I think it’s great that Apple is coming to RTP. That’s a lot of jobs at good salaries, and hopefully this will act as catalyst that both speeds up the development of public transit connecting Raleigh, Durham, and RTP and spurs the construction of more housing, and a greater density of housing around RTP. There’s a lot of upside here for this area.
But looking at this holistically, the fact that Apple is getting $845.8 million in tax incentives (admittedly over a 39-year period), plus 30 years of property tax kickbacks from Wake County, in exchange for $1 billion in investments that they needed to make anyway really illustrates how much our tax policy advantages the wealthiest incumbents at the expense of any companies that might one day serve as competitors or innovators–and in tech specifically, a lot of those potential future stars are trying to get off the ground right here in the Triangle. It’s just a fantastically tilted playing field.
Point taken. However this is much more than 1b Investment and invaluable IMO. The ripple effects of this will be x fold the 1b! Perception for NC and the region
I had friends from NY, Toronto, Seattle etc reach out to me this morning after reading the headline in the news
The unfortunate thing about developing in RTP is the whole “park” angle that prevents a campus from developing tall, and requires a ton of buffer. If you look at Cisco’s campus on the other side of the lake from their property, you’ll get an idea of what’s possible for their 281 acres. Their real opportunity to maximize their land is to go with parking decks instead of surface lots, but it’s not something that I expect them to do.
RTP needs to drop the rules that where put in place when building where placed in center of a large wooded plot of land. That’s no longer the norm and is a damper on expansion in RTP.
RTP zoning restricts uses severely, but allows 30% impervious coverage and up to ~9 stories of office (145’). One general guideline of office is that you need >1 FAR to consider doing structured parking, so they could easily have 3-4M sq ft of office before needing any garages.
Another point that economist Enrico Moretti makes is that tech firms sell to a global market and so their arrival has a high “multiplier effect.” Based on Cupertino numbers, 3,000+ new jobs at Apple RTP results in 16,000+ additional jobs throughout the Triangle.
Was hoping we’d have a chance to maybe pull the huge Microsoft development from going to Atlanta because of the voting law but looks like they just doubled down and purchased more land in the middle of west Atlanta.
With the apple news this week though, I’m hoping it creates a sort of domino for people and companies to say “why not Raleigh” if two huge companies in Google and apple are investing this much here.
Even at 3000 employees, Apple barely cracks the top 5 for RTP employers behind IBM, Cisco, Fidelity, and Credit Suisse.
This doesn’t even count others like Lenovo, SAS, Metlife, or IQVIA which are also larger but not technically in RTP. There are also some other significant ones in our region, like Red Hat or Toshiba who have big presences but are slightly smaller.
The average of $187k is extremely eye popping but I don’t think the overall impact is going to be as big as some seem to think.
Speaking of the $187K, has there EVER been an announced average salary that high for a corporate expansion of this magnitude in the history of the state? If there has, I certainly don’t remember it.