be true southerners, whereas the rest of the Triangle is quite a hodgepodge – you are just as likely to hear a New York accent as a southern accent in the rest of the Triangle. There are great shops and restaurants inside the beltline – the Glenwood South neighborhood is a great place to walk the streets and visit both casual and fancy restaurants and shops. Likewise, the “Five Points” neighborhood is home to many antique stores and boutiques as well as some gorgeous historic homes and quiet, leafy neighborhoods.