[North Carolina Relocation Thread]

Yes indeed. I may become a fellow Triadian or whatever!!!!

Thanks Nowensone. I'm coming up in a few weeks and will check out some of those places.

[Heart of the Triad]

I think that Krazeeboi is saying that you make it seem like it's a bad thing to try and emulate success. I don't know whether you are trying to belittle the triad or not, but one could easy get that impression from your comments. I think that the situation is kind of like an arguement between a multi-sibling family. The oldest kid (in this case charlotte) has had his license for many years now. The middle kid (raleigh/durham/chapel hill) has just recently turned "sweet-16" and gotten his license. The middle kid flaunts his license to the youngest kid (the triad) because he can, and because he finally thinks that he's "arrived" with the big kids. What he soon realizes is that driving is no longer the cool thing to do for the oldest sibling. It's buying beer. Well now the middle kid wants to be old enough to buy beer. His jealousy only subsides when he too gets to buy beer. At this point the youngest has been driving for a few years and he too will eventually be able to buy beer.

The point of my analogy is that everyone has an oldest sibling (ATL is charlotte's oldest sibling). Everyone is eventually going to grow up (this is NC and even the triad has that potential). Why not realize that will happen, and that the best thing to do in the meantime is not to flaunt your success?

Weird anology i know, but take what you want from it.

I see what you are trying to say, but it is flawed.....

The Triad would be the "oldest" kid here because we were North Carolina's *FIRST* "large" economic engine. In other words, the Triad was bigger both economically and population-wise before the Triangle and Charlotte areas. Only recently (last 20 years) have the Charlotte and Triangle areas zoomed "ahead" of the Triad. In fact, the Triad had a bigger population than the Triangle until just a couple years ago.....

If anything, the Triad is the "has-been" big metro in NC.

I will gladly leave you guys to your perceived utopia.

You crack me up, man.

[Heart of the Triad]

First of all, I never made any direct comparison's between Raleigh and the Triad...you did, which ALWAYS seems to be the case with Triadians. My statements had nothing to do with my personal perception of Raleigh, but no that you brought it up...Raleigh has been topping the rankings for years, this is not something that all of a sudden happened recently.

The point that i'm trying to make is that the Triad would be better off taking clues from successful metros, in terms of how to grow oganically and attract more people and big business, and not devote so much time to trying to "keep up with the Joneses," which is OBVIOUS to anyone who isn't "clueless" and keeps up with the local happenings in the Triad.

Look, I know how you uber "New South" Raleigh and Charlotte folk look at the Triad as "The Rust-belt of North Carolina", but that is just silly.

You have been making comparisons between us and the Charlotte and Triangle areas throughout this thread.......just look back at your posts.

Raleigh is a great NC city, but it has been topping the rankings for only the past several years.....that IS a sudden thing.

You should not talk about growing organically as you are from a very sprawling area....

The Triad is attracting more biz and people: Dell, Fed-Ex Hub, HondaJet.........HELLO!!

I would not call that 'keeping up with the Joneses". As cityboi stated........we are a sleeping giant and we are more of a distribution/logistics/high-tech manufacturing/aviation technology type of economy mixed with a little other stuff. We are different from the Charlotte and Triangle areas and are NOT trying to emulate them.

You are clueless.

[Heart of the Triad]

Would have NEVER left it so far behind in the dust? That would be the main juvenile argument here, Raleigh's recent rise onto many of the charts seems to have imparted a few people with illusions of grandeur, not to mention some strange need to defensively criticize (if there is such a thing) certain other locations like the Triad, and frankly it gives the appearance that they are fearful of something. Which is equally ridiculous, but none-the-less how it appears. This strange attitude would be better directed elsewhere.

Historically most of NC's major cities have seesawed back and forth, CLT and Raleigh probably have the edge, though regionally CLT, the Triad and Triangle are similar. Can't really argue with bad planning, but it's everywhere, there is no monopoly there as you surely know. Building research centers to accommodate an industry whose dominance in the future is a certainty is simple common sense, not to mention that the Triad is also a place of quality universities and history of innovation and research, and so there exists a precedence and natural fit, more so than most places in the country. I'll agree that the public face of such initiatives is sometimes embarassing, but again, I think that is more common than not. The efforts by WS and GSO, as well as Dole's in Kannapolis, may be overkill for a while, but this industry has already proven that early entry is key, and obviously R/D benefited from such a strategy 50 years ago when it was considered economic backwoods (along with most of NC in general).

You hit the nail on the head!!

"RALNATIVE" is clueless

[Heart of the Triad]

I agree with you DanRNC---there definitely is this competiveness going on here. I have read several articles in bizjournals that lead me to this conclusion. I even read a statement in one article where one leader was saying that the Traid could potentially monopolize on the name similarities between "Triangle" and "Triad." He indicated that people outside of NC aren't aware of the differences between the names, so they should capitalize on that fact. How sad?

If the best that the Triad can do is try and emulate Charlotte and the Triangle, it will NEVER find success in any of its plans. Any bright person knows this.

Who says the Triad is trying to emulate Charlotte or the Triangle?

If it wasn't for the Triad, the Charlotte and Triangle areas would not be what they are today......

Charlotte has stolen quite a few headquarters and businesses from the Triad. And the Triad funded a big part of what the Triangle has today thru tax dollars over the decades. This is largely because the Triad was the FIRST big economic engine for North Carolina and was so for several decades.....

The Triangle and Charlotte people can thank the Triad for some of its success

[In 25 years, which city's skyline do you think your's will resemble?]

As of right now, South Park is the only area outside of the CBD that I could see having a nice skyline with good height. By that time, I would imagine that SouthEnd and Midtown would begin to blend with Uptown for a more expansive, yet centrally located skyline. At most, Charlotte would only resemble Atlanta in the downtown ATL/midtown ATL respect. Atlanta has at least two other significant clusters of towers, Buckhead and Perimeter; I'm not seeing this occurring in Charlotte within the next 25 years (although I most certainly could be wrong). I think Charlotte's skyline will remain compact for the most part, resembling Houston (or possibly even Dalls) more than Atlanta.

I agree. Sure Charlotte will see more sprawl outside of it's CBD, but it's CBD is very compact and it seems they want to keep developing in a compact fashion.

[American Tobacco Historic District]

I am glad that this thread is brought back. I didn't know so much was going on in Durham. I love how Durham has kept some of that industrial feel while progressing with great new developments.

These are great pics!