This work session featured a presentation from Stephen Bentley, Director of Raleigh Parks, and Ruffin Hall, President and CEO of the Dix Park Conservancy, on the status of Dorothea Dix Park, including its 10-year anniversary, visitation, upcoming projects, and financial needs. The council discussed the transition of DHHS, future capital costs, and funding options.
Dix Park, and I'm going to turn it over to Stephen Bentley to present. Good afternoon, Mayor, members of the council. I'm Stephen Bentley, the director of Raleigh Parks. With me today, uh co-presenting is Ruffin Hall, president and CEO of the Dix Park Conservancy. So I'll kick us off. He'll share some of the work that they're doing, and then I'll finish the presentation. We have a lot to cover. Um a lot of great work to show you today. So this is a big year for Dix Park. It is the 10-year anniversary of acquiring the property. We open opened Gibson Play Plaza. Uh DHS informed us that they are moving off the campus, and the Conservancy completed a $75 million fundraising campaign. So our agenda today, we're going to talk a little bit about the visitation. We've had an incredible summer. We are going to talk about the transition of DHHS, share some of the great work and the project updates, and then look forward and share some next steps with you. So congratulations, you have the number two most visited destination in North Carolina. So June, July, and August saw over 600,000 visitors to Dix Park. You can see the data points, 42 states and uh four uh 95 of the hundred uh counties in North Carolina, and it is the number one local destination uh in the triangle. Uh this is a map, a little bit harder to see on the big screen, but you can see geographically that we I was trying to look for states, looks like Idaho and Alaska. So we need to recruit some uh folks from Boise and some folks from Anchorage to come visit. Uh but you can see that we go both coasts. So it's pretty exciting to have such a destination here in Raleigh. Uh in addition to that, if you go more local, you can see that each one of these dots represents a hundred visitors in Raleigh. So each of your districts are very well represented, uh represented and visiting the park and enjoying the park. Stephen. Absolutely. Sorry to interrupt. Yeah. Can you ask how you have this data? Is it cell phone? Is it self-provided? Yep, uh, the data source is Placer AI. Uh-huh. A commonly used tool in uh public spaces as well as retail. Phone data. Yes. And just to capture, uh, we had an end of the summer block party a couple weeks ago in conjunction with Oak City Collaborative, and we had 15,000 visitors to that one event. So now we'll shift gears a little bit and move towards the DHHS transition. Just to remind council that we I said we acquired the property 10 years ago. Uh the original lease was set to expire July of this summer. However, last summer DHHS approached approached city staff and asked for a two-year extension. Um, this uh earlier this calendar year, they notified us that they would be leaving in November of 2025. That has put us in a uh operational position to uh deal with a lot. So uh from a square footage standpoint, we have about one million square feet of buildings on campus, uh including 300 acres of our grounds and all of our infrastructure. All of that becomes our responsibility. And from a context standpoint, every building in the park system is about one million square feet of buildings. There is so there is one million just on this campus. So what does that mean? That means that we are in a citywide organizational mode to respond to this. This is not just parks and recreation.