To add insult to injury (as far as North Hill’s developer John Kane’s $78 million parking deck goes) the city is now building not one but two decks downtown.

The first mammoth ($35-40 million) underground deck is already underway. But just to be sure he doesn’t run out of parking the Mayor’s building another 500 space deck for $24 million ($48,000 per car). Then when it’s completed, some of his developer ‘friends’ are going to build a retail – residential – office space tower on top of it.

So if you build a (what sounds a lot like a mall) downtown you can get the city to build you a deck. If you build one at North Hills you can try – but the Mayor will say he doesn’t subsidize businesses in booming parts of Raleigh (except, apparently, downtown).

So, here’s to the folks at Crabtree Valley – who built their own parking deck without asking anyone for a penny!

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