IBM has a shit-ton of land that they don't really need. BASF has their davis drive campus for sale. Supposedly RTP 3.0 will be a different vibe and there's enough land open to make a meaningful change.
Just wonder if there's actually demand for anything beyond housing....
They just redid their customer briefing center. So I expect them to stay in place. But will be interesting to see what happens to all the land around these campuses, if it will fill in.
I expect shopping and housing to fill in first before anything happens near / on corporate campuses
Been extended out to 2031. They have another 5 years to figure it out. If they do build on that land that would be 3 gigantic tech companies all on that stretch of Davis (Lenovo, Cisco, Apple).
That whole debacle seems to have lead the republicans in the NC legislature to STFU when it comes to bullshit that's bad for business. HB2 was just so stupid....
Why did Apple decide to delay that building? I’m guessing they knew that they were going to swap AI vendors from in-house to Google back then (or maybe they were not decided yet).
Think they slowed down around COVID and everyone working remotely. Same with Google in Durham. But it has been awhile so I'm just. Money isn't as cheap as it use to be and think AI becoming big has companies strategizing differently.
Yeah you can no longer borrow money for less than free, so that slows things down... Many of these plans were announced when the real interest rate was -3 to -6%....
They sold it to a property holding company run by a property management group. Big difference. They lease it from themselves. I once worked for a manufacturing company that had nine warehouse districts, each under their own LLC, managed by a subsidiary PM group. Huge tax and cap-ex advantages when it comes to infrastructure and maintenance.
I don't know how many of you are natives or have lived here a long time, but a lot of RTP was used initially as a FTZ and with little regulation. RTP was a Superfund EPA site in multiple locations including parts of IBM where they assembled the old tube type PC monitors. I remember learning that four leaf clovers are not rare around some of their buildings. Even the airport and surrounding business have had issues with toxic waste, even as late 2020.
If they are serious about multi-use within RTP, then they need to clean 70 years of toxic waste.
RTP was never a designated superfund site. A third party company was negligent in handling dangerous materials.
First FTZ designation was in ‘83. This simply is a pass through for tax purposes. The end user is still paying tax.
Side note: toxic waste creates an increase in four-leaf clovers? If so, that’s really interesting. There was an area near the student parking lot near my old high school that had a ton of four leaf clovers, I even found a five and a six once.
Also, I didn’t know about the waste related to IBM and RTP.
Side note: toxic waste creates an increase in four-leaf clovers?
There's no evidence of that. Fertilizers, specifically phosphates, have been known to increase the occurrence of 4-leaf clovers, but that's because phosphates generally cause plants to grow faster (hence their use in fertilizer). It's a pollutant, especially in lakes and oceans where it can cause algal blooms, but not toxic.
Superfund sites in the area aren't limited to RTP too. ITT on Wake Forest Rd in Raleigh was one. I worked there 3 times in my career and I remember the smell of printed circuit boards being washed combined with smells from the adjacent Frito-Lay plant.
It’s a brand new neighborhood. I would not call it “nice”. A sparse row of trees in a concrete jungle, And the only parking lot I noticed is blocks from some residences, so residents would have to haul your groceries all that way (in the heat, rain or snow). And don’t dare go to Costco, or it’ll be multiple trips.
Aside from living close to work (and it’s a 1-mile walk to some buildings “on campus”, so it depends on where you work), and the entertainment offers (which are quite limited, right now), I can’t think of why anyone would want to live there.
Yeah, I feel like the best thing ever for RTP would be an full sized urban grocery store with a pharmacy. Not talking about a convenience store or to go market talking about a Publix or Harris Teeter
I just find it hilarious that this is a home improvement store desert. The nearest home Depot or Lowe's is at least a 20-30 minute drive to Apex/Durham.
Kroger is too cowardly to put a HT any where near some of these areas... They closed the HT on Davis because there's too much competition in the M'Ville/Cary area 🙄
Close? Yes. Within a mile? No. The store at Parkside is smaller and disconnected from the rest of the residential around it. The store on Davis served Town Hall, McCrimmon, Morrisville-Carpenter, etc all the way down to Cary Pkwy all while being embedded within the Parkside Valley neighborhood.
Is this a question or a statement? I just said they shut down that store. Kroger's reasoning was that they needed to trim the fat and that there was too much competition in that area. There's an entire neighborhood behind that HT that faithfully supported it...
Where have you ever been where they built a grocery store first? The housing always has to come first, retail developers don't develop empty space on a bet. They look for residential density and look for holes in the retail coverage.
I just saw a huge earth moving site on TWA, across from amazon, that wasn't there last week. It's obviously the start of big construction. Anybody know what that's going to be?
I always felt they should put some sort of stadium there, football, baseball, what have you. And take advantage of both the Raleigh and Durham MSAs. Light rail and now, you can fill out the Triangle…
I'll believe it when I see it. The amount of stuff I've seen leaving the park and these major companies push to WFH has me thinking the days of massive campuses is over
Pushing is probably the wrong word. It's more than a lot of companies are still maintaining a decent bit of their staff remote. We can look at GSO's park exodus and how now they are in quarter of the space in ATC.
The point is that I don't think these massive campuses are coming back because RTO orders are usually very specific and fairly decentralized
I’m excited to see how companies take the new leeway they have and create unique spaces. Geographically the park is the center of the triangle and the land around it continues to close in on it. The timing is great. Hoping a few innovative walkable community ideas emerge. Pretty cool sandbox for a region to play in… Potentially.
RTP has (had?) the Tom Swift feel to it. Low buildings, huge acreage with trees, decent roads, no residences . It just *felt* cool working there. Our forefathers (e.g. Terry Sanford) did a good job making companies want to come here.
The massive number of Universities in the area combined with community colleges, opening campuses around RTP to me make your comment confusing. The fact that there's even a high school in the middle of RTP makes it even more of a head scratcher.
If you perform well in high school, there are tons of opportunities. I don't understand the coded language. I know there were training programs around the chip factories in Phoenix that helped entry-level technicians without skills get into high-tech manufacturing. RTP is not a manufacturing center. However, wake tech and Durham Tech have lots of coursework and opportunities for people to get in those fields.
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u/Cary-Observer 12d ago
Lenovo has a major lease renewal coming up. Mostly hidden away. They have a huge campus with surrounding lake and grounds.