Raleigh can’t bring PNC Arena downtown. So, it’s finally bringing downtown to the arena.
On Tuesday morning, as the sun beat down on the familiar facade of PNC Arena, the parking lots were all still there, as always, spread out over empty acres on another typical day they went unused with the arena quiet. Inside, their future was changing forever.
It’s almost impossible to overstate the scope of what’s going to happen in and around the arena after Tuesday’s historic agreements to extend the Carolina Hurricanes’ lease, renovate the arena and develop the land around it. Everything about PNC Arena is going to change. What it looks like. What it’s like to go to a game or concert there. What you can do before or after.
PNC Arena has spent its entire existence marooned on an island of asphalt, but it’s going to become the center of what Raleigh mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin called the biggest economic development project in the history of the city, with a minimum of $800 million – and potentially closer to $2 billion – invested in restaurants, retail, offices, housing, hotels and a 4,000-seat music venue, completely changing the neglected western approach to the city and Wake County.
Why the arena was built where it was makes sense, even if its peers at the time were all being built in more urban locations. That it sat by its lonesome for 24 years never did.
For the umpteenth time, if you can’t bring the arena downtown, bring downtown to the arena.
That’s finally, after Tuesday, going to happen.
The owner so many people feared would move the Hurricanes has not only invested in the team — they’ll not only be a Stanley Cup contender this season, again, but up against the ceiling of the NHL salary cap this season, again — but is investing in the city and county and state. The arena site, on state land, doesn’t pay property taxes now. Soon, it will.
All of this was linked: The Hurricanes signing a new lease through 2044, owner Tom Dundon’s right to develop the 80 vacant acres around the arena, the city and county committing $300 million in hotel-and-restaurant tax money to renovate a 24-year-old arena that has started showing its age. Philip Isley, the chairman of the Centennial Authority, which oversees the arena, had to pull on all three ropes simultaneously to bring this to fruition.
In the end, it’s a win-win for everyone. Fans and concert-goers get an upgraded arena and new pre/post entertainment options, without being asked for any of their tax dollars. Hurricanes fans in particular get a guarantee the team will be here for at least another 20 years plus another NHL All-Star Game and outdoor game at Carter-Finley Stadium. N.C. State will keep the majority of the Wolfpack Club’s beloved parking spaces for football games, while the basketball team will benefit in recruiting from a state-of-the-art arena.
Dundon gets what is essentially a license to print money, full control of what may be the last great undeveloped parcel of land in Wake County, and was willing to pay rent to the Centennial Authority — the Hurricanes do not now — and include an affordable-housing component to make it happen. The arena authority gets funding to keep the building updated and seed money to potentially help build a new one in some 15 years.
“This is the greatest thing to happen to west Raleigh since N.C. State decided to build its university there,” Isley said, and that’s probably not hyperbole.
Imagine, for a second, what it will be like to attend, say, a random N.C. State basketball game in 2033, in whatever conference the Wolfpack will be in then: You pull off Wade Avenue at 5:30 p.m., via a free-flowing off-ramp, and into a parking deck on the north side of the arena in time for an early 5:45 p.m. dinner reservation at, say, a new location of Amedeo’s. (For those still shellshocked from waiting to get out of the Reynolds Coliseum deck, just be aware there have been tremendous advances in parking-deck design over the past three decades.)
On the way into the arena, you swing through a market to grab a bag of peanuts and a water without stopping to pay. Sensors charge your phone as you exit. That technology exists now, just not at PNC. You watch the game not from a seat in the bowl but with friends from a bar on the upper level overlooking the court. When the game’s over, there’s a postgame concert at the music venue next door, or maybe you place a bet or two and watch a late game at the sportsbook instead. By the time you get back to the parking deck, traffic is long gone.
That’s not at all far-fetched. If anything, that’s the minimum expectation for what could happen on the property within five years. Folks who prefer to tailgate will still have that option, but many who do now may rather be inside somewhere on a cold night or hot afternoon. And it’ll all still be happening whether there’s an event at the arena or not. It’s what every city wants from the arena experience these days,
“You go to Atlanta, you go to places like that, they’ve got these vibrant entertainment districts or arena districts,” Baldwin said. “Now we’re going to get one here.”
It’s as revolutionary as it is long overdue, and while everyone cautions that there’s still hard work ahead, make no mistake, this was the hard part. Isley saw what was happening up Edwards Mill on state land at the Bandwidth site, and realized this was feasible, just not simple.
Getting everyone to the table on Tuesday — the Hurricanes, N.C. State, and all the governmental types who could have beefed over this repurposing of state-owned land but quietly agreed not to get in the way thanks to Isley’s listening tour and delicate political maneuvering — was the real challenge.
Not that what comes next will be easy, but from this moment forward, everything and anything is possible.
“I said this early on: I was either going to screw it all up or it was going to be one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever accomplished in my adult professional life,” said Isley, a lobbyist and former Raleigh city councilman. “I’m jazzed up.”
He shouldn’t be the only one.
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This story was originally published August 15, 2023 at 12:10 PM with the headline "Raleigh can’t bring PNC Arena downtown. So, it’s finally bringing downtown to the arena.."
