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.

Yes. This is a $ 600 million dollar project. Junior is starting out strong. Raleigh will be seeing many construction cranes in 2022. Downtown, North Hills and Iron Works.

What a total bust.

Window framing and glass.

Longfellow recognizes a strong market for additional lab space in downtown Durham proper. Converting 100,000 square feet of nearly new office space (formerly occupied by WeWork) into wet lab space, in the new ID district, is a costly endeavor; this is in addition to their recently announced office-to-labs conversion in Morrisville. The easiest thing would have been to release it as office space. Other large downtown Durham buildings with mixed office and lab space include: The Gregson (202 S Gregson Street): 218,000 sq feet The Chesterfield (701 W. Main Street): 286,000 sq feet Per Longfellow: “Durham is one of the nation’s fastest growing hubs for life science innovation. We are executing a strategic plan for Durham.ID that will serve top companies and research institutions in the region, and bring more jobs to an already dynamic market,” said Longfellow Partner Jessica Brock. “The labs we are building, ranging in size from 8,000 to 10,000 square feet and larger, will address a critical need within Downtown Durham for high-quality lab space, and will complement the incubation spaces that are currently available.” The company is currently building out the space on spec as demand for lab space around the Triangle continues to grow. “There's really been a lack of supply in that diverse ecosystem,” Brock said. “As a developer we want to not only build that ecosystem in the suburbs but in downtown Durham. We're proactively building the labs. We’re not waiting to sign the lease.”

They have started the exterior glazing system. You can see it in a couple of the above pics.

It will be a massive redevelopment by Turnbridge Equities, as described on their website: Turnbridge Equities acquired Cary Towne Center, an 980,000 SF, 87-acre regional mall located in Cary, NC, just outside of downtown Raleigh, in January 2019. Turnbridge acquired Cary Towne Center in a distressed sale driven by the loss of three of the mall’s five anchor tenants and an unsuccessful redevelopment effort, which left the mall approximately 65% occupied at the time of acquisition. Despite the mall’s distress, Turnbridge saw value in the property’s location in the heart of North Carolina’s rapidly growing Research Triangle, immediate access to I-40 and I-440, Cary’s outstanding demographics, and the secular shift toward walkable mixed-use places. Upon acquiring the property, Turnbridge successfully assembled the unowned anchor parcels, removed the remaining long-term encumbrances, and rezoned the property for up to 4.5 million square feet of mixed-use set amid a walkable urban grid. The new development, Carolina Yards, is expected to break ground in early-2021 with a first phase consisting of over 1.2 million square feet of mixed-use, including residential, office, retail and hotels. Please visit www.carolinayards.com for more information.

It will be interesting to see if this turns out to be just another “Charlotte School of Law” situation. Health care organizations generally, and particularly medical schools (or branches) don’t operate under free market principals. Can’t buy your way into success. Very regulated. Healthcare in the Triangle area is dominated primarily by UNC Health and Duke Health; is known to be intensely difficult for outside organizations to enter this market because of this. Novant has tried unsuccessfully for years. Kaiser Permanente also tried and failed. Other than Wake Med, UNC and Duke own the area hospitals and physician practices. Both Duke and UNC are world renown Tier 1 research universities with very highly rated medical schools and teaching hospitals. In addition to competing with one another, they also occasionally collaborate as they are located only 11 miles apart from each other. Wake Forest is a wonderful organization, but not a Tier 1 institution.

I've already contacted the city, and relayed everyone's concerns about the rendering scale problem. They intend to form a committee to study the problem. Heads will likely roll.

This Dominion project is completely different , and has nothing to do with the city's recent RFI on the city-owned parcels. Dominion is buying their land from the NCAE, which is across the street from the city property. I agree that something taller by Dominion would be nice, they have a great track record in DT Raleigh. (PNC Tower, FNB Tower, Charter Square etc.).

Whatever is built at this site will likely look nothing like what's in the rendering. That's why I am surprised folks are harping on this. If the office tower is built like it's shown (unlikely) it will be significantly taller than anything else in the adjacent area, and possibly wider as well. Most people would agree that a 40 story office tower would be much taller than the adjacent 30 story office towers, amiright ? Will be interesting to see what the final products turn out to be.