The Trader Joe’s at Holly Park Shopping Center is now open. Hark! People like William Needham Finley, IV need not venture Outside The Beltline to seek a better Trader Joe’s experience. The location of the store, near Costco, is a slam dunk for the company. Now if someone would put a really good butcher shop where Blockbuster was, we’d have an almost perfect neighborhood for food shopping

For those impressed by green companies and for those who hate unnecessary teardowns, this Trader Joe’s represents everything wrong with development in the modern era. The pedestrian unfriendly site was once host to Wake Paint and Wallpaper. In order to satisfy the signing of Trader Joe’s, the shopping center moved the paint store into one of the center’s original strips, into a space that was once a Winn-Dixie. So where is all of the whining about Trader Joe’s? They could have just taken the former grocery store space, and we wouldn’t have thrown away a perfectly good building, and wasted the energy and water it took to make the materials for this Trader Joe’s experience. Environmentalists and teardown critics need to be consistent if they are going to be taken seriously.

Just remember that when you clog the aisle to join your obnoxious geek friend in a loud conversation about how green you are when you’re shopping there (this happens a lot in the Cary store). Hopefully this location will offer a better experience. You “see the right people” at Costco, so surely Trader Joe’s will become the next ITB hotspot. My only question is whether or not the parking lot is designed adequately to handle the droves of Suburbans and Tahoes that will take over. ITB hotspots aren’t without their own challenges, but surely I’ll be more likely to utter this great Homer Simpson Halloween line in the Raleigh store than I could in Cary:

Urge to kill…fading…fading…fading — RISING! Fading…fading

map it

Today marks the last day for the temporary site of Aldert Root Elementary at North Hills East. The replacement school building, on Lassiter Mill Road, is complete and staff will make the move during tomorrow’s teacher workday.

The completion of the new facility frees up John Kane to begin construction on The Cardinal once the WCPSS moves their 5 MCUs away. Though nobody loves going to school in a trailer park, this has been a VERY smooth 15 months at the temporary site. The trailers were really nice and did their job perfectly. The only real drawback to the site was the lack of a gym and field for P.E..

The original plan was to move Root to a site that Wake County uses for displaced schools. IT is next to East Millbrook, behind Sweet Tomatoes out on Capital Blvd. During the summer of 2009, some people made some phone calls and “paved” the way for the site at North Hills East. Kudos to John Kane, his accountant, and the WCPSS for making it happen!

One of the big haunted house operations this year is The Frightmare. It is located in Raleigh Bonded Warehouse on Capital Blvd, and features a 13,000 square foot maze in Chromodepth 3-D. The house reopens tonight and runs through Sunday. See Goodnight Raleigh’s photos for more info.

On Valentine’s Day, Broadway Series South welcomes a doo wop show to Memorial Auditorium. Artists scheduled to perform are Herb Reed’s Platters, The Tams, Harold Winley’s Glovers, Maurice Williams & The Zodiacs, and Johnny Thunder. Tickets are on sale and range from $25 to $55.

The Community Grocery store at Oberlin and Van Dyke has been for sale for a while, and went up on Craigslist earlier this week. The little store has had two owners in the last 61 years, and this one is ready to retire. As a favorite hog dog and chicken salad spot for many, the future is up in the air for the little place. One potential buyer this year was ready to go, but couldn’t secure funding, so back to the drawing board. One of these days, you’ll get to go fishing, Gro-man!

map it

Of course, Saturday night is Halloween, but after a head-spinning month, we finally get a week here in Raleigh that is only moderately busy. Let’s start with sports. The not-so-scary Carolina Hurricanes, currently on pace to a 57-point season, face the St. Louis Blues in the RBC Center Wednesday night. They will also host San Jose on Sunday. There is no college Div-I football in the area this weekend.

Daylight Savings Time ends late on Saturday night. That extra hour of sleep will come in handy for those wanting to run in the City of Oaks Marathon on Sunday morning.

There is some music going around. On Wednesday, Roger Daltrey plays the DPAC. On Friday evening, Zydecopius plays Seaboard Station while later that night, one of the greatest guitar players to come out of the southeast, Rick Miller, takes the stage when Southern Culture on the Skids plays the Berkeley Cafe.

In the Fletcher Theater, the Picasso Ballet continues its run while South Pacific opens on Tuesday night at Memorial Auditorium. Charlie Goodnights hosts Broken Lizard Live this weekend.

Wednesday marks the last Moore Square Farmers Market of the year, so enjoy it while you can. If you can’t, don’t worry, because Trader Joe’s opens on Friday.

Well, that’s about it. Enjoy the week because there aren’t too many overwhelming choices to make; just that much easier to get out there and DO IT!

TBJ is reporting that the Raleigh Convention Center has earned silver-level LEED certification. It is one of seven such centers in the USA that have achieved some LEED certification. The article states that the building’s design reduces energy use, water use by 20%, and recycled much much of its construction waste.

Raleigh’s Lincoln Theatre marks the spot for the Squirrel Nut Zippers’ triumphant return to Raleigh. They are touring in support of the release of their new album yesterday, Lost At Sea. The show is on Friday, December 18 (the same night the Connells are playing at the Pour House).

Congratulations to Charlottesville’s Christopher Counts, the winner in a 79-applicant field to create a new vision for Raleigh’s Moore Square. By winning, he will get to assign a design team to develop a real master plan for the square and surrounding areas. More information is posted about the applicants’ entries on the City’s website and on Flickr.

I really can’t complain since I didn’t enter, but damn!, I mean DAMN! I should have entered! After seeing the results of our “world-class plaza” and this? This week is a peek at the great vision of downtown Raleigh? [thump] [thump] [thump]. Let me tell you all about Windows Media Center with CableCARD tuner integration, since that’s where my mind has been the last few months…