Downtown Raleigh ramp closes for City Gateway redevelopment project

A small ramp that moved about 1,400 drivers a day out of downtown Raleigh closed this week, forcing westbound traffic from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard onto Wilmington Street and other nearby streets as the City Gateway redevelopment starts to remake the south edge of downtown.

The change is minor on a map but immediate on the street. Commuters, delivery drivers, downtown workers and anyone trying to reach the core from the west side now have one less direct path to northbound McDowell Street. The closure removes a traffic movement that had been in place for years and replaces it with a routing pattern meant for a denser downtown block.

The ramp land is part of the City Gateway district, one of the most prominent redevelopment parcels at the southern gateway to downtown Raleigh. The broader site has been described as 6.75 acres, while planning and design materials put the district at about 8 acres or 10.14 acres depending on how the land is counted. Raleigh rezoned the site years ago to allow office, hotel or residential towers as tall as 40 stories.

Capital City Urban Development bought the property from the North Carolina Department of Transportation after the agency gave up its easement for the ramp. With the closure in place, the company will extend Kindley Street and create a new intersection at MLK, turning a one-way ramp connection into part of a street grid built for mixed-use development.

Planning materials describe City Gateway as a mixed-use district that can include residential, office, hotel, retail and education space, along with a public plaza and a multi-use bike and pedestrian trail. Urban Design Partners says the project is meant to connect downtown Raleigh to Downtown South and serve as a southern pedestrian entry into downtown. FirstFloor’s master plan says four development-ready lots remain, with plans for apartments, housing, office, hotel and retail uses.

The Mira, a roughly 2-year-old apartment building above MLK, is the first completed piece of the district. The ramp closure also comes after other major changes near McDowell Street, including the permanent closure of one block of South Street from McDowell to Dawson to make room for the relocation of Red Hat Amphitheater. Together, the projects show how the city’s south downtown streets are being rebuilt one block and one access point at a time, with short-term congestion traded for long-term redevelopment.