Overview

The City of Raleigh is seeking planners/urban designers to staff a new division within the Planning and Development department responsible for identifying, pursuing, and managing public-private partnership opportunities to implement plans and projects and elevate development outcomes. There are three non-supervisory positions and one supervisory open in this division. 

The City of Raleigh

During the past 30 years, growth in Raleigh and the surrounding Research Triangle Region has consistently and significantly outpaced the nation. Raleigh’s current population is about 468,000 people, up from 291,141 in the 2000 Census. Situated in the heart of North Carolina’s Piedmont region, Raleigh is centered between the sandy Atlantic beaches and the Great Smoky Mountains. Raleigh covers an area of more than 148 square miles, has a planning jurisdiction of 181 square miles and is home to a diverse population. Fueled by an impressive mix of education, ingenuity and collaboration, North Carolina’s capital city has become an internationally recognized leader in life science and technology innovation, and a great place to live.

The Opportunity

The City of Raleigh has a consolidated Planning and Development department which addresses every phase of city building, including comprehensive planning, area and corridor planning, zoning and development regulation, development plan review, building plan review, and site and field inspections. The department has a staff of nearly 200 and an annual budget of $21 million.

Raleigh has a history of visionary planning which continues to the present. However, a persistent gap within the organization has been a consistent resource dedicated to implementing plans and projects. To address this gap, the department has created a new division, the Urban Projects Group, dedicated to catalyzing and accelerating the transition from plan vision to physical reality through internal coordination, external partnerships, and problem solving.

The Urban Projects group will consist of three collaborative work units reporting to the department’s Deputy Director. Civic Infrastructure will concentrate on internal coordination and collaboration around plan implementation, civic projects, and public realm improvements. City Partnerships will both seek out and respond to proposals to marry private development projects with public infrastructure and benefits, using various public-private partnership tools. These two work units will be joined with and supported by the City’s Real Estate division, which handles acquisition, disposition, and real estate analysis for the entire City of Raleigh organization.

Candidate Profile

Successful staffing of the Urban Projects group will require a multidisciplinary team with complementary talents. No single individual is expected to meet all the potential qualifications. Rather, it is our goal to assemble a team from the candidates with both the best individual skills and experience as well as those which complement the other team members. Among the skills we are seeking are the following:

• Designers with training in Architecture or Landscape Architecture who bring design thinking as well as an ability to visualize and communicate the development and landscape potential of specific sites and areas using software tools such as Rhino, SketchUp, and Giraffe.
• Planners with an economic development bent (or Economic Developers with a planning bent) who have a working knowledge of real estate development economics and finance, who are good with spreadsheets, and can read and understand both development codes and pro-formas.
• Planners and engineers with experience in land planning, site development, site review, and the overall land development process, who can bring insights to how large-scale as well as smaller scale, mission-driven projects can more effectively navigate the City’s approval process, all the while looking for opportunities where partnerships can create opportunities for public benefit and elevate the overall development outcome.
• For the supervisory position, experience leading teams of people on complex undertakings and developing the skillset and knowledge base of staff.

To Apply

Application requirements and instructions are available at these links:

Supervisory Positions: https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/raleighnc/jobs/3524280/planning-urban-design-supervisor

Non-supervisory position: https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/raleighnc/jobs/3522096/planner-ii-urban-designer-ii

Candidates must have a Bachelor's (4-year) college degree or equivalent, with a Master's degree preferred. Applicants may substitute additional relevant experience for the required education. Five years of relevant experience is required, or an equivalent combination of education and experience sufficient to successfully perform the essential duties of the job.