SlackJack

According to their website, Midtown Exchange recently changed their name to "The Exchange Raleigh".

BOOM has picked up nothing. It is seeking another engine supplier. Cart before the horse.

It was announced today that Rolls-Royce terminated the agreement to supply engines to Boom. Not good.

That man (Sidney) has some type of axe to grind against Raleigh for some reason. My guess is that he is jealous. And, he is bullied because his name is Sidney.

Yes Tim. You are correct.; "After reading the first paragraph in the News link, Greensboro has landed Boom Supersonic" Yes Tim. You are correct.;

What is the obsession of building a 561’ tall building ? In Greensboro or anywhere ? It seems like such an odd, arbitrary height. How many hotels (or office buildings) does downtown Greensboro need ? I’ve never seen a situation where a local developer selects an exact final building height and scrambles the various elements (office, residential, hotel) to achieve that exact height, to the exact foot, mind you. Generally, these decisions are made based upon local microeconomic conditions, rather than on “bragging rights” by some local developer with a giant ego.

This is such a nice ballpark. The Kannapolis ballpark reminds me more of the one in High Point (both are nice). The Greensboro ballpark area is more urban, and will likely look more like the DBAP area in the coming years.

That's not my intent. But, Wake Forest is not a Tier-1 research university like Duke, UNC and NCSU, and therefore receives only a minimal amount of federal research funding, which is the lifeblood of medical and engineering schools. In terms of medical schools, US News ranks Duke # 3 in research and UNC # 3 in Primary Care and # 3 in Family Medicine. Actually, Wake has a top 30 law school ( not a top 50 as you stated) but that's the peak metric. Federally funded research is the key metric of any Tier-1 research university, and only Duke, UNC-CH and NCSU are Tier-1 universities in NC (Duke and NCSU get a ton of funding in engineering and quantum computing research). WFU is a fine school but it's not a Tier-1 school. Same goes for Campbell and ECU. I think that Gene Woods will try to go after more federal research funding but the competition is fierce. Again, lots of egos involved. Charlotte will get a school, no doubt.

BTW – there are five (5) medical schools in North Carolina: Duke , UNC-Chapel Hill, Wake Forest University, Brody School of Medicine (ECU) and Campbell University. Guess which one is the newest and was the cheapest to create, and also has a very reputable Law School and Pharmacy School ? Yep. Campbell. No egos involved. No BTM Barnum attitudes.

I didn’t mean that as flippant as it appeared, and the Charlotte School of Law quip was not apropos. My apologies. Still, Charlotte has struggled to open a Law School, much less a Medical School. My point was that simply opening a medical school, even if it is a branch of an existing medical school, is no guarantee of creating a “Silicon Valley of Healthcare”. Gene Woods comes off sounding like the P.T. Barnum of healthcare. Wake Forest is a good school. My wife graduated from Law School there and we have a good friend who graduated from their medical school. My impression is that they are arrogant and think that they are on par with Duke (they charged the same tuition as Duke) and UNC. They are not. Even the recently retired WFU president Nathan Hatch said as much. Maybe Elon University, but not Duke or UNC. Wake Forest needs the money and they made a deal with the devil IMO (Gene Woods). Maybe it will work out great with WFU and Atrium, but only time will tell. Lots of egos involved with this deal.

I don't think that you understand. This is not something that you "check off" of a list as "being done". That's what the Charlotte School of Law thought. You saw how that worked out ?

They were shown on the TBJ. Look nice.

Well, maybe ---- Charlotte got a medical school, and that’s a good thing. It was long overdue and well deserved. However, Innovation Districts are hardly unique, and are becoming the “in thing” whether they are related to medical schools or not. NCSU’s Centennial Campus is an example of one not related to medicine, but engineering instead. Eugene Woods wants to build a “Silicon Valley of Healthcare” between Charlotte and Winston-Salem where I suppose that Salisbury would be the epicenter of that research. Well he may be successful but national competition is fierce for Federal Research Grants. Perhaps he would be better off on focusing on the quality of output (doctors) instead of the quantity of output (doctors). That’s the policy of most highly rated medical schools in the country. Medical schools are also not unique; some are quite good while others are not. US News ranks the following medical schools in the Piedmont area of North Carolina: Duke University: # 3 in Research UNC-CH: # 3 in Family Medicine, # 3 in Primary Care; # 24 in Research. Wake Forest University: # 48 in Research, # 80 in Primary Care. Duke and UNC-CH are both Tier 1 research universities while Wake Forest is not. Neither is UNC-Charlotte. Duke also anchors a new Innovation District in Durham and has recently opened a 273,000 square foot separate Medical Research Campus in Research Triangle Park. UNC and Duke extensively collaborate on research, and numerous startup life science companies in and around RTP have origins from Duke and/or UNC. The area draws researchers from around the world. The Triangle is one of the top 5 Life Sciences hubs in the United States, and is growing very rapidly. Most successful medical / life science / tech hubs are anchored by at least two Tier 1 research universities. This area has three of them. I have no doubt that Atrium will build a successful medical school , but boasting about creating a “Silicon Valley of Healthcare” seems to be a bit of a stretch at this point.

UNC has no interest in developing a medical school in Charlotte; they never had and never will. They don’t need to, as they are locked into fierce competition with Duke’s School of Medicine, only 9 miles down the road from it, and the Triangle area is growing rapidly, so the market is expanding every year. Duke has no intentions of establishing another medical school either; they will only expand their existing one. Between UNC, Duke and Wake Med, the Triangle market is very competitive between those three institutions, and that’s why other companies like Atrium and Novant have been unsuccessful in entering this market. Conversely, that’s also why these institutions have been reluctant to expand outside of the Triangle other than takeover / purchase / manage a very small number of regional hospital systems in the boondocks. Over the years, Atrium / Eugene Woods courted several institutions to form a partnership, and UNC might have done so eventually, but not at the expense of Chapel Hill no longer being the headquarters of the new entity. UNC didn’t initiate the discussions, Eugene Woods did. Wake Forest was in a weak position (particularly with the local Baptist Hospital) which is why they agreed to a deal, but it will likely bite Winston-Salem them in the rear end. Some folks think that the Medical School and Graduate Schools will eventually wind up being headquartered in Charlotte. That’s a good thing if you are Charlotte but not Winston-Salem, LOL.

Regarding your item # 3, the stadium is on hold , because covid drained any public money for it, but the Downtown South development is not. Kane-Malik are starting the first two buildings of this project in early to mid 2022. Still, public support for the stadium is mixed, even before covid, so it remains to be seen if the city/county gives them money. Regardless, John Kane is proceeding with this project , along with others beside Dix Park, Smoky Hollow and Warehouse District. He has the dollars to do whatever he wants, and I believe that it is Steve Malik pushing the stadium. As previously mentioned, Kane's son is also gearing up in the Dix area and in the "Ironworks" area which I believe that Grubb is calling East End.