Podcast Raleigh

Sabrina Goode and Emma Liles are both working to preserve an important and often overlooked part of Raleigh's history: Oberlin Village, a community of African Americans near Oberlin Road that flourished after the Civil War, and Latta University, a school whose campus was at the center of the community. Goode is the Executive Director of the Friends of Oberlin Village , which works to preserve...

Around the time we should have been assessing Mary-Ann Baldwin's first 100 days on the job as Raleigh's mayor, everything changed as the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 became the biggest issue locally and globally. Mayor Baldwin was kind enough to join us again (our first repeat guest!), this time to talk specifically about how the coronavirus is affecting life in Raleigh, where we stand...

When Gina Stephens was a television producer and got dropped in a new city, one of her first moves was to grab a city magazine to try to learn about the town. After getting out of TV and having worked with a few different publications in North Carolina, in 2015 she decided the time was perfect to create that magazine for Raleigh that she would have loved to have picked up as a new-to-Raleigh telev...

Dr. Scott Ralls says in order to truly appreciate everything that goes on at Wake Tech, you have to see it in person. In fact, for Ralls, who assumed his role as president of the school in April 2019, seeing technology in action is what drew him to working in community colleges in the first place. Unfortunately, we're an audio-only podcast, so we have to settle for his descriptions (and then...

Nancy McFarlane served four terms as Raleigh's mayor from 2011-2019. It's safe to say that when she first arrived in Raleigh she had no idea she'd end up being the face of the city--in fact, she wasn't even sure she wanted to stay! But stay she did, and she became active in her neighborhood and her children's schools (all while starting her own business), and then her frie...

Vanessa Crow sees her job as a parent as more than packing lunches and registering for camps. Her interest in public policy--she's a graduate student at N.C. State--arises ultimately from trying to do her part to make the world the best possible place it can be for those who come after her, including her offspring. Which is how she can be so passionate about something as seemingly mundane--ye...

Rafael Baptista likes to help people. He does it in his "free" time by volunteering for the Red Cross and working as a collegiate soccer official. And he does it every day in Raleigh's Office of Economic Development and Innovation, helping individuals and small businesses help grow and continue to improve Raleigh's business climate. One way his office has achieved this goal is...

Kerry Painter has managed a lot of different event and performing art spaces in a lot of different North American cities. But the chance to run four great, distinctive spaces like Raleigh's Convention Center, Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Ret Hat Amphitheater and Coastal Credit Union Music Park are what made coming to Raleigh an opportunity too alluring to turn down. We talked t...

LeVelle Moton recently had his jersey retired by NC Central University, where he starred as a basketball player and is now the head coach. After leading his team to 3 NCAA Tournaments, he is one of the most recognized coaches at (and advocates for) an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities). His team was recently featured in a great ESPN story on the not-so-glorious road on the life fo...

Chris Woody grew up playing in his grandfather's drug store in Cameron Village. He assumed being a Raleigh native meant he knew a lot about the the city and its people. Now, as his firm Merge Capital continues work on two big developments south of downtown, he's learning how much he didn't know about people and neighborhoods in the city who all have their unique history. He and his...

When Adam and Lacie Lindstaedt set out on a tour of potential cities to set up their dream business--a music venue--the first place they went when visiting Raleigh was The Pour House, downtown on Blount Street. As fate would have it, The Pour House became their music venue, and last year it officially became The Pour House Music Hall and Record Shop , as the couple added a retail record store to t...

Russ Jones' family has a history of building things in Raleigh, including Crabtree Valley Mall. Now a partner at Loden Properties , Jones has his own portfolio of projects, including the redeveloped Gateway Plaza and the upcoming Longleaf hotel on the north side of downtown. In part two of our interview, we talked about Raleigh's hotel scene and the new Longleaf Hotel that Russ is curren...

Russ Jones' family has a history of building things in Raleigh, including Crabtree Valley Mall. Now a partner at Loden Properties , Jones has his own portfolio of projects, including the redeveloped Gateway Plaza and the upcoming Longleaf hotel on the north side of downtown. We broke up our interview with Russ into two parts--in this first one we talk about some of that family history, how a...

Nick Neptune may blush when we read him the bio his creative friends cooked up to promote his services for the Good Times Assurance Company , but after sitting with him for an hour we can definitely confirm when it says "he is not a man--he is an event." Much of the focus of the interview is on Transfer Company Food Hall and its surrounding property, which Nick oversees as General Manage...

Ira David Wood III is the founder and Executive Director of Theatre in the Park , which puts on several theatrical performances each season . A native North Carolinian, Wood graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts and spent time in the cast of The Lost Colony (a production he has directed the past few summers) before coming to Raleigh for a state government job in arts. Wood and Ralei...

Is Raleigh a fashionable city? That's one of the questions we asked Brian Burnett, proprietor of Glenwood South Tailor + Alterations and one of the folks helping us up our fashion average. Brian, a Raleigh native, has adapted old school tailoring with the technology and demands of today (most of his client communication is via text, and he has a van for mobile tailoring!) to build his small b...

PNC Arena is celebrating its 20th birthday this year--the Carolina Hurricanes opened the building in October of 1999 and N.C. State basketball had its first game in the then Raleigh Entertainment and Sports Arena a few weeks later. Before the building was even constructed, the NC General Assembly created the Centennial Authority to oversee the facility. We chatted with two members of the Authority...

Nicole Stewart knew the Raleigh City Council needed more female representation, younger people serving, and different viewpoints. It just took her a while to realize she was the best person to start filling all of those roles. Now, after being overwhelmingly re-elected to a second term, she sits down with us to talk about what she learned the first time around, and what she'll be focusing on...

Next month, Mary-Ann Baldwin will become Raleigh's mayor. After choosing to not run for city council re-election in 2017 after 5 terms, Baldwin seems eager to take the reins, and she definitely does not view the mayor's role as just another member of the City Council. We talked to her about what her first priorities were once in office, affordable housing, modernizing community input int...

One of the biggest--if not the biggest--changes in Raleigh in the past 2+ decades has been the growth of downtown as a place to live, work and play. Bill King joins us in this episode to talk about the Downtown Raleigh Alliance (DRA) and what role it plays in the building, sustaining, and growth of Raleigh's now vibrant downtown. He explains some of the services the DRA provides--like busines...

Few people have had as big an impact in Raleigh music the past 25 years than Dave Rose, founder and owner of Deep South Entertainment . But despite his influence, Rose \ still acts as if he can't believe the business he created with a fake-it-til-you-make-it attitude in 1995 is still a thing, let alone outfit that books all the musical acts for the NC State Fair (all North Carolina acts!) We...

Our Election Issues series concludes with Eric Lamb , Transportation Planner for the city of Raleigh. We discuss what it means for Raleigh to be a planned city, what types of things fall under the city's jurisdiction and how they work with the state and federal government, and some recent and upcoming projects he and his department have worked on. We also talk about what impact elected offici...

Gregg Warren is the President and Yvette Holmes the Vice President of Resource Development and Partnerships for DHIC , whose motto is "Home to Opportunity." They not only help homebuyers and renters by providing affordable housing, they provide an array of services to help people and help make great neighborhoods. They literally make Raleigh—and many surrounding communities—a better plac...

In this episode we continue our discussion of issues we think are important to election season as we discuss planning and zoning with Elizabeth Alley of Stewart , who spent 12 years working for the city of Raleigh in urban design and planning. She tells us some of the recent history of Raleigh's planning, gives us the ABC's of zoning codes, and helps us learn the role of the city's...

Smedes York is a lifelong Raleigh resident, a member of the Raleigh Hall of Fame, and a former Mayor of the city. We chatted with him about Raleigh's past, present and future--some of the same issues that were hot topics when he was mayor seem to be relevant today. We also talked PIZZA--as one much anticipated pizza place opens downtown and another pizza spot closes its doors. And since you c...