In Raleigh, NC, for 154 years the mentally ill have received treatment at the Dorothea Dix Hospital.
The hospital occupies approximately 425 acres on a hillside with a great view of Downtown Raleigh. Dix Hospital is directly across Western Boulevard from Boylan Heights Historic District neighborhood.
Across Lake Wheeler Road is Caraleigh, a district of less expensive starter homes.
Effective late 2007 to early 2008, Dix Hospital will be closed and patients transferred to Butner, NC. This will make the land at Dorthea Dix available for use in other manners. There are, of course, mixed opinions regarding the proper use of this delightful state land. The City of Raleigh, and the North Carolina State Legislature have a voice in the outcome. It is nearly a certainty that there will be some park development of at least a portion of the area.
Developers salivate at the prospect of developing Dix Hill. The location is central to Wake County, and fabulously close to North Carolina State University campuses, Downtown Raleigh, Interstate 40, Shaw University, Amtrak train station, and greenways and water features like Lake Raleigh.
DIX306 is a movement founded by the Friends of Dorothea Dix Park that has originated in favor of developing 306 of the 425 acres for a world class destination park, resembling a New York Central Park in Raleigh. "Dix 306 is a grassroots movement to let our politicians know that the people they represent overwhelmingly want to preserve all the remaining Dorothea Dix campus as a park." There would be minimal mixed use development and this would benefit benefit the Caraleigh neighborhood, as the development would be clustered on the Lake Wheeler Road boundary of the Dix Campus.
This vision has a competitor in the ULI Development plan. This plan would develop more of the Dix land and offer less park land.
Today's Raleigh News and Observer offered an opinion piece relating the vision employed 28 years ago when the Town of Cary bought the land that is now Fred G. Bond Park. The piece relates the savings to the town by grasping an opportunity when it arose, when land was inexpensive. It would seem the opportunity soon will repeat itself in Raleigh on the Dorothea Dix property.
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