During the weekend of August 20, Raleigh will be revving with excitement as the Carolina Classics at the Capital (www.classicsatthecapital.com) brings the Southeast’s largest indoor car show to the Raleigh Convention Center. This family-friendly event will feature special show cars and auto parts vendors in the air-conditioned Convention Center, displays of custom and classic automobiles on historic Fayetteville Street, a KidsZone with inflatable attractions, and prizes awarded by Southern Classic Cars NC Inc.

Many of the Southeast’s premier classic cars be featured at the Carolina Classics at the Capital, including a 1940 Cadillac LaSalle, a 1961 Chevy Impala Bubbletop and a 1969 Camaro RS/SS, just to name a few.

Top vendors already committed to the show include Danchuk Manufacturing, Pypes Performance Exhaust, Northern Tool and Equipment, Hamlett’s Chevy Parts, Detailer’s Dream, Page’s Custom, Ausley’s Chevelle Parts and Quality Air Tools.

With no charge for viewing the classic cars that will be parked on the closed-off Fayetteville Street, plus just $10 for admission to the Convention Center, this first-of-its-kind event is expected to attract thousands of attendees. Tickets can be purchased on site at the Raleigh Convention Center.

The festivities will culminate with an awards ceremony on Sunday, Aug. 22 at 1 p.m. on the Fayetteville Street Stage, with awards for Top 50, Sweet 16 and the Sir Walter Raleigh Cup.

“We’ve gotten great cooperation from the City of Raleigh, the Convention Center and automobile enthusiasts to make sure that everyone will have a good time,” said Greg Cox, one of the event’s organizers. “We hope this family-friendly event will become an annual tradition on the auto show circuit.”

The fifth edition of Raleigh Wide Open is just two weeks away, and it looks like the committee has put together a fun-filled afternoon of entertainment. Hopefully the weather will cooperate this year.

As before the even takes place on Fayetteville Street, from the Capitol to the Marriott. The street and all cross streets will be closed in order to facilitate four main music stages (Cherry Bounce, World, Raleigh Rocks, Free Spirit), as well as a beer tent and other entertainment venues and booths. Additionally the space in front of the convention center will be used as well as the new downtown Raleigh amphitheater.

My experience has been that the best place to park for the event is in the municipal parking deck at Morgan and McDowell. A short walk puts you right in the heart of the action. Other options are the parking garages lining Wilmington Street, but be sure to swing several blocks wide of the Fayetteville Street axis in order to avoid stagnant traffic and pedestrians.

The Raleigh Wide Open crew has once again put together a very nice flyer (.pdf) which includes a map of the RWO territory as well as a schedule of the day’s events. Gogoraleigh adds to that experience, however, by publishing this calendar to Google Calendar. Simply subscribe to the Raleigh Wide Open Calendar or just add events that interest you to your personal Google Calendar by clicking on the calendar link, selecting “Agenda” in the upper right, then selecting the desired events.

We recently went to Taste of Chicago and Milwaukee’s Summerfest, both events with rolling musical events at different stages throughout the days. Each even had its own iPhone app, and it made the event much more fun to select events beforehand and let the app plan the day for us. While this isn’t a dedicated app, it still affords you the chance to add events to your calendar and turn on notifications to remind you of them as they approach!

 Subscribe in Google Calendar

Here is the RWO schedule:

11:00 am – Parade down Fayetteville Street
From Morgan through the City Plaza with marching bands, floats, and local celebrities!

Noon – Festival Opens
Food and art vendors, street performers, 4 stages throughout Fayetteville Street

RebBull Motocross Mayhem with Geoff Aaron 
Fayetteville Street between Hargett and Morgan St. Performance times are 2:45; 5:00; 7:15 (add according to time)

King BMX Stunt Show
Salisbury Street in front of RCC. Performance times are 1:30; 3:30; 5:00

Cherry Bounce Wrestling
Hargett and Fayetteville St. Performance times are 5:15 and 7:30

Fire Circus
Flames and high flyers set City Plaza ablaze. Performance times are 8pm and 10pm

Eating Contests
*Free Spirit Stage. Krispy Kreme Donuts at 3:00; Lumpy’s Ice Cream at 5:00

Cherry Bounce Stage

• Jews & Catholics 12:30-1:15pm
• Cherry Bounce SPECIAL Guest 1:45-2:30
• North Elementary 3:00-3:45
• Lake Inferior 4:15 – 5:00pm
• I Was Totally Destroying It 6:00-7:00
• Bomba Estereo 8:15-9:15
• Javelin 9:45 – 10:45pm

World Stage

• Crucial Fiya (reggae) 12:15 -1:45pm
• Shana Tucker Trio (soul) 2:15 – 3:30pm
• Mel Melton & The Wicked Mojos (blues / americana) 4:00pm – 5:00pm
• The Barn Burners (country) 5:30 – 7:00pm
• Old Habits (bluegrass) 7:30 – 8:45pm
• Rubberband (funk / hip hop covers) 9:15 – 10:45pm

Raleigh Rocks Stage

• Adam Pitts and the Pseudo Cowboys 12:30 – 1:15pm
• Will McBride Group 1:45 – 2:30pm
• Big Mama E & the Cool 3:00 – 3:45pm
• Wax Planet 4:15 – 5:00pm
• Sleep Control 5:30 – 6:15pm
• Airiel Down 6:45 – 7:30pm
• Design 8:00 – 9:00pm
• Nigthshift 9:30 – 10:30pm

Free Spirit Stage

• Kappa Xi Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi (stepping) 12:15 to 12:30
• D.LIV(E) (spoken word/hip-hop) 12:45 to 1:05
• Schizophrenic Octopus (breakdancing) 1:30 to 2:00
• Sabrosa (spoken word/hip-hop) 2:15 to 2:35
• Krispy Kreme Donuts (Eating Contest) 3:00 to 3:30
• Spotlight Creative Studios (Bollywood Dance) 3:45 to 4:00
• Dasan Ahanu (spoken word) 4:15 to 4:45
• Lumpy’s Ice Cream (eating contest) 5:00 to 5:30

Downtown Raleigh Amphitheater

Barenaked Ladies 9:15 – 10:45pm (ticketed event through www.LiveNation.com and also avalable at the Amphitheater box ofice.)

10:45pm – Fireworks

Note: I will repost this on Friday, July 30, as a reminder.

One of Raleigh’s oldest standing examples of sprawl is proposing a significant change to their Wade Avenue entrance. www.abetterridgewood.org outlines the plan, which includes tearing town the tiny doctors offices next to Kerr Drugs, tearing down the gas station, and (apparently) tearing down the houses that sit on the center’s entrance road.

After these buildings are removed, the center will have new sidewalks, bike racks, improved accessibility for the disabled, additional parking, and additional public art. The gas station will be replaced with a charging station for electric cars. There will be no new retail space added.

Ridgewood Shopping Center has transformed itself nicely through the years. While it did have Villa Capri and a great stereo store for a while, it also had a Winn-Dixie and the most depressing sewing store on the planet. Through the last two decades they have done an outstanding job of finding tenants that make the center unique.

Some of the plan’s choices are a little bizarre, though. While the gas station is outdated and is no longer the last chance to get gas before Durham, it still is needed in a part of town where gas stations are less common than they were 20, 30, and 40 years ago. Five years ago there were 241 billion cars on the road. Only a few hundred have been replaced by plug-in models. The McDonald’s in Cary has a pair of plug-in stations, but employees I spoke to have never seen anyone use them yet. A renovated gas station that isn’t a cookie cutter (one that houses a cool coffee shop or has drive-thru full service with grocery pickup) could be a great source of new revenue for Ridgewood.

Very small retail spaces in a safe part of Raleigh are extremely rare. Perhaps some creative thinking could be implemented to utilize the aging offices as a source of revenue, rather that just putting up a parking lot.

The additional parking spaces will be the most inconvenient ones in the whole center. People wanting to go to lower level shops like Brueggers will benefit from the spaces, but nobody seeking stores on the main strip with Whole Foods will be happy settling for a space beyond the drug store.

This plan looks like a way to spend a lot of money and get nothing in return. With a very big 3rd recession dip likely looming, Ridgewood ought to hold tight and do whatever they can to keep rents as low as possible for at least a couple of years. We are getting ready to see a big wave of retail closings in the second half of the year, and local merchants, including restaurants, will be greatly affected. This is not the time to spend tons of money trying to cutesy-up a retail center.

The color wall art piece that can be seen through the large windows of D.H. Hill will be relit at a special event coinciding with the reopening and dedication of Hillsborough Street. The even will take place on September 25.

The N.C. Department of Transportation will hold an information session tomorrow (Thursday, the 17th) at the Rialto Theater. The meeting, which runs from 4pm to 6pm, concerns upcoming work on Glenwood Avenue between Five Points and Wade Avenue.

The site plan (.pdf) was revealed today for a new coffeehouse in downtown Raleigh. At 223 S. Wilmington Street, the former spot of Vintage Nation, just to the left of Busy Bee, deepjava is coming. The plan is one-floor, and the space is about 10,000 square feet.

Today the mayor announced that the fifth installment of Raleigh Wide Open will take place from 11am to 11pm on July 31. Just like the first Raleigh Wide Open, the event will offer Raleighites a fun event in the middle of the summer. The event will feature a parade, four stages with more than 20 bands, a beer and wine tent, a kids’ zone, food, arts, and fireworks. More to come as the summer progresses…

The warehouse space to the left of The Pit is slated to be a new bar called The Chemistry Lab. They have a website setup as well as a MySpace page, and it appears that the bar will sport a giant dance floor and non-descript, thumping music. They have been seeking a staff, but the only problem is, they still haven’t cleared a Site Plan for the building’s renovation.

Today that Site Plan (.pdf) hit the web. It mainly details egress, ingress, and streetscape improvements. There was previous word that the business would be serving lunch during the day, and the site plan does include outdoor cafe tables in the ally adjacent to The Pit. However, the site plan and website make no mention of food delivery, and the club appears to be a membership club, which usually ties in with a non-food business.

map it

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…