YAY!! thanks matt awesome! First!

I LOVE the way my city is beginning to look!! thank you for your pics MAtt!!

These shots are amazing, Matt! RalSky is in my bookmarks toolbar and I check it compulsively every day hoping for a new set of photos… today was my lucky day! Love the silhouette shots.

These photos capture the excitement I feel living in an up and coming city! Excellent work Matt!

One of your photos has happily earned a spot as my wallpaper.

AWESOME!!!!!! 5 ACORNS!!! Let’s see the bashers (Mongo Slade and Al) try to make THIS look bad!!!!

Amen, Ari…this is an amazing album…Raleighview Road and Raleigh Density are my faves.

this is a fantastic series of Raleigh shots. Love you’re work.

It’s absolutely tragic that they’re going to build a power substation in that spot and not condos. It’s such an amazing location! Can you imagine the views from a condo there?

It’s almost as if the city itself is sniffing out prime locations and barring developers from using them. Why? I feel as if all the elevated, vacant spots in the city are already taken by something useless or a big tree or other obstacle is blocking current residences from a potentially nice angle on downtown. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me… I was just in San Diego and it seems like all of their apartments and condos downtown face the center of the city. That would make sense, right?

Anyway, enough with the rant. Awesome pictures again Matt, it was definitely worth the wait on these Faves are the last fisheye cam shot (Taz’s convenience store is now open down the right side of the picture at Wilmington & Hargett for all you F St and City Market bar folk), the 2nd shot taken from just northeast of the RBC plaza, and the “Gust front” one. Great stuff.

i cant lie fellas as wack as that marriott is… it looks damn good at night i tell ya!

Great photos!!!

Agree with JR, what a sad place for a power station (I did not know the city was going to put one at that location). This does not make any sense, bad enough we have that ugly AT&T building in the heart of downtown and that ugly cell tower in City Market (would love to know who approved that cell tower being built there - that equipment should have been located on a rooftop - 98% of the downtowns in this country do not put cell towers in the heart of their downtown - if I am correct, that is a Sprint owned site).

The city should cell that property to another developer (I knew that Metropolitan was not going to move forward, another example of a developer with lack of vision and muscle to get a project started and completed)

Does anyone have a rendering of what this power station is going to look like?

Matt,

This is probably the most amazing collection to this day!!! Not enough words to describe how happy I was to see such a great variety of skyline shots. Also, I am glad that you finally started to show the “human density” along Fayetteville Street. We are not a big city, but we surely feel like one during business hours

Regarding the power station, it is Progress Energy we need to blame for this proposal, not the city of Raleigh. Sure, it is needed ASAP, and they have not been able to assemble land anywhere else, regardless their efforts, but WTF? The Metropolitan site is prime for something great, not a power station. There is a land condemnation case that Progress Energy is about to bring forth, but I surely hope they lose… Maybe the City of Raleigh has land they could offer in the form of exchange. The Metropolitan is another project that has been in the planning phase for too long, but the developers formed an alliance with RAM Development, the company behinf Lot 5, in Chapel Hill. Once the latter was under way, I am sure they would have focused on The Metropolitan… Anyway, Progress Energy is the offender, in this case.

The Metropolitan looked more like college dorms anyway. It is sad that there wont be any dwelling units there, but maybe the city will light it up, and develop around it like powerhouse square. It might not be a completely lost opp. Great photos btw Matt!

Great photos! My wife and I visited New York City and the Statue of Liberty last year. I bought a New York City screen saver on CD at the Statue gift shop. I would love to have a screen saver with your Raleigh photos. Do you sell anything like this? I also liked the photo of the Fireworks at Five County Stadium in Zebulon. I was there and we could see and hear the storm and lightening over Raleigh. To bad the fireworks were postponed at the State Fairgrounds.

Once again great photos of the captital city.

you got a shot of the shimmer wall!!!! yes!

AWESOME!! My favorites are the Workday and Gust Front. The last one’s pretty cool too!

Love the photos…I am so proud of our city!

great pics matt

So has anybody noticed that lately, all the RBC lights up top (even the aircraft beacons!) were out? Looks like from the webcam tonight, they have both beacons actually flashing. Can’t wait to see both the crown and signs lit up!

roguejam, I walked outside and can confirm that the beacons are flashing- kinda cool. Now all we need is BB&T to fix all the setback floods and actually have them consistently come on at dusk, then RBC can join the lightning party.

That would be really cool, but we do need Wachovia lit up somehow…I’m just not sure how they would light that up.

Wow, the Storm Moves Out At Sunset one makes Raleigh look like Gotham!

Matt, Originally the Wachovia’s design had a crowne on top. The original model and pictures had the crowne. For some reason at the last minute they decided to delete it. I think I remember hearing something like they thought the crown look was outdated or something like that. It would have looked good lit up at night. If you go to http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=128452 The crown looked a lot like this one in Sandy Springs Ga. On the northside of Atlanta.

The main portion of the Wachovia building is set back from the first few floors so they could put some lights there, but it would definitely be more difficult lighting that many floors from one spot. They could also do some up on the roof if they just wanted to do the top.

They do light up Wachovia during the evening hours. It is not on for long or consistently either.

Notice the setback floods in this picture from this series:

http://raleighskyline.com/images/07.09.08/july_09.08_raleighskyline.com_06.jpg

Well, Matt, that answers my question.

Epic pix as usual by the way.

That Raleighview Road photo shows Raleigh’s skyline very well.

cool pictures. very cool.

We should have a live streaming camera on Raleighview Road.

Just ran accross this website today…and I too will be saving the link as a Favorite and adding to my wallpaper. Excellent photography! Look forward to seeing more.

I agreed with you

raleigh is ugly

Peter is ugly.

yes, i was wrong. i’m ugly, not raleigh.

The Wachovia building in Roanoke, VA has a spire on it as well - it actually bears a slight resemblance to the building in Raleigh, although about half as tall. Emporis should have a photo or two of it on their site. I would love to see a spire on top of Hannover One. In fact - why not something functional, as there are several antennas on the rooftop there now? The building is nearing its 20th birthday, so since they’ve gone to the trouble of adding signage… it wouldn’t hurt to give it a slight update.

Ugliness is a virtue. I am ugly, too, and I love it :LOL:

Matt K., I don’t think that the owners of Wachovia Capital Center really care for image… If they did, this building could have been the tallest for Raleigh. They missed a great opportunity when they built Alexander Square… Instead of a parking deck, they should have gone with a nice 600ft+ tower, but it is too late now. Spires and crowns are great, but they are too costly to put after a building is done, unless they had planned on it. To bring a crane just for that would make no sense. On the other hand, it is doable, as we can see with Mobile, AL. I don’t recall the building, but they added a crown similar to RSA Tower’s. You can see that building in the photo below - the tower to the right is the one I am speaking of, RSA Tower appear to the left of that building.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e42/haldcottingham/MobileSkyline-2.jpg

Remember too, that the Wachovia building went up almost 20 years ago and at the time, Two Hannover was also under construction. Together, those 2 buildings added something like 50% of the then current total leasable space downtown, so it was a huge stretch.

AS far as Alexander square, you have a point, but I think people were really looking away from DT still when it was conceived. Only in the last 3-4 years has attention come back to DT Raleigh so they just missed out.

You are correct… I just feel that the developers lacked the vision required to make the most out of the Alexander Square site. Luckily, they built the structure in a way that we can add up to 10 floors above it - the current owners mentioned this possibility for the future - but I think they should have planned for something MUCH larger. Anyway, it is done deal now. As for Wachovia Capital Center and Two Hannover Square adding space, many of us should remember the vacancy rates following the completion of the two towers and the unfortunate cancellation of First Citizens Bank tower as a result of the very high vacancy rates

Oh well!!! We have grown accustomed to small things. Thank God we have Matt to show us Raleigh in a way many of us have not noticed before.