Heard this from my Dad and thought I’d share it with everyone since we’ve been mentioning Downtown Durham here. My dad works for Duke at the American Tobacco Campus and last year Duke canceled their leases, moved the majority of folks to permanent WFH, and downsized to a smaller building in DTD for ‘critical/on-site’ staff. He told me over this past weekend it looks like Clorox will be taking up their old space in the ATC. For anyone who doesn’t remember, this is in regards to this announcement from 2020.
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My brother is also a Duke employee and he’s also now permanent WFH.
Yeah they didn’t have to twist my dad’s arm too hard when he was offered permanent WFH. My parents live in Cary so he didn’t mind giving up that I-40/147 commute everyday.
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My brother is in north Raleigh…same for him. He no longer puts 20,000 miles on a car each year.
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Yeah, I feel like the explosion of remote work would allow Amazon to tap the talent base here without necessarily planting a flag with any major real estate or office space. Seems like you confirmed my suspicion, for now at least.
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They’ve remained pretty adamant about wanting to have an office-centric culture:
Amazon has 20-odd “tech hubs” besides the HQs, and some are pretty huge – recent announcements will put Austin and Phoenix at 5,000 jobs apiece, as big as the Nashville “bronze medal.”
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Can’t remember who on this thread was so certain Amazon would not open an office in Downtown Raleigh but I am at Morgan Street and ran into an old colleague who is now with AWS and informed me that Amazon just took up space in the We Work Tower……
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Wasn’t NCSU’s Spring Hill property offered to Amazon when HQ2 was a thing? Not exactly downtown but in 8 years it might be pretty appealing for a company to setup shop there.
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Yeah that’s accurate. Honestly the Spring Hill area would be super desirable for a company like that… I would think at least.
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Spring Hill + a large swath of properties stretching from North Hills through Downtown Proper…maybe even DT South.
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If I were an engineer, I would rather be at AWS than Amazon “retail”, but I’m guessing whoever said this did not mean no subsidiary of Amazon would ever have a presence here (there are hundreds of these, with AWS being a critical one), but rather that the corporate presence of Amazon as described in HQ2 would not be here.
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But it was the downtown Raleigh locations which seemed to be what drew the most attention for us during the HQ2 Idol search. It wasn’t Morrisville or North Hills. And I think Durham was even left off the invitation until they forced Amazon to awkwardly acknowledge it was an oversight and Durham was indeed part of the Raleigh bid.
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There are many advantages to having multiple offices around the country. GE did it in the 20th century and these mega tech companies are doing it now. One of the not-so-small benefits is having increased leverage in DC when you have jobs in lots of states/districts. You can really lean on an ever increasing number of Senators and Congresspeople.
Durham’s nitpicking was just a question of the wording they used. The state only asked Amazon to clarify the specific branding they used for the Triangle. There was no sign that the substance of our bid changed before/after the finalist announcement.
Downtown Raleigh’s proposed site obviously got more attention here (this is dtraleigh.com after all), but our region’s bid for HQ2 included several sites throughout the Triangle -including Wendell Falls and Chatham Park.
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That is just the Triangle’s bid. The scuttlebutt (outside this site) at the time was Amazon had eyed a few sites but were circling downtown Raleigh if we were chosen. Whether accurate or not, Amazon’s penchant for urban settings seems fairly well-established.
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Chatham County’s no longer a candidate for the unidentified semiconductor manufacturer’s plans to build a new fab plant.
Can’t wait to see which City / State throws the most money at them.
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On nice! Just drove by here the other day and this wasn’t up. I live very close, and I’m happy to see anything getting built and adding density to this area of Raleigh, even if it doesn’t directly benefit me.
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