The News and Observer reports that the McDonalds that I walked to many a time in Middle and High School may be going green… If it happens, and is approved by the USGBC, it will be the 3rd LEED certified McDonalds in the United States. I haven’t had McDonalds for anything besides breakfast in years (and the breakfast thing is really out of necessity… options for a quick bite down east are few and far between.)

While I doubt such a renovation will change my dining habits, I can certainly commend Ric Richards on his decision to think long-term rather than short term in renovating the old restaurant. (If the new establishment is the same footprint as the existing, the $2 million rehab project will come it at about $480/square foot… I don’t know what your average McD’s in North Carolina costs to get off the ground, but I think it’s safe to say that this decision is based on something more than making money.)

Hopefully this will be one more step towards a more progressive Cary as far as development is concerned… We’ve had a reputation for being an ultra-conservative, sprawl-driven community for too long. Cary was the home of the first public high school in the state of North Carolina, Cary High was established in 1896. A brief look at our history will show that we are much more than just an Automobile Suburb of Raleigh, and I think it’s time to revisit that reputation. In the two hundred fifty-eight years since Cary’s founding we’ve grown a lot, more out than up unfortunately, but it’s never too late to move in the right direction.

Here’s to hoping for a more diverse, more walkable, and more sustainable Cary to come!

In yet another example of New Media trouncing Old Media… Raleigh’s own News and Observer was a full three days behind NewRaleigh in covering this unannounced addition to NC Central Prison. In fairness, the addition was announced somewhere on the Prison’s webpage, and there was at least a mentioning of it at one City Council meeting. However, there was no additional effort on the part of the Department of Corrections to notify the immediate neighbors of the property. At the time of my writing this there is still no mention of the neighborhood meeting to be held tonight, nor the prison expansion in general on the WRAL webpage.

Being an occasional contributor to NewRaleigh and a personal blogger myself, I’m naturally a proponent of the social networking aspect of Web 2.0 and the blogging phenomenon… but it’s this kind of grassroots story being entirely missed by several major news agencies for days that really drives home, to me, the need for this kind of news. You can talk all day long about the checks and balances in corporate media, but I’m always going to gravitate towards the little guy.

(images from Schenkel Shulz)

Update:

As of sometime this afternoon (According to their webpage 1:15, but I have my doubts) WRAL has finally gotten some coverage of the story as well. Their blurb is even less comprehensive than the N&O’s. I wonder if there would have been a little quicker coverage if the affected neighborhood had been Mordecai?

Update 2:

Apparently, unbeknownst to me, the WRAL staff checks my blog and decided to lengthen their article.

Manteo is an small harbor town with a population of just over a thousand people. Architecturally it has some interesting older houses, as well as its fair share of not-so-interesting houses. A quiet little island town with all the charm & frustration that comes with it. It is beginning to grow on me personally, not in the way that Atlantic Beach has (it’s hard to beat the vivid memories of summer vacations as a child, walking down to the Triple S Pier as well as the Sportsman’s and watching the fishermen fighting the surf) but still, it has its moments.

With that said, Manteo is suffering from what I’m certain dozens of other small coastal communities are suffering from… unsustainable development. We have precious few towns with the sort of history that Manteo has here in the North Carolina. I’m hesitant to say none, but if you count back to the Roanoke Colony, it’d be a fair assessment. It’s a shame in my opinion, that the closest the average developer can come to “respecting the history” of an area is to make their super-profitable condominium projects mildly “historic” in their decoration. There is so much more to the way a small fishing village / harbor town works than sticking some historic trim & cedar shakes on a box and calling it historic. I’m afraid that in addition to be environmentally extremely wasteful, all the projects I see on my ride into town have no real connection to the island community (except of course, for proximity.)

Anyway, enough soapbox ranting for me… The ride down wasn’t bad at all, and the 4Runner got north of 23 MPG on the ride down, so that’s pretty exciting in and of itself. I did get a closer look at the wildfire that’s tearing up acres and acres of land down here. Not much to see from the road, though the smoke plume it self looked something like a gigantic tornado, so wide you couldn’t see the edges.

I’m looking forward to a nice productive day here at the office, and a quiet evening in my hotel room reading some of Kunstler’s Home from Nowhere. I hope everyone has a great day, and I look forward to heading back to town tomorrow.

Cheers!

The new structure could hold as much as 28,000 square feet of retail and 290 new residential units. The building is expected to achieve LEED certification, and will be replacing a handful of historic buildings currently within Cameron Village including the Village Citgo building, an office building, and the old Ballantines Cafeteria. The City Hall hearing on the amended streetscape plan will be held on July 15th.

It’s unclear how long the path to approval for this project will be, but there will no doubt be some resistance to some of the longtime residents of Cameron Village who would like to see the tall buildings remain in downtown. I for one, would like to have more information before weighing in on the design.

Cross-post from NewRaleigh