Downtown Raleigh Alliance

We wanted to see the Illuminate Art Walk. We were under-impressed and we left shortly after we arrived.
Dec 28th, 2023

Dec 20th, 2023

Took my family to see the Illuminate Art Walk in Raleigh sponsored by the Downtown Raleigh Alliance. We went on the second week of its opening and was a little disappointed to see many of the displays were either not working or just not turned on. Especially the Firefly Footpath. Only the light in the trees were on but the lights that were suppose to light up the footpath were off. We were not impressed and left shortly after arriving.
Dec 3rd, 2023

Waste of tax payer money!
Oct 3rd, 2023

DRA is an tax-funded corporate-welfare group that runs a garbage service and private police/vigilante thug service in downtown Raleigh to protect wealthy people and yuppies from their everyday white boy/girl problems. Their board of directors is a who's who list of local corporate oligarchs, developers and political hacks, augmented by a  long line of fawning wannabees looking for an approving dinner party invite in exchange for supporting the DRA's astroturfing, corporate-welfare mission.Their core duty is to pick up trash and work with the Raleigh police to drive out poor and homeless folks from downtown so easily frightened yuppies can go out and get drunk and pay way too much for mediocre meals without having to confront the underside of our society that had previously been forced to live downtown because of the low rents and undesirability. They augment their $1.6Million in annual tax revenues by selling protection and lobbying services to businesses looking for the City of Raleigh Planning Director and staff to bend the rules for them so they can later shift costs to general taxpayers while hopefully making a tidy excess profit.They also provide free car battery jumps to an army of bailed-out bankers so they won't have to pay for AAA like the rest of us (all tax-deductible of course!).In all fairness, the DRA has done a decent job of putting on events in downtown Raleigh, but they are the organization behind the scenes calling the shots for the Raleigh Police Department's crackdown on feeding homeless and hungry people during the greatest economic downturn since the 1930's Great Depression. The DRA also orchestrated Raleigh's ban on begging unless you have a business license -- but oddly, this is the only business license that the city issues through its police department (how clever!).The DRA fosters agism with its constant touting of only YOUNG people as suitable employees and customers for Raleigh companies. It gets offensive at a certain point. My biggest gripe with these corporate welfare queens is that they have violated their charter -- which clearly states they are to work within a defined "central business district" -- by throwing their substantial political weight around in matters of nearby neighborhoods when rezonings come up, resulting in giveaways to developers who have been allowed to reap excess profits while bulldozing perfectly good buildings and shifting the associated infrastructure costs to city taxpayers. So beyond the garbage pickup and free battery jumps for an army of bailed-out bankers (tax deductible for the banks, of course), they are increasingly serving as an unaccountable, astroturfing, corporate-welfare group in a fundamentally undemocratic manner to the detriment of citizens -- in favor of a short list of local oligarchs and cronies. They also routinely and shamelessly misrepresent their numbers to make themselves look good, and spend what appears to be a disproportionately large amount of money on top management/administrative salaries and benefits, but I suppose that is typical for an organization of this nature.They should have to follow public records laws and full disclosure of salaries, contracts and adhere to a public code of ethics. But I suppose they would say that they are above these laws despite the overwhelming majority of their revenues being paid directly from taxes. Yuk.
Oct 4th, 2013