Triangle area Dopers (Raliegh, Durham) tell me about your area!

In My Humble Opinion
1

Mrs. Debaser and I will be heading to NC this week to visit her parents. As a part of the trip, we are going to be stopping by the Triangle area to scout it out as a possible future home.

We are currently living in the Boston area. I’m a Systems Analyst and we are frustrated by the expense of this area. Research Triangle Park has jobs. The area seems pleasant. Houses are cheap. What’s not to like?

We’re planning on visiting Raleigh, Wake Forest, Chapel Hill and Cary (I know, I know, Evil Dreaded Cary.) What should we check out, specifically? Are there any neat areas or downtowns that we should put on our list? I know that many new houses are built in the area as part of large new communities. We’re visiting a couple of these that I got off of the net. What else should we be looking for?

In addition to the short term challenge of what to see this weekend, please feel free to sell me on the area in general. What do you like about it? What don’t you like? What are the secrets? What town is just outside the triangle area enough to be cheap but still has an easy commute into RTP where the jobs are?

I’m also a hunter, so any info on area hunting would be greatly appreciated. Right now I can hunt out of my backyard and that would be hard to give up!

2

My ex-boyfriend lives down there, and I used to visit pretty regularly. It’s a great area. MUCH lower cost of living than Boston (where a few of my college friends live). And much nicer weather - I always loved going down there in about March when it’s nasty here and they’ve already got (some) flowers out and it’s warm enough not to need a winter coat!

He lives in the Falls River (I think) community in the northern section of Raleigh. It’s a huge development project, just off 540. Lots of different housing options, from apartments to townhouses to little cottages to big McMansions. I think it’s about a 1/2 hour commute to RTP. And lots of stores around for convenience.

That’s really all I know, but I’d definitely recommend it if you like milder weather. (I certainly don’t blame you for considering leaving Boston at this time of year!!)

3

I’ve lived in Maryland, Virginia, California, Louisanna, Georgia and then NC. I lived in Durham for 6 years, and for the past decade or so have lived a little south of Chapel Hill. AND my son lives in Boston. Cosmic.

Anyway, I love NC. You’ll miss the cool autumns, cold winters and snow. You won’t like the long summers, high humidity and heat. But the people are lovely and take things a little slower. There are fabulous restaurants everywhere—you have to go to the Magnolia Grill in Durham. It’s famous for its terrific food and it’s right here in little ol’ NC. Three hours one way will get you Emerald Isle, a beachfront town with great beaches and reasonable rentals. Three hours the other way will get you to the mountains and the Blue Ridge parkway. The skiing isn’t like it is up north, but hey, that’s what planes are for.

Cary is unbearable. Everyone calls it the Containment Area for Relocated Yankees. But the real problem is that it’s crowded, expensive and has no character. Why move south when you can get that in any Northeastern suburb?

Durham has a bad rep but shouldn’t. They’re up front with their problems—many other urban areas aren’t. It’s less expensive to live there, the schools are pretty good, and the downtown is the focus of intense new urban improvement. If you’re here in the spring or summer, go to a Durham Bulls game. This is what sports should be.

Wake County—Raleigh, et al—is suffering mightly from winning the popularity poll. The schools are stuffed, new schools can’t be built fast enough, traffic is increasing, roads are being built everywhere, strip malls springing up like mushrooms after a rain; it’s in danger of becoming Atlanta. But it does have good schools, the traffic is still better than Boston or DC, and it’s gaining some “city” type amenities like a good symphony and a great ballet company.

Chapel Hill is my town. VERY expensive. I live just outside the city in another county because the cost of housing is so much less. Outstanding schools—best in the state, bar none. The university is an intregal part of the community. Unbelievable restaurants for a town of this size, liberal and forward thinking population, surrounding by a beautiful rural buffer…the only thing we lack is good shopping. But we can go to Durham, or Cary, or Raleigh, or Charlotte for that.

Email me if you want a short list of fun things to do or see in the area.

Bye y’all.

4

Oh, you’re going to be here THIS week. No Durham Bulls for you I’m afraid. You might still be able to get a really early reservation at Magnolia Grill, though I doubt it.

Go the the Natural History Museum in downtown Raleigh. Visit Duke Gardens in Durham. Even in winter (well, it’s sort of like winter here, anyway) it’s beautiful. Come to Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. Park and walk the street, visit campus, watch the students. Go see Fearrington Village to the south. It has another drop dead restaurant that you probably can’t get reservations to but its worth a shot. Go to the NC Museum of Life and Science in Durham. It’s supposed to be a children’s museum but it is much, much more than that.

We even have a lame ass hockey team down here, but I don’t know anything about them. Hockey in the south is just too depressing. It’s like trying to grow magnolias in Boston. Maybe it can be done, but why bother when they’ll look unhappy and out of place.

5

Thanks for all the great info, wonder9.

I am worried about the heat. I like cold weather. I actually prefer to be outdoors on a 20 degree day to an 80 degree one.

However, summers in NE are hot and humid also, so it’s not like I’ve never been exposed to it. 100 percent humidy isn’t going to be worse down there than it is up here, right?

I figure my summers down there will become what winters are like up north. You just stay inside and wait for the more temperate season to go and play.

I was definitely planning on doing some walking around in Chapel Hill. I hear great things about the area. I’m glad to actually have a street name to be looking for. I’ll check out Fearrington Village also, whatever that is. I found it on Google, and it doesn’t look to far out of our way.

6

Re: Street names, if two makes you happier than one, the center of downtown Chapel Hill is within 100 yards of the intersection of Franklin St and Airport Rd.
If they still let you go up there, you get a sweet view of Duke University from the top of Duke Chapel. Even if the top is closed off to the public, the building itself is worth a look.

7

Mine. I live near Hillsborough, which is about 12 miles north of Chapel Hill. It takes about a half hour to drive to RTP from here. Much cheaper housing than Chapel Hill.

You can pretty much do that here in northern Orange County too. During deer season last year, I was getting the oil changed in my car and went over to the Bojangles next door to get a biscuit. Up rolls a guy to the drive-thru pulling a small trailer with a dead buck on it … sometimes it gets a little too rustic around here for me. :stuck_out_tongue:

8

Cool.

I’m looking at google maps and am very curious about towns like Hillsborough, Pittsboro, Holly Springs, Etc.

Up here around Boston you need to go far, far away from the city to start getting cheaper prices. Down there it looks like there isn’t as much crowding.

Over to the east there is a town called Zebulon. I don’t know what that’s all about. It sounds a bit Star Trek.

9

Hunting is very big down here. Not exactly IN Chapel Hill, but you don’t have to go far to find rural areas for hunting. Fishing is big here too. Falls Lake near Raleigh, Kerr Lake to the north, Jordan to the south. We even have bald eagles nesting at Jordan. You can get pretty much anywhere in a half an hour, as long as you don’t start in Cary.

Right next to Chapel Hill is an tiny town called Carrboro. They refer to themselves as the “Paris of the Piedmont” (or, it they’re in a giddy mood, as the “Gateway to Chapel Hill”. The jokes are funnier once you see Carrboro). If you get there, go to Weaver Street Market. Jazz brunches on Sunday on the lawn, people working, kissing, playing at the outside tables. Pittsboro is a dear little town, as is Hillsborough. Zebulon is just beginning to get the overwash from Wake County’s population boom. I don’t know anything about it. Chatham County is largely rural, but with the highest per capita of Ph. D.s in the state because of it’s central location to Duke, UNC-CH and NCSU. I love this Southern Slice of Heaven (marketing nonsense I know, but cute.)

10

I live one mile outside the “official” limits of the Triangle, five miles from Zebulon, which is where we do most of our shopping. It’s a classic Southern small town, relatively quiet and friendly, population about 4,500 but seems bigger because there’s a large exurban sprawl throughout eastern Wake County and nearby. I love Zebulon but it’s not for everyone’s taste. My wife and I are very partial to McLean’s Restaurant, on East Gannon Ave. on the east side of Zebulon, which is Southern country cooking done extremely well.

“Urban sprawl” in the dictionary has a map of Raleigh in place of a definition. Downtown remains alive but aside from the State Government facilities (extensive because it is the state capital) it’s more or less on life support. Rents and home ownership costs in much of Raleigh are relatively high, but there are scads of developments within a short commute. Knightdale, between Raleigh and Zebulon, is growing rapidly, and within 30 minutes of most Raleigh businesses (within 15 of many). The new Wakefield Plantation mega-development between Raleigh and Wake Forest, essentially lining Capital Boulevard/US 1 northeast from downtown Raleigh, is supposed to be extremely nice. Wake County schools are an integrated system that is ranked among the top five public school systems nationally, but suffers from inability to catch up with burgeoning growth (the county population now is what the entire metropolitan area’s population was when we moved here seven years ago). Glenwood South, an area on Glenwood Avenue (US 70) just northwest of downtown, is rapidly developing as an area of chic eateries and entertainment. When last we hung out in Raleigh (2003) City Market, on the east side of downtown, had a large number of interesting little restaurants and shops. From what I understand, The Angus Barn, on US-70 at its intersection with I-540 halfway from Raleigh to Durham, is a nationally reputed beef-based-menu restaurant (not just steakhouse although that too). There are a lot of good little restaurants in odd places, like an excellent Italian restaurant in a shopping center out Creedmoor Road, and the Irregardless Cafe, a largely vegetarian operation on West Morgan Street.

I strongly recommend the NC Museum of Science, which has Willo, a heterodontosaur which is the only dinosaur fossilized with what is probably its heart preserved. It also has a preserved ivory-billed woodpecker and a Carolina paroquet in the birds area adjacent to the lobby.

Weather in this area varies during the winter. It’s definitely not warm, but very pleasant for someone used to the Northeast. It only got up to about 55 today, and the low will be in the 30s. It’s expected to get up into the 60s during the week, possibly hitting 70, according to the forecast (local news and weather are very well done in this area, by the way).

To a certain extent, it depends on what you’re looking for. I never minded the ~25mi. commute from here east of Zebulon to my job on the west side of Raleigh (just over an hour during rush hour one way then in 1999-2001, but new highways would halve the time now). And we’re paying less than $400 a month rent, with water/sewer included – though we lucked out in the landlady we got!

11

Hillsboro is small. The old downtown is kinda’ nice, with a small historic district, a couple of rather nice bar/grill places and a bare handful of other shops. Also the courthouse and county seat administration.
Cross the bridge and you have a half-dozen or so fast food places, a Ford dealer, a few sit-down restaurants, a hotel, and a healthy selection of miscellaneous shops in assorted strip malls. I think there’s an antique shop somewhere in there, but my memory’s failing on that item.
It also has the carcass of the ONLY failed Wal-Mart I’ve ever personally seen. Don’t know how that happenned…
Also, it’s the home of PHE, owner of Adam & Eve, the nation’s leading adult mail order catalog company.

Pittsboro… 4 years ago, not quite as exciting. At the time, it consisted of a mixture of various housing with a downtown district that basically ended… 50 yards from the traffic circle in the middle of town. And a Ford dealer. Given the way the Triangle is growning, I wouldn’t be surprised if my observations from 2001 were wholly and completely inaccurate now. Pittsboro is/was IDEALLY situated to blow up as the area gets more and more crowded with housing/commuter overflow from the bigger towns.

12

Take me with you! Stephanie and I once looked at the Charlottesville, Virginia area for that same reason a few ago. I would do it in a second.

Actually, my house is being reconstructed over the next few months after a massive tree strike crushed half of it. It is going to work out quite well. I can’t go anywhere now but the house and street look more like they are in Vermont than Massachusetts. I searched long and hard to find something I could deal with. Large parts of the Boston area make me feel like I am going to puke especially with what you get for your money.

From the looks of the latest census results, it looks like you aren’t the first one to have this idea. The population is dropping as people throw all their money in their trunk and flee the area in the middle of the night before their last dollar evaporates before their eyes (save some cash for all those tolls on the way out though).

13

The correct spelling is Hillsborough.

The Wal-Mart did not fail, it moved - it’s one of those Super Wal-Marts now with the grocery store (and it’s got a surprisingly good selection in it). The new one is over on Route 86 near I-85, and a Home Depot just opened next to it. No more driving to Durham to get plywood! There are also some other smaller stores around it.

As for the antique places, there’s a lot more than one, in Daniel Boone Village on the main drag.

There are also some other building projects in the works. Oakdale Village is being constructed now - it’s going to be a shopping center that’s surprisingly large for its location. Condos are also going to be built in the old downtown area, and the Weaver Street Market plans to open another store near those. Eventually Durham Tech will also have a campus on the south side of the town. I’m really looking forward to that.

14

The Hurricanes are having a very good season, and it’s not one bit depressing to go to a game here (unless you count ticket prices, but that’s pro sports for you). Eric Staal was leading the NHL for awhile in goals scored this season.

Remember, there’s a lot of us northern transplants here, and we love the fact that we’ve got a sport here we can relate to!

That said, though, it’s pretty much required that you be a fan of college sports, and basketball in particular, to live here. Otherwise you might as well just stay where you are. :stuck_out_tongue: