It’s a rainy December day, and a few delivery trucks are making their way through the mostly empty streets of Hub RTP, a new 100-acre development just off Davis Drive in Research Triangle Park. At the east end of the Hub, there’s a cluster of newly built structures, including the Horseshoe, a 160,000-square-foot retail and office building; MAA Nixie, a 406-apartment complex; and a small amphitheater staring across a creek and a patch of overgrown, yet-to-be-developed land. There are plans for much more — a hotel, wet labs and additional apartments.
It’s part of what its promoters call RTP 3.0, a recognition that in today’s “live, work, play” world, the old RTP 1.0 big company vision was increasingly out of step. RTP 2.0 included a nod to the value of newer, smaller companies, but was still big office-focused. What once held great appeal — an isolated research campus situated among the pines — is no longer enough to attract a younger generation of researchers and entrepreneurs.
“In the older suburban model, office buildings were surrounded by parking, separated from housing and amenities, and the area essentially shut down after hours.” says Richard Florida, a futurist whose books include “The Rise of the Creative Class.”
“That worked when work was more routine and people were willing to commute long distances. It doesn’t match how ideas form or how people work now. Innovation depends on interaction — planned and unplanned — and that happens more naturally in places with everyday life around them.”
RTP has been transformative to the region and the state, and to the potential of research parks globally. At its launch in 1959, it was a high-stakes bet that North Carolina could attract a global constellation of companies at the epicenter of research universities Duke, NCState and UNC Chapel Hill. The wager paid off more than organizers ever dreamed, starting with the establishment of the Research Triangle Institute and Chemstrand, which invented Astroturf at the park, and with the entry of IBM in 1965.
But no feast lasts forever. “The idea that people want to get in their cars with 50,000 other people and drive into a research park is outdated,” says Ryan Combs, executive director of the Research Triangle Regional Partnership, which promotes economic development. (Actually, 55,000 now work for park employers.) “When RTP was opened, companies wanted to be by themselves. Now everyone wants to be right on top of one another.”
In 2017, leaders hired Scott Levitan to head the Research Triangle Foundation, which oversees the park and its 385 tenants. He had more than 30 years of experience in mixed-use economic development and a stint as development director for the Science + Technology Park at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “The companies and [Durham and Wake] counties felt strongly that we were a very tired model, that interest was slowing down,” he says.
RTP responded with a 50-year plan, an effort to reinvent the park for today’s workforce with Hub RTP as the centerpiece. Investment in the Hub tops $100 million, with $20 million from Durham County, $10 million from the owners and tenants, and $75 million from the foundation. “When we make investments like the Hub, it’s because the private market isn’t ready to do it. We want to prime the pump,” says Levitan.
One believer is White Point Partners, a real estate investment firm based in Charlotte that has been active in the Queen City’s Mill District and South End areas. It is a co-investor alongside the foundation in the “Horseshoe,” a 160,000-square-foot mixed-use development with offices and retail space, a first for RTP.
“We were impressed with the vision the Foundation laid out about the future of RTP,” says Erik Johnson, a founding partner at White Point. “Some of what’s there is a little dated. People want something more engaging, restaurants that work with the broader area, a common space where they want to go and spend time.”
White Point is joined at HUB RTP by Germantown, Tennessee-based apartment developer MAA. Its 408-unit complex opened last fall, marking the first apartments inside RTP. Monthly rents range from $1,438 to $3,723, depending on the unit size. About 20% of the units remain vacant in early January, according to the company’s website, which isn’t unusual for a lease-up stage. Apartment vacancies in Raleigh-Durham are generally 7.5% to 8%.
Eventually, the park expects to have 1,200 apartments at the Hub, about 1 million square feet of office and lab space, 250 hotel rooms and 50,000 square feet of restaurants and retail.
Accomplishing all this required a change to the park’s bylaws to accommodate new kinds of development, and approval by both Durham and Wake counties. It was a four-year process to amend covenants, says Levitan.
A clear impetus to the foundation’s plans was the development of other Triangle urban real estate districts that have attracted many tech-oriented businesses. Downtown Durham, Chapel Hill and Raleigh’s North Hills area developed by Kane Realty are each luring companies seeking the benefits of “innovation districts.”
Sheryl Waddell, the senior leader of UNC Chapel Hill’s Innovate Carolina innovation district, believes it’s possible for everyone to co-exist. “One would think it would be competitive, but I don’t think it’s competitive at all. I think a rising tide lifts all boats,” she says.
PRO CHOICE
A quick conversion to a live, work, play environment at RTP isn’t simple. At 7,000 acres, 10 miles long, and 3-1/2 miles wide, it’s too big.
“We’ll never have the kind of density of Kendall Square. But we have enough dirt to be all things to everybody,” Levitan says. He’s referring to the Cambridge, Massachusetts, area near Harvard and MIT that is home to the largest concentration of U.S. life sciences companies. San Francisco is second, followed by RTP.
Under the new zoning, the park’s historic model can be augmented with three new approaches. The park has long offered 100-acre spaces for companies looking to establish a major research facility. In the past, those companies were limited to covering 15% of their land with structures. That has been raised to 60%, allowing for increased density and more amenities.
The second model is walkable residential communities, with multifamily housing and restaurants and retail shops. Residents would walk or bike to work along current or new trails. The third is essentially the Hub, which Levitan calls the “downtown of RTP.”
“The idea that this is a dense downtown environment, that’s not our goal,” he says. “By definition (we continue) to look at 100-acre campuses with major industrial activities. That’s our lifeblood. Full walkability across the whole 7,000 acres is probably not where we want to go.”
Richard Florida suggests that full walkability isn’t necessary for RTP. “The opportunity is straightforward,” he says. “Add real residential density, build greenways and bikeable connections, create clusters of restaurants, cafés, and third places, add parks and public spaces, stitch together smaller blocks and walkable streets, and create a setting that feels alive outside of work hours.
There’s no need to turn RTP into a downtown, he adds. “It means giving it the pieces that allow people to mix, meet, and move naturally through the day. Founders and technical teams want to step outside their door and immediately be in a neighborhood with food, amenities, culture and other people. Venture capital wants to be near these clusters because proximity speeds everything up. None of this is cosmetic. It’s part of the operating system of innovation.”
Levitan’s vision is for sprinkling micro-communities around the park, or “nodes,” with Hub RTP acting as the prototype. Residents would have a choice of lifestyle and amenities, and companies could choose their preferred work environment.
The park’s plan should be supported by broader demographic trends reshaping the Triangle. North Carolina was the ninth fastest-growing state in the U.S. between 2003 and 2023, led by the Raleigh-Durham area’s explosive gains. The nine-county region is expected to have 1 million new residents by 2045, joining a current population of about 2.3 million.
Construction through the region lags substantially behind projected demand, however. Levitan cites research showing that about 9,800 new housing units are coming online every year, about half of the numbers needed to meet demand. Development in the park can help respond to the housing shortage in the region, he says, particularly with more than
173 acres still available for development.
One selling point likely never envisioned by the park’s founders is reverse commuting. MAA highlights the proximity of its apartments to the Duke University campus, about 13 miles away. Raleigh and Chapel Hill are similarly accessible.
As a result, residential development could be similar to satellite towns such as Morrisville, Holly Springs and Cary, says the Research Triangle Partnership’s Combs.
WORK IN PROGRESS
A gleaming white 3-D model in the Hub’s marketing office shows multiple new office and research buildings, apartments and a landscaped stream flowing alongside the amphitheater. It calls to mind the downtown districts of Cary or Greenville, South Carolina.
On the ground, however, it’s a work in progress. A positive sign is that retail spaces are starting to fill up in the Horseshoe. Among the new restaurants locating there are the Drift café; Nanny Goat, a boutique bodega started by James Beard Award nominated Preeti Waas; and Prime Barbecue. They are local establishments selected for their uniqueness and potential to appeal to people living outside the park.
Says White Point’s Johnson, “People are looking for experiences. People are looking for quality. We wanted restaurants that work with the broader area, a common space where people want to come and spend time.” (Counter, a Michelin-starred restaurant run by chef-owner Sam Hart, is a White Point tenant in Charlotte.)
RTP has a worldwide reputation. “The Research Triangle is a globally recognized brand,” says Combs. “People have heard about it all over the world. A lot of times they don’t even know it’s in North Carolina, but they’ve heard of RTP.”
Looking to the next 50 years, Levitan hopes to build on that reputation. “For the past 65 years, the only thing you could have in the park was an industrial research campus,” he says. “(Now), we have posited a big audacious idea in a community that has embraced big audacious ideas, and that has a history and a culture of allowing these things to happen. I don’t think there are many markets in the US that would have allowed this.” ■
