Raleigh leaders ‘planning to plan’ Dix Park

With old and abandoned buildings strewn across 308 acres of lush hills just south of downtown Raleigh, the Dorothea Dix campus beckons the imagination.

And the City of Raleigh, which last year purchased the land from the state government for $52 million, indeed hopes to transform it into an iconic destination park.

But designing such an amenity isn’t as easy as imagining one. City leaders can’t simply hold a meeting, put pencil to paper and start planning.

The city this year is in its “planning to plan,” stage, said Kate Pearce, one of the city’s main project planners. Staff will work with the City Council over the next few months to figure out how Raleigh will decide on the future of Dix Park over the next two years, adopting a master plan somewhere around the end of 2018.